JOE COCKER
...our very different careers

Part 1:

John Robert "Joe" Cocker(1944-2014) was an English rock and blues singer who came to popularity in the 1960s in the first years of my young adulthood. He passed away two days ago as I write this personal retrospective.

He was known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance, and cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of the Beatles. His life-narrative is divided into several phases, at least that is the pattern at that useful online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Cocker began playing drums and harmonica in 1959 with a group called the Cavaliers. I joined the Baha'i Faith that year. I was in grade 10, in love with at least 3 girls, and was a home-run king in a little town at the centre of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe.

Part 1.1:

I found the delineation of the several stages of Cocker's life in Wikipedia helpful in providing a framework for my own life-experience: 1959 to 1966, 1966 to 1969 and 1969 to 1971, and so I utlize that framework below. I'll leave it to readers who are interested in the evolution of Cocker's career to go to Wikipedia. In my case these 3 phases were characterized by:

1959 to 1966: finishing high school and university, finishing my adolescent baseball, hockey and football careers
1966 to 1969: finishing teachers' college, starting marriage, starting my teaching career, and moving away from home and hearth.
1969 to 1971: recuperation from first episode of bipolar disorder; moving to Australia

Part 2:

Mr. Cocker’s career began to take shape around 1965 when he and the keyboardist, Chris Stainton, formed the Grease Band which played in pubs throughout northern England before relocating to London in 1967. The year 1965 was also the year my own career began to take shape, and in 1967 that career began. While I was a student in my last year of a sociology degree, I decided to teach among the Inuit in Canada's eastern Arctic.

Cocker broke into the big time with his chart-topping 1968 cover of The Beatles’ With A Little Help From My Friends. He sang the song at Woodstock in 1969. His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film “Woodstock,” established him as one of pop’s most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. That song was released in October 1968 in the UK while I was in a large psychiatric hospital recovering from an episode of what came to be called bipolar I disorder.

Part 2.1:

Cocker, too, had mental health issues, mainly depression, and drug addiction mixed with alcoholism. I was protected from both alcoholism and drug addiction by my bipolar disorder. I had the severe form of BPD and, if I had got mixed-up with alcohol and drugs, my life would have made much more of a nightmare than it already was with the symptoms of BPD.

Cocker injected some American soul into English rock-n-roll; he was the first white English singer to really sound black. Cocker moved beyond the fluid soul of Sam Cooke and jazzy extemporization of Ray Charles to just lose himself in the musical moment.

Part 3:

Cocker also came to Australia in October 1972, some 15 months after I did. Just as my career and personal life was taking-off in 1972, Cocker's was beginning to descend into the alcohol and depression mentioned above. By the 1980s, his wife, Pam, had helped him get onto the straight-and-narrow. By the 1980s, marriage, career and psychiatric treatment for my BPD, all helped to regularize my life.

“Up Where We Belong” resuscitated Mr. Cocker’s career in 1982 as my own career was also resuscitated by a job in Australia's Northern Territory as an adult educator in the small country town of Katherine. By the time Cocker passed away yesterday, 23/12/'14, he had millions of fans from his 20 albums, from Woodstock releases, and all sorts of activities on the celebrity circuit from 1988 to 2014. I, too, had millions of readers thanks to the developments of the internet from 1988 to 2014. But I was still a two-bit player in the world's celebrity minor leagues.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia and several obituaries published in the first 24 hours after Joe Cocker's death.

Part 4:

I'm not in your league, Joe.
But I found looking back at
the road you travelled, and
the road I've travelled that
there were some useful ways,
means to make comparisons &
contrasts that throw light on my
own modus operandi......modus
vivendi, my own raison d'etre.

There was some crazy stuff in my
life-narrative, but nothing as crazy
as what you got into, Joe, in your
70 years of battling-away with the
intensities in your emotional life...
I had my own over-the-topness, too,
but was pleased to have moderating
influences of prophylactics1 from the
medical specialty of psychiatry which
have kept me from depression, mania--
all sorts of emotional imbalances in life.

1 pharmacology's precautionary, preventative, preventive medications

Ron Price
24/12/'14.

SUPERMAN: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

He Keeps Popping Into My Life

Part 1:

I watched some of the 2006 movie Superman Returns one evening this week. It was early February 2014, mid-summer in Australia with Valentine's Day just around the corner. Watching the movie gave me a brief visit into fantasy-land, and the experience of some personal nostalgia. I had watched some of this same TV film nearly four years ago on 19 June 2010, so my notes informed me. I decided to write this prose-poem providing a personal perspective on this superhero.

Superman is a fictional character, a superhero that appeared in comic books first published in the 1930s by DC Comics. Superman is now considered, and has been for decades, an American cultural icon, and that means, of course, that he/the image has acquired an immense popularity.

Superman first appeared in a short story entitled: "The Reign of the Superman" in 1932. In that same year, in July 1932, a dozen years before I was even born, the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Faith was closed with the passing of Bahiyyih Khanum, the daughter of the Founder of the Baha'i Faith.

According to Bahá’ís, every dispensation has one particular holy woman or "immortal heroine". In the time of Jesus it was the Virgin Mary, the time of Muhammad it was his daughter Fatima Zahra, and during the Báb’s dispensation it was Táhirih. Bahá’ís believe that Bahíyyih Khánum is the outstanding heroine of the Bahá’í dispensation. This, of course, has nothing to do with Superman. But the syncronicity of Superman's first appearance in popular culture with a particular aspect of the history of a Faith I have now been associated with for more than 60 years, was of more than a little personal interest. I do not expect this to have any special interest to others.

Part 2:

Superman was also created, so we are informed, by two high school students in Cleveland Ohio, in 1933. By then, the Baha'i community's 9 month period of mourning, which began with the passing of this holy woman, had ended. The comic character, Superman, was sold to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1938. By this time the formal and systematic teaching Plan of the Baha'i community had just begun.

Superman now has an 82-year history(1932-2014). He appeared in comic books, his central texts in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by the George Reeves' 1950 television serials. I was too young to remember those comic-books, but I do recall some of the episodes of that TV series back in the early to mid-'50s before my mother sold our TV to, hopefully, ensure her son was not tempted into triviality on a daily basis.

In the late 1970s and 1980s Christopher Reeve films rewired the entire Superman canon. The Lois and Clark television series of the 1990s was framed as yet another central Superman text. The Crisis on Infinite Earths(2001) and The Man of Steel (1986) comic book series rebooted the entire Superman-mythos, framing a range of sources. These resources were further extended by Superman Returns, as we are informed at that reliable source Wikipedia.

Part 3:

In 2001, the Smallville television series was launched, focusing on the adventures of Clark Kent as a teenager before he donned the mantle of Superman. I watched some of these episodes after I had retired from a 50 year student-and-employment life: 1949 to 1999. Adaptation to various media by any literary or art form depends on a dialogue or oscillation between those media. If I engaged in a cross-media study of Superman, I could look back at the more than three-quarters of a century genesis of this trans-media dialogue. But that is not my purpose in this brief prose-poem.

Part 4:

Superman was first conceived, as I say above, in 1932 and was arguably western civilization’s first superhero. Superman was first portrayed as a villain named Bill Dunn who was later revisioned into a good guy for more popular appeal. Originally,Superman was produced as a syndicated newspaper strip, which ran from June 1938 until May 1966, before being revived between 1977 and 1983.

Until the 1980s, comic books had largely been ignored by media theorists, except as scapegoats in media-effects debates. But comic books are on the cards for analysis by culture theorists in this new millennium. -Ron Price with thanks to Richard Berger, “Are There Any More at Home Like You?” in the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Volume 1 Number 2, 2008.

Part 5:

Why he’s been around since our Plan
began in the 1930s and 1940s. But no
one had any idea that the lifespan of
this superhero went along with the life-
span of this super-Plan that would, in
time, take the world by storm as the hero
Superman certainly did over the 82 years.

Why I remember those comic books,
and the TV programs way back in the
1950s when I was knee-high to those
grasshoppers....and the Baha’is were
in that Ten Year program that took a
new Faith to where it is today in some
200 countries, the second most spread
religion on the planet, so they tell me.(1)

Part 6:

(1) The term "Superman" derives from a common English translation of the term Ubermensch which originated with Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, "Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen" ("I will teach you the Superman"). These words appeared in Nietzsche's 1883 work Also Sprach Zarathustra. Baha'u'llah was released from strict confinement in the prison city of Akka in that same year to begin the last decade of His earthly life, as Charismatic-Founder of the newest, the latest, of the Abrahamic religions.

