Vicarious Cemetery Travel

Bianca, by Mike Spak

At the beginning of June, 2015, I took a trip to Denver, Colorado, with my family. I had to teach all weekend at a medical conference, and had no opportunity to do any cemetery travel. One evening we had dinner with my friend Mike Spak, who lives in Boulder, Colorado. During dinner, he began showing me the photos on his smart phone. Oddly, several were cemetery photos that he had taken in various places.

I had forgotten that he did this sort of thing. So during dinner, I enjoyed some cemetery travel vicariously through him! The photos you see here are all Mike's.

The angel with the guitar belongs to Bianca Halstead (1965 – 2001), a.k.a Bianca Butthole. She was the bassist and lead singer of the Hollywood-based hard rock band Betty Blowtorch. Bianca was killed in an auto accident in New Orleans. She is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, CA.  Hollywood Forever is a “must see” for any Cemetery Traveler. I’ve been there twice. (Read more about Bianca here http://foodchainrecords.com/bianca/)

Photo by Mike Spak

William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997), is the American beat writer famous for his 1959 counterculture novel Naked Lunch. He is interred in the Burroughs family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. I have always felt guilty for not reading Burroughs, though I am a big fan of Jack Kerouac, another beat writer. Quite a bit of Kerouac’s novel On the Road is based in Denver, and I did feel a bit of that vibe walking down Larimer Street, which is where Kerouac hit town in 1947 when this area was the town’s skid row.

The “Black Angel of Council Bluffs;" photo by Mike Spak

Now for the “Black Angel” of Council Bluffs. Okay, so I thought I knew my cemetery lore. I also thought Mike made up this moniker because this Victorian-era bronze patina angel had taken on a dark hue. Turns out it is locally known as the “Black Angel of Council Bluffs,” Council Bluffs being a town in Iowa across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska.

The angel resides in Fairview Cemetery, marking the grave of Ruth Ann Dodge. The bronze sculpture holds a bronze basin of running water and appears to be standing in a granite boat. After Dodge died in 1916, her two daughters commissioned the memorial to be made by Daniel Chester French, who is best known for creating the white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. According to the website, www.prairieghosts.com, the young women “had strict criteria for French as to how the angel was supposed to look. They wanted it to be a likeness of an angel that had appeared to their mother during a series of visions that she had before her death.”

Interesting. Many such sculptures are created either from a mold or from a live model. This one appeared to be created in the likeness of an actual angel. According to www.prairieghosts.com, Dodge’s dreams were realistic and overwhelming visions about which her daughter Anne stated: “We realized this was no dream, no ordinary occurrence, but an apparition such as appeared to those saints of olden times, who were spiritual seers, holy enough to penetrate the fleshly veil and view spiritual things hidden from the worldly minded.”

Photo by Mike Spak

In these visions, Ruth Dodge described to her daughters that she was on the rocks of a seashore. Out of the mist, “she saw an ancient boat appear that was covered with roses and rare and fragrant flowers. As it approached, she saw that a beautiful young woman was standing in the bow of the ship. As soon as Ruth saw her, she knew that she was a spiritual being and “not of this earth.” (ref.)

Excerpt from “Iowa’s Mysterious Black Angels:”

“The young woman was clad in a glistening white garment that fell in long folds from her shoulders to her feet. Her hair, which reached to her shoulders, looked like spun gold, forming a halo around her head. Her eyes were bright and seemed to look at Ruth, and yet through her, and were filled with an expression that was beyond description.”

The being came toward Ruth carrying a vessel under her arm. The vessel was filled with water that Ruth said “glistened, glittered and sparkled like millions of diamonds.” The woman offered it to her and urged her to drink from it, telling her that it contained a blessing. But as much as Ruth craved the water, she told her daughters, she was not ready to drink it just yet. A few moments later, she “awoke” and the vision was gone. (ref.)

"Ruth had the same vision three times and on the third time, she drank from the water that the angel offered her. A few days later, she died. On her deathbed, she told her daughters that the angel offered her the “wonderful water of life. I drank from it and it gave me immortality.” (ref.)

