LIKE LARKIN'S LETTERS

Spalding Gray's journals share a skinless text-
how he struggled with multiple identities-9 in fact-
world traveler,film actor,Zen monk,Woody Allen WASP,suicide victim
and succeeded in most if not all of these multiple identities
I remember him best as storyteller/enchanter/chanticleer-
he sat @a table in the Universal Theater,Fitzroy,Melbourne,Victoria,Australia for 2 hours
and shared his experiences filming Francis Ford Coppola's epic APOCALYPSE NOW!
I recall most his being stoned in the South China Sea,not seeing land anywhere
and reconciling to a random lost death via drowning.Chance saved him Zen
and his story salutory even now,continues to evoke ,provoke and resonate.
Mark Twain storysharer,Charles Dicken's touring circuit,Jack Kerouac's adventuring-
his private life of drugs,booze,rage and pain anhedonia max
His"talking cure" ,his crafted conversations,his interviews with the audience
marked him as a public figure of wit and spontaneity,adaptive yet structured for max effect
"A connoisseur of ambivalence".A "lifeplayer who played life" He often wondered
what he would do without an audience or for one.Offstage often an embarrassment
Severely depressed,sexually confused ("I had to marry her to leave her")
It was a car accident that led to several suicide attempts-the final successful one
and only his filmed works and private journals to remind us what we have lost in his leaving.