The term "Superman" was popularized by George Bernard Shaw with his 1903 play Man and Superman; this was the same year as the approval of the building of the mother-temple of the West in Chicago was given by 'Abdul-Baha. The character Jane Porter refers to Tarzan as a "superman" in the 1912 pulp novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The originator of Superman would later name Tarzan as an influence on the creation of his own Superman. Abdul-Baha went on His Western tour that year, a super-human effort by a 68 year old man in the evening of His life. I saw one or two, or more, of the Tarzan films starring Johnny Weissmuller back in the 1950s.

Ron Price
14/7/'09 to 17/2/'14.

Note: First updated after watching Superman Returns on Australian TV 19 June 2010, and finalized, I trust, on 17/2/'14.

Jack Brabham
On the passing of Jack Brabham today, 19/5/'14, I post an updated prose-poem I wrote about his life some years ago. -Ron Price, Tasmania
----------------------------------- ----------------------------- ------ -----
BRABHAM

And his formula......

Part 1:

I was never that interested in car racing, racing teams, Formula One world championship driving and drivers; indeed, sports in general after my teens took a distant place in my interest inventory. In addition, I have always had a low mechanical interest and aptitude. I never did well in basic woodwork and metalwork, what we used to call “shop” in high school, and I had little interest in cars and mechanics, in motorcycles and, indeed, anything, any gadget or appliance with a lot of parts. If any of these things needed fixing it was off to the repair man. In my second marriage, my wife had a high mechanical aptitude and interest. She took care of all the stuff that needed fixing. I did not marry my wife for her skills in this area, but marriage to my second wife, a Tasmanian, has proved useful on many fronts, fronts I knew little about when we married some 40 years ago.

So it was that a person like Jack Brabham was an unlikely candidate for my poetic pieces in this the evening of my literary life. One evening, though, some five years ago, I watched with interest a brief life-story of Jack Brabham.(1) I'll post a few highlights from his life, highlights that had some relevance to my own life-narrative, and perhaps some relevance to others who happen to read this prose-poem, although when writers talk about relevance and readers in the same breath, they can make no guarantees that readers will find their words laden with meaning--any meaning.

Part 1.1:

Brabham enlisted in the RAAF the year I was born, 1944. He was then 18. In 1959, the year I joined the Bahá'í Faith, Brabham won the World Championship in car racing, after winning the Monaco Grand Prix. Fifty-five years ago, as I update this original comment I made on Brabham some 5 years ago, this racing legend cemented his name in motor-sport history. He did this by becoming the first Australian to be crowned a Formula One world champion. In 1962, the first year of my own travelling-pioneering away from my home town in Ontario, Brabham drove for his own team, the Brabham Racing Organization. I'm still travelling but, now, it's mostly in my head as I watch and observe, recall and comment on all that comes into my sensory emporium and catches my fancy. Brabham stopped any of his travelling on this mortal coil today. He passed away as autumn in Australia was about to enter its last month.

Part 2:

The 1966 Jack earned a further place in motor-sport history by becoming the first, and so far the only, driver to secure the F1 championship in a car of his own creation. It was a feat unlikely to be repeated. I graduated from McMaster University in the lunch-pail city of Hamilton Ontario that year in May. I had a BA degree in sociology. For the next ten weeks, after graduation, that summer I sold ice-cream for the Good Humour Company at 80+ hours per week. On average, new employees with the then famous ice-cream company lasted only two to three weeks because of the long hours. Good Humor became unprofitable beginning in 1968 and, by then, I was teaching primary school among the Inuit on Baffin Island.
-Ron Price with thanks to (1)ABC1, “Australian Story,” 8:00-8:30 p.m., 17 August 2009.

Part 3:

You were only a name on
the very periphery of my
life back then the 1960s,
Jack, along with Stirling
Moss & the many Grand
Prix racing-men around
the world. I had my hands
full just getting through my
days: my studies, my psycho-
emotional life, the embryo of
my career, & my new religion.(1)

I was simply too busy, Jack,
to include you in the many
constellations of interests.

You’ve become an Aussie hero,
Jack, and in a global civilization
of 7.3 billion there just may be
many millions who will have
their emotions stirred when
they hear of your passing today.

Goodonyer, Jack, goodonyer!
May your continue with the loves
you had in this life as you race into
another world with its own Formula
One.....Perhaps there will be several
new formula for you to get into???
Who knows, eh Jack, who knows?

(1) The Baha'i Faith

Ron Price
17/9/'09 to 19/5/'14.