To the best of their abilities, and based on Ruth’s physical description of the supernatural being in her visions, her daughters had the “black angel” sculpted and placed over their mother’s grave. They must have assumed it was an angel, since their mother never mentioned wings. The angel is standing in a granite boat and is carrying a vessel with water that continually runs. I never really thought about fountains in cemeteries. The angel may symbolize immortality, but then so might running water. The water of life ....

So thanks to my friend Mike for the virtual cemetery tour!

A Cemetery ... Coloring Book?

Your favorite Cemetery Traveler does not have to visit actual cemeteries to get his jollies. Oftentimes adventures can be had in other places, like a used book store, for example. Phoenix Book Store in Lambertville, New Jersey, has been something I’ve wanted to check out for months. In mid-June, I had the opportunity to do just that.

Let me start by saying that they are going out of business in August 2013, so time’s a wastin’ if this article excites you and you want to partake of their wares. Phoenix Books specializes in used, rare, and out-of-print books. Antiquarian booksellers are not businesses I frequent, but I do read a lot so it seemed worth checking out. When I got there, I was surprised to see a sign on the door saying everything was half price! So that made the not terribly high prices even more palatable.

I looked around a bit and noticed a large rack of photography books, art books, architecture books, but nothing having to do with cemeteries. After picking up a monograph of Brett Weston’s photography (Voyage of the Eye), it occurred to me to ask the shopkeeper, “Do you have any books on cemeteries?” He thought a moment then shook his head, saying, “No, we don’t … don’t think so …” And then he brightened up and said, “Oh wait! We do!” And he went darting off between the stacks (that’s librarian-speak for the shelves full of books). The kind gentleman returned with the coloring book you see pictured here.

I was astounded. Shocked, tickled even, by my good fortune. Ask and you shall receive. Who would have thought such a thing existed? Not I, said the Cemetery Photographer. The 8.5 x 11 inch sized, thirty-page paperback was published by California’s “Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Association” in 1962 (what were they thinking?!). While I paid four dollars for it, there is no actual price on the cover. This led me to believe that it was given to children (with a pack of crayons?) by the funeral director while the parents were …making final arrangements? But I was wrong (as I so often am). I found this tidbit on the Internet, written in 2009, recalling the author's memories from 1969:

"What I do remember very well is the Forest Lawn coloring book I bought in the gift shop. In it, one could lay crayons to the sculpture and buildings peppering the deep green landscape. (Green was a dominant color in this book.) The cover foretold the fun inside: two children, hand in hand, walk through Forest Lawn's open gate. Ah, family values. Four decades later, who knows if any of the Forest Lawns even have a gift shop."

(Steve Crum on Show Biz)

I’m not certain the writer (Steve Crum) realized the oddness of his experience. Does anyone reading this blog know of any other cemeteries that have published coloring books? To a child, I suppose coloring a scene from the Crucifixion or angels serenading a deceased baby might not raise eyebrows. I know my own three-year-old daughter is undiscerning about what she colors. Granted, the Last Supper and the Pieta are relatively innocuous and safe, but wouldn’t you think coloring an outline of the Administration Building and the Flower Shop to be rather boring? And what about that front cover? A little boy and girl walking hand-in-hand through the cemetery gates? What’s up with that? Why the amber vortex beneath their feet? Are they entering a Disneylandia-type entertainment complex or did they just die and are entering Heaven? And why SIX scenes from the crucifixion?!

At the time of Steve Crum’s colorful experience (1969), I don’t expect Forest Lawn was the huge entity it is now, owning ten Forrest Lawn memorial parks around southern California. I’ve been to two – the one in the Hollywood Hills and the one in Glendale. Back in 1993, I visited the Glendale memorial park in search of movie stars’ graves. I found none, while I expected to see many. I guess I thought the place would look like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Hollywood, CA), where massive monuments to silver screen titans cover the grounds – even if you weren’t totally up on your silent movie star catalog, at this place ALL the surnames sound familiar! Not so at Forest Lawn. Forest Lawn is, as its architect might have said, more ‘dignified.’

 

According to the “Seeing Stars” website, “There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park than at any other spot in the world.” Now realize, there were no such websites in 1993. All I had to go on were some stupid “Hollywood Stars” maps that people sell on the street corners on Sunset Boulevard (which is where I bought mine). The Glendale Forest Lawn, I have since discovered, is the original and largest (300 acres) of the Forest Lawn Memorial Parks. That coupled with the fact that all the grave markers were flat-to-the-ground and very spread out, I found no movie stars.

Forest Lawn is a memorial park. At the time, I did not distinguish between this and a typical cemetery with upright headstones, statues, and monuments. At the time, I also did not realize the historical importance of Forest Lawn being the nation’s FIRST memorial park. For the uninitiated, a memorial park is a cemetery without upright gravestones or family monuments. They are characterized by flat meadow-like grassy fields with flush-to-the ground grave markers.

Back in 1912, a fellow by the name of Dr. Hubert Eaton purchased Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California (it was established in 1906). His innovative plan for the cemetery was to turn it into "a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and ... memorial architecture." (Wikipedia ref.)

For the most part, Dr. Eaton succeeded. His idea caught on and spread throughout America. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the concept, much preferring the art and architecture of an old Victorian cemetery. The major attraction of the memorial park to the owner, I am sure, is the relative ease with which the grounds can be maintained. Run that riding mower right over the flat grave markers – no bothersome statues and monuments to dodge, no meticulous weed-whacking necessary.

But according to the coloring book, Forest Lawn has many other attractions including the Finding of Moses Fountain, Wee Kirk o’ the Heather Chapel, and the Last Supper stained glass window in the Memorial Center of Honor. For a more updated list, you can check out Forest Lawn’s website.

So while Phoenix Books did not provide me with any other cemetery books, the Forest Lawn coloring Book is a substantial piece to add to my collection. I did find some other choice pieces,  including a copy of The Devils’Race Track – Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings. I’m sure there are other treasures awaiting you in these last couple weeks before they close, so run! Perhaps like the phoenix of Greek mythology, it will go down in a blaze of fire and at some point be reborn, rising from the ashes of its predecessor.

Further Reading and Reference:

Yelp Review of Phoenix Books in Lambertville, New Jersey (with map):

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks website

Visit Phoenix Books before they close their doors forever in August, 2013!

49 N. Union Street
Lambertville, New Jersey 08530

609-397-4960

Love and Death

This would be quite a short blog if I were to just say, “Hey, one of my photographs was used on a magazine cover, and here it is.” But you know me better than that! First let’s talk about the magazine, or more accurately, the [British] Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. One of the editors of the JCFAR had seen my photograph, “Cupid and Psyche,” on my StoneAngels website (www.StoneAngels.net), and emailed me asking if the organization could use it as the cover image for their next issue of its professional journal. The issue would be published in February 2013 (the month in which I am writing this blog, the month of love, as it were), its overall theme being, “On Love.”

I of course said yes, as this would be an interesting topic of conversation between my wife and I, she being, in fact, a psychotherapist. Our worlds again collide – art and mental health (but they are closely related, right?).

Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research, 
Issue No.23 “On Love”  (Table of Contents):

Lucia Corti   Love Masks....

Julia Borossa   Narratives of Love

Anne Worthington   The Inequalities in Love

Werner Prall   Transference: Seduction and Transcendence

David Henderson   Where is Love?

Astrid Gessert   What Does The Woman Want? - Revisited

Alireza Taheri   Love and the Sexual Non-Rapport

Conditions of Philosophy

From the book, Stone Angels, by Ed Snyder

My own interest in the sculpture of Cupid and Psyche began with research I did in preparation for writing my Stone Angels book, which features my photograph of the statue. When I made the image back in the early 2000s, I was unaware of its mythological and historical significance – I only recognized it as a quite moving piece of sculpture, one of many examples of sensuality and death comingled in the cemetery.

 (Available from Blurb.com)

“Sex and death. Eros and Thanatos. [The psychiatrist Sigmund] Freud believed them to be our inner drives, forces that both coincide and conflict. As humans we seem to be simultaneously sexually driven and death phobic. Death and desire seem to conjugate in some fashion in our minds, a philosophy of opposites.”

“The sculpture in this photograph is a copy of Psyche Revived by Love’s Kiss, by the Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova [1757 - 1822]. The original resides in the Louvre. The one I photographed is in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. The cemetery is cleverly described by its owners as the “final resting place of Hollywood’s immortals,“ which includes, quite appropriately, Rudolph Valentino.”

- Stone Angels (Blurb.com)

The Journal of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research
 

Victorian Valentine, "Love's Question" (Squidoo.com)

The interest taken in my photograph by the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research for use on its journal cover is easily understood at first blush  – the imagery is essentially that of a Victorian Valentine, and the journal issue is focused on love. However, I believe the sculpture likely has a much deeper meaning to the readers of the journal, the members of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. Cupid, or Eros, is waking his love, Psyche, with a kiss. [In Roman mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupido, for "desire") is the god of desire, affection, and erotic love. His Greek mythological counterpart is the god Eros.]

Canova's original sculpture

The sculpture epitomizes not only love, but death as well. Freud theorized that human nature emerged from two basic instincts: Eros and Thanatos, the libido and mortido - the life instinct and death instinct. “He saw in Eros the instinct for life, love and sexuality in its broadest sense, and in Thanatos, the instinct of death, aggression. Eros is the drive toward attraction and reproduction; Thanatos toward repulsion and death. One leads to the reproduction of the species, the other toward its own destruction” (ref. Michael Dunev Art Projects). 

So, then, if Cupid, or Eros, with his erotic embrace, is reviving the woman with a kiss, is she dead? Is Antonio Canova’s sculpture as much about death as it appears to be about love? The meaning behind the statue lies in Greek mythology, not far from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. It is an allegory about love overcoming death. As a piece of sculpture in a cemetery,  It can easily symbolize life after death – immortality.

Sleeping Beauty

Cupid and Psyche’s story is the earliest recorded version of the “wakened by a lover’s kiss” fairytale. It was told by Lucius Apuleius in his 2nd century AD novel, The Golden Ass (in the novel, the protagonist is turned into a donkey).

 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1889

Psyche is a (mortal) princess so beautiful that people treat her like a goddess. Potential suitors are reluctant to approach her, and she can therefore find no mate. The goddess Venus is jealous of this so she decides to trick Psyche into a self-imposed “Sleep of the Innermost Darkness,” or coma-like death. Through Venous’ trickery, her own son Cupid becomes Psyche’s secret lover. Psyche implores Venus to help her find her mystery lover, and Venus imposes a series of [seemingly] impossible tasks that Psyche must perform in order to “prove her worth.” One of these tasks was to deliver a jar in which was imprisoned the “treasure of divine beauty.” Psyche wanted some for herself, thinking it might lure her mystery lover to show himself. However, the jar was filled instead with a sleeping potion. In the end, Cupid rescues Psyche from her death-sleep, and she is, as depicted in the statue,“… revived by Love’s kiss.” Cupid implores Zeus to grant Psyche immortality, so that the two lovers can be together forever. Psyche received the gift of immortality so that she could be with Cupid. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas (Greek for "Pleasure"), and they all lived happily ever after. Eros + Psyche (Greek word for the human soul) = Voluptas , i.e.,  erotic desire melded with the human spirit produces pleasure – or something like that.

Conclusion

So we can see that, as with love itself, there is much more to the "Cupid and Psyche" statue than meets the eye. The concepts of life and death touch us all - taphophiles, psychiatrists, sculptors, Disney script writers, and certainly these young lovers locked in a sort of Cupid-and-Psyche embrace that I photographed on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. In this month of Valentine’s Day, we can see how love is, in fact, a many-splendored thing. Namaste.

References and Further Reading:

Center for Freudian Analysis and Research
Antonio Canova biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid

http://www.ynot1.com.au/magazines/EROS%20AND%20THANATOS%20tat.pdf

Hollywood Forever Cemetery website
Greek Myths: Eros and Psyche

Victorian Valentines

The Ramones and Hollywood Forever

In 1998, I had a teaching engagement in Los Angeles. I took my daughter with me, who was fourteen at the time. We got to California a day early so we could photograph in a few cemeteries. One of these was the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

The cemetery was at that time kind of overgrown with weeds and not tended to very well. It also seemed to parallel the shabby look and feel of Hollywood itself--a shanty town. Supposedly the owner (who died in 1997) embezzled most of the endowment funds (which is a cemetery's main source of income to pay for upkeep). New ownership in 1998 has turned things around and the place is currently a very lively memorial park that hosts tours, movie screenings (picture George Romero's 1968 cult classic, Night Of The Living Dead projected on a mausoleum wall!) and the Ramones annual memorial concert (see link below).

As the Hollywood Forever website says, "Founded in 1899, the cemetery was an integral part of the growth of early Hollywood. Paramount Studios was built on the back half of the original Hollywood Cemetery, where the studio is still in operation today." To paraphrase Mark Twain, you can't swing a cat without hitting a movie star's grave in this place. I don't usually take snapshots of such things, as I strive for a more abstract, fine art type of photography. The image you see above is one of the most memorable I made that day. The sculpture rests on a monument at the main entrance and is a knock-off of the famous Cupid and Psyche masterpiece "Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss" created by Antonia Canova in 1787 (original in the Louvre). I prefer the knock-off; it has more character!

Photo by Mike Spak

Jayne Mansfield, Douglas Fairbanks, Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, and those Little Rascals, Alfalfa and Darla, are all buried here. But the list goes on, as the cemetery continues to host active burials. Since I've been there, two of the Ramones, Johnny and Dee Dee have died (2004 and 2002 respectively) and are both buried there. The photo at right of Dee Dee's headstone was taken by my friend Mike, who visited the cemetery in 2009.

Many of my friends have seen my cemetery photography over the years, and some have become interested in the subject themselves. I've had people send me photos of fabulous graves from all over the world, places I'll probably never get to. It's a nice feeling to know that I've kindled this interest in others, and its fun to hear their stories. Mike, for instance, refused to photograph Johnny Ramone's monument, which is near Dee Dee's. Why? Because it had an inscription carved into it from that poser Eddie Vedder! I mean, Johnny paid for the monument himself! What could Pearl Jam's radio-friendly MOR music have to do with the Ramones' innovative punk? Takes some chutzpah (Johnny was Jewish)  to have your own name carved on someone else's monument.

Another thing that made my visit to the cemetery memorable was an interaction I had with my daughter. As we walked around the grounds, we came to a grove with childrens' graves. Many of the small stones had "Born" and "Died" dates that were very close, often less than a year apart. Being in the health care business, I was fully aware of the high mortality rate among children prior to the 1950s. My daughter, however, was not. They might mention this stuff in school, but it doesn't really hit home until the proof stares you in the face. She was shocked.

In 1900, 10% of U.S.-born children died before they were a year old (now its far less, below 0.03% thanks to vaccines for measles, rubella, and polio, as well as better prenatal care for moms). Large family plots in cemeteries would seem to feed into the stereotype of families being larger in the olden days. But if you scrutinize the dates on the headstones, you'll see that many children didn't make it past their 5th birthday. Parents would in many cases continue to produce children to make up for ones who died. A sobering revelation--I could tell her eyes were opened. Kind of like when I introduced her to the music of Alice Cooper. Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted!

I think I've reached the end of my broadcast day. Since I spent so much of this blog talking about life, death, and creativity, let me leave you with this lovely quote:

"Creation is a drug I can't do without." - Cecil B. DeMille

Some links to peruse:

Hollywood Forever Cemetery Website
Video tour of the cemetery
Ramones annual memorial concert
Johnny Ramone Monument on YouTube
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss