5:58am: Waking to a cool breeze wafting through the window of our Cougar Half-ton trailer, Annie and I are scheduled to leave Morro Bay’s 64 degree temps for Fresno’s 108 sweltering degrees in a couple of hours🤬! So, after a bit of outdoor cleaning, my dog and I ramble through the sand dunes of the Pacific coast beach weaving through various trails separated by blankets of brilliant pink flowering ice plant with Dassa yanking, pulling me along.
Holy Mother …
As I’m cueing up ‘Holy Mother’ by Eric Clapton with Luciano Pavarotti on my iphone, Dassa jolts the leash agitating me a bit. Looking down about to scold my dear friend, I’m averted to an adorable 🥺 vulnerable baby seal about fifty yards from the ocean tide. My heart sinks thinking how to save this little guy and wondering why his coat is jaundiced.
Note: Come to find out a harp seal can have yellowing of the fur at birth due to a staining from amniotic fluid (a cushion that protects the fetus in a mother’s uterus) lasting a few days then becoming white. I assume this is the case here. Side note … the ice plant is native to South Africa’s dry climate able to thrive in poor soil, brought to California in the early 1900’s where it was planted to solidify, stabilize soft soil by highways, railways, and such.
I called Morro Bay Harbor Patrol, giving me the number for the Marine Mammal Center. They don’t open until 8:00 directing me to voicemail asking for a thorough description, location, my name, and number along with pictures they would later request … which they did.
It bothered me to leave the little fellow by himself, but the Center warned about touching, moving, or approaching the seal since I could unintentionally cause it more distress. There was nothing else I could do. Fortunately, Dassa sensed the seal’s vulnerability keeping a respectful distance. We left the seal planted in the sand praying the Marine Mammal personnel would save our new buddy.
So you know … Later in the afternoon I called the Marine Mammal Center, providing reference #1699, checking up on the ‘little fella’. The report stated that there were sand tracks indicating the baby seal made its way to sea. No body was found which is one mystery making me very, very happy 😊.
Walking away heavyhearted, I played ‘Holy Mother’ through my pods attempting to drown some of the softness I felt. It worked only following the first line, “Holy Mother, where are You?’ Ugh 🥲! That first line put my mind to the mother of the poor dear washed ashore baby seal likely worried sick about her bundle of joy.
Then I thought, what a musician! What an operatic genius! Absorbed in a gospel-esque song. Hmmm. Yet, what tweaked my mind more than the immense talent of both Clapton and Pavarotti were the lyrics creating a curious rabbit hole for me to crawl into. After replaying ‘Holy Mother’ seven times (something I often do when I love a song) along my morning six mile jaunt, packing our things for our trip back home, scratching the itch when we got on the road, “Who wrote this song? … and why?”
It was written by Clapton in 1986 during his peak of drug and alcohol addiction, a dark period in his life as he released a tenth solo album, ‘August’. Two years prior, Clapton was in Canada and went to see the release of ‘Purple Rain’ starring Prince playing himself. Never hearing of Prince prior, he was mesmerized by his talent. Literally, after watching ‘Purple Rain’ Clapton soon considered Prince a genius, respecting him immensely. On a Facebook post later in his life, Clapton stated it gave him hope returning to songwriting during a time he was just hanging on, deeply depressed.
The year of ‘August’s’ release while producing songs with the help of Phil Collins, a fellow talented musician and friend Richard Manuel was depressed and drug-abused returning to his hotel room, hanging himself after a performance in Florida. This solace of losing someone Clapton loved dearly drove Eric to dig deeply and pen ‘Holy Mother’, something he was inclined to do only because of a purple rain (end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/God guide you through the purple rain).
The last three verses of ‘Holy Mother’ are what cause me to replay it over and over before knowing the whole story, so here it is … “Holy Mother, hear my cry, I’ve cursed your name a thousand times. I’ve felt the anger running through my soul; All I need is a hand to hold. Oh, I feel the end has come, no longer my legs will run. You know I would rather be in your arms tonight. When my hands no longer play, My voice is still, I fade away. Holy Mother, then I’ll be lying in, safe within your arms.”
“In the privacy of my room I begged for help. From that day until this, I have never failed to pray …” Eric confessed. He was lost and needing to be found like Richard Manuel. In 1987, for the second time, he went into addiction rehabilitation treatