Emotional roller coaster, emotional trampoline, edge of that fucking ravine in Vishnevitz August 1943– call the motherfucker what you will, my knuckles are fairly white these days.  A few notes, then, for future posts on the Book of Irv that came to me while walking today, to be amplified one at a time in the near future.

1) High Threshold of Pain, Low Threshold of Frustration

My father liked to mention his high threshold for physical pain. When he was on his death bed I asked him if he was in pain.  “Only psychic pain,” he said.   While his threshold for pain may have been high, his tolerance for frustration was very, very low.

2) Great Candor and Honesty, Great Denial

My father loved Lenny Bruce.  He loved Malcolm X and Richard Pryor.  He loved them for their brilliance and originality and, just as much, for their unflinching honesty.  He hated hypocrisy and valued true honesty above most things, and he instilled those values in me and in my sister.  At the same time, there were things he defended tirelessly but was completely blind about.   He had regrets about this capacity for denial, the ultimate untruthfulness, as he was dying.

This capacity for denial extended, amazingly, to a kind of Holocaust denial [insert Sam and Yetta piece here– ed]

3)  Soul Music

I mentioned that my father bought every Sam Cooke album as soon as it came out.  The thing about Cooke that thrilled my father was the same thing in Bill Kenney that thrilled Sam Cooke.  It was soulfulness.   Cooke would take a beautiful melody and make it more beautiful with his small, perfect improvisations on it.  He was famous for  singing with melisma, a graceful, bluesy sliding between notes on a single syllable, using his voice like a great horn player uses his horn.   Even as a boy, I always loved Sam Cooke’s singing above all other singers.

My father also greatly loved cantorial music, also sung with great soulful longing.  I did not love cantorial music.