Sleeping more lately, re-disorganizing, napping...
Last Thursday for awhile!!!!
Post Blizzard Happy Hour!!!!
Work is a workweek work is a blind slide that startsonmondaystopsonfriday if i'm lucky, life is a workweek, life is life, life is a big fast car flying down a one lane blacktop, flying, swooshing, sighing by like a thing you did but don't clearly recall, like a memory you haven't had yet, just yet, life is the car, destiny is the road, work is the engine, money is the fuel
Night two: The last weekend for the show playing downstairs, and they had a great crowd. By 7pm the lobby already filling up, I dug into it on the electric. I left a copy of the book out and got two requests, Mister Green Genes, Zappa, and something else. I kind of chewed up Green Genes, first time playing it in public, but got a positive nod from the requester. Ramped up the song energy as the crowd gathered and then the room emptied out for the downstairs show leaving three older gentlemen at the bar. I took a brief break then came back with the baritone uke, which they liked. By 8:30 all wrapped up. Decided to play some house music from the ipod for the crowd exit, which matched the main show and was cool.Carmen:
You don't know me, unless I met you when Tom was teaching in Newark and I passed through town. I was one of Tom's best friends at Denison (a geologist, not a theater guy - Tom had two classifications for rocks - salty and non-salty). I just read about his death in the college news and have tearfully/gleefully watched your video of the memorial. Sadly, Tom and I last talked about a year after he moved to Greensboro, and we had promised to get together either there or here in Oregon where one of his nephews was in school. None of that happened despite good intentions. Last time I saw him was in Walnut Creek years ago - I was in town on business and we ate and drank - Tom wanted to make good use of my expense account!
Like everyone that played a part in the memorial service, I was one of Tom's projects. Tom taught me about being myself - how he knew so much about people when he was the same age as me (18 at the time) is beyond me. We were hardly alike, but maybe that's what made us friends. He was so far from my science circle, yet so close to all human roots. We took that same beat up Pinto from Newark to Ann Arbor to his dad's dream general store in Craftsbury VT in the middle of winter. Tom cursed the seat of the Pinto and Ford engineering cause it was going through the floor, but he flung himself into that thing pretty mightily. His mom even had a Christmas present for me, though she had never met me before. His dad was gruff with a heart of gold.
I can tell from the video that you had a long close friendship with Tom. I wish I had maintained my contact with him more consistently, but, even though I regret the distance and distractions, I believe that Tom would have greeted me with a booming "BILLY!" from the foot of the stage as I came to watch rehearsal in Greensboro. He did that for me at Newark High School a couple of times as I came to visit. You were probably there.
Can you tell me something about his last years? Just wondering about his illness and his state of happiness. I've thought about him a lot. Email when you can.
Thanks much
Bill Bach
- - - - - -
Hi Bill,
Your message has rung a few bells and it's generated a long response, I hope that's ok.
Tom had health issues for quite a few years, but it was not always easy to pin him down on them. He was a militantly independent soul and was not very receptive to suggestions about health, personal or career matters. About 15 years ago he had a case of severe reflux which netted some pretty negative diagnoses. He was fatalistic about it and took glee in reporting one particular trip to the doctor because he had lost the ability to swallow. The story involved a lot of uncontrolled spewing of some medicine or other that the doctors gave him to clear it up. To go to a doctor for an inability to swallow and then be given something to drink was Tom's favorite kind of doctor tale that he would relate with anger and relish. To him they were all incompetent or quacks and he would rage and laugh while dispensing the story. He told me things could get disastrously worse at any moment, but I don't know how that particular issue finally played out.
I believe at that time he was on a disastrous, hilarious and depressing solo cross country jaunt in a borrowed RV that he figured would be a good opportunity to sort out some big questions he was having about life. I think he was 45 or so. He had been going strong as artistic director at the Western Stage for many years and was in serious need of a vacation. Tom was into the big gesture and maybe the only thing he loved as much as theater was a road trip. And gambling. I think Tom's ideal life would have been to direct sold-out directorly and actorly plays in some isolated mecca of theatre, drive to Vegas or fly to Monte Carlo to play high stakes poker with heavyweights and show up to rehearsal the next day hung over and ready to work. I think he dug the emotional swoop of being way down and then winning back up. It wasn't until his final illness that I really got how much Tom liked drama. Pretty obvious given his profession. Me dummyhed!
He was always either a smoker or quitting smoking. In either state, he cursed his own need for the habit. I've smoked from time to time, and if I hung around Tom I might have bummed one of his atrocious menthol cigarettes from him just to feel the cool breeze.
In July of 2007 I got an email from a friend that Tom had developed serious health problems. He had checked into a hospital, diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He was still out and about in the world, but he had been having great difficulty walking and increasing problems breathing, so he went to see a doctor. Tom was simultaneously one of the most social people I've known and a true loner. I have often wondered if this set of traits fits naturally with theater directors as I've seen it in others. The director loves people, the director needs people, the director understands people and people are the raw material of his work. But working with someone is not the same as friendship. Although I consider Tom one of my greatest friends and I loved working with him, it was difficult to stay close in the absence of the work. The work was life and the work was family. I had decided to focus on building a career in New York and eventually the economics of my life made the trips to California to "do a Tom show" a thing of the past.
I kept up with him by phone, talking every few months. Conversations could be difficult, in every talk he would circle around some grievance in his theater, budget woes, the state of the art in general, betrayals by co-workers, this business we call show. I think of this kind of thing as work stuff, daily crap that needs to be dealt with but that ultimately must be transcended to get to life's important things. But Tom didn't have a lot of life outside of his job as far as I could see. He didn't have many romantic relationships that I'm aware of. He was in touch with his relatives, but I don't know that there were a lot of visits. He always spoke highly of his brother Gregg, but tended to express frustration with his father and his other brother. He was crazy about his mother, who passed away quite a few years ago. I would say now that Tom was competitive with the fellas. His real family was the diaspora of people who came to work with him and then would fly away until the next show. He had a few old friends that he kept in closer touch with from his days at Denison and even before from the Young People's Theater in Cincinnati. I proudly count myself as one of his oldest friends, but that crew I think was for him a well with a precious trickle of clear water where he could go for a drink. I don't want to idealize it, he could behave like an old married person with his old friends.
To Tom the theater was always his theater. It was this sense of ownership of the art and the place for the art that made him inspirational and maddening. And he had a great innate distrust of all authority, including, of course, doctors.
In this spirit Tom had become quite unwell over the course of at least a year before seeing a doctor. He had left the Western Stage around maybe 1999 and moved to Greensboro to chair the theater department at the University of N.C.. He had told me repeatedly that he was very unhappy there. I believe he loved the students but disliked some of the staff and faculty. I have an impression of him teaching classes and doing shows, but not having much of a home life. He had a cat, Baby, that he was very crushed out on and doted over. As he became sick the circulation in his legs was beginning to slow and the host of problems that comes with that were manifesting. It became more difficult to walk, numbness, weakness and then sores appeared. He hid this condition from his co-workers and did not mention it to friends. He'd drive to class, I'd imagine that he started to direct more from a seat in the theater, which he was good at. He told me that this problem culminated in a reunion trip for the Young People's Theater, which Tom helped to found. He made the 8 hour drive from Greensboro to Cincinnati barely able to move his feet. And when he got to the reunion he mostly sat. He didn't tell anyone there what was going on. I'm not sure how he accomplished this feat, perhaps people noticed but were polite, hey, we're all older now, right?
When he returned to Greensboro he finally saw a doctor. Tom loved to self-diagnose himself, and he had a bit of a haggle with the doc. "It's asthma" sez Tom. "Nope, your heart is failing" sez the doc. Tom was shocked. I think he had his hopes pinned on asthma. The doctor scheduled him for open heart surgery. I think quintuple bypass. Quintuple? Geez, how many bypasses can there be?
I went to Greensboro a few days after the surgery to visit. It was good to see him and he was pretty groggy. I came with a friend and we were only in town for a couple of days. He was having an interesting time of it with the medical personnel, the higher the rank, the more Tom detested them. One of the female nurses was very good to him. He had begun a year-long sabbatical a couple of months before and now it looked like it was going to be his recovery period. He told me that he felt very disconnected from the art of theater and wanted to get back into performing. He was working on a show of his medical journey and wondered if I would contribute music and sound design. I naturally said yes. It was to be a solo show with disembodied music and sound to accompany, and Tom would perform it himself. He worked on this show over the next two years while undergoing 2 more surgeries and not very enthusiastic diagnoses from the docs.
Tom had let his condition deteriorate quite a bit before seeking help and I suspect this contributed to the final outcome, though I don't know. While I wouldn't say that Tom took particularly great care of himself, I think his main vice was tobacco. He always liked a drink, but was more of a beer guy and I'd guess his early years of drinking had given way to the occasional cocktail. I think the larger issue might be that single person problem where one doesn't get a lot of input from outside sources. He could get pretty cranky if he were encouraged to adjust to get along with people, social expectations or his body.
And now this is a funny thing, because Tom had many, many admirers. I've drawn a bit of a bleak picture I suppose, and to me he was usually pretty eager to convey that he had a life of regret and diminishing expectations both professionally and personally. But I don't entirely believe it.
In some of these conversations I had with him, toward the end of the chat, after the carping about the co-workers and the miserable state of theatre in Amerika, there would be a mention of the show, or of the student. This would be on the order of, "well, I've got to get to rehearsal". Or "You'd love Charlie, he's a great guy, he's going to teach me to use this stupid computer." The rehearsal would be a show at the university, and Charlie was a student. I don't want to imply that Tom was happier than he claimed, that is not my place, and I'm sure some curse from beyond the grave would attach itself to me as a result. But I think it was a more complex than I was encouraged to see.
It's the reason I went down to Greensboro for his memorial, where I knew almost nobody, and not to Salinas, where I'd be more familiar. I wanted to see for myself what was going on. I was not disappointed. As you saw in the memorial video, there was a great love and support for Tom in evidence. There I was in a beautiful theater, packed with people who loved him. I looked around just before the memorial began and said to my wife, Alison, "Full house. Pretty good." Everyone I spoke with had a familiar story to tell. "I didn't know ... about myself, Tom encouraged me to..." "I never thought I could...Tom yelled at me to..." "I was terrified to...and Tom came along and beat me up until..."
I think I was able to spot the people who had pissed him off, swaggering a bit, more concerned with talking about their jobs than subject at hand. More interested in their jobs than in theatre. I know the type. But there were only a few. They must have felt a bit relieved and distantly confused at the event.
Right or wrong, Tom owned the theatre, even when he didn't have the highest authority or a piece of the real estate. He could be a real pain in the ass if I counselled pragmatism in his various conflicts. The thing was, and I've done more than one stinker with Tom, he could really deliver a show, he extracted the best from his colleagues. And that was because theatre was the thing with him, it was important, it was essential, it mattered. This was especially true in working with new actors and designers. I'd heard him complain about being trapped in academia, but I think he really loved to teach. It's hard like hell to get up in front of a class of young people, day after day and impart the sacred knowledge, but Tom was really good at that. I don't think I ever saw him bored at a rehearsal. Angry? Yes. Petulant? Check. Giddy with happiness? Sure, lots of times. Satisfied?
Ah, that might be the thing. Your email set me off on a bit of a journey. Satisfaction, happiness. You asked me if I could tell you about his state of happiness, and in my own 50 year old midlife zone I wonder about that topic pretty much all the time. Life has gone on longer than I ever thought it would, not in a bad way, just that whole being a grownup thing. See, even now I use a child's word to describe it. Keeping life fresh is a challenge. Learning is hard, knowledge is a bitch. Tom was ten years older than me, I see him as a cautionary tale and a shining example.
Tom went down unhappy with his job but loving his work. He couldn't stand academia but he loved to teach. Show business threw him into a rage but he lived only for the theatre. Maybe he was a guy who was difficult to work for but easy to learn from. Hard to find the right words, I wouldn't go with easy. And if he were here now he'd be trying to edit this himself.
Hope this answers your question, Bill.
Best regards,
Carmen Borgia
Last Thursday's gig was a hoot! Played a bunch of my own stuff
