an older frank sinatra sang lyrics from “the way you look tonight”/and they used it for a commercial/with stills of frank singing and smiling/and who knows what the commercial was advertising/but i trust it showed to frank/that he still had it/and was valued

a really old tony bennett/brought tears to lady gaga’s eyes/simply by recognizing her when she came out to sing with him/and they sang timelessly together/though tony was addled with dementia

glen campbell and alice cooper were golfing together/and glen told alice a joke early in the round/and then told him the same joke later in the round/and yet again before the round was over/but glen kept on performing on stage/and bathing in the applause/and he was still really good/and muscle memory kept his guitar playing astonishing

and i identify with and cheer for those old guys/and learn from them/that spending the last of your life making music/even when much of you is gone/is a glorious testament to “the show must go on”

.

i was an art major in college/and jokingly told my friends and family/that i was getting an early jump on my retirement

turns out not to be a joke

i will be seventy-one before the end of august

and i blissfully spend hours and hours making things on the potter’s wheel

i turn lumps into cylinders and cylinders into chess pieces and goblets and vases and birds

and I watch with increasing detachment as another part of my mind slowly erodes

for instance I did a search on “glenn campbell”/because i’d forgotten that “glen” has only one n in it

.

but back to “the way you look tonight”

it is a distant echo of the lines “And all that’s best of dark and bright/Meet in her aspect and her eyes” from “She Walks in Beauty” by george gordon, lord byron

“aspect” loosely translating as “the way she looks”

fun fact: “specchio” is old italian for “looking-glass”

.

i don’t give a care about leaving a good-looking corpse

but i care fervidly about leaving some good-looking and well-made clay art

so I raise the “power turquoise” cup i made, and i raise it to you, whoever and wherever you are,

and say, though i cannot see you,

“Here’s looking at you, Kid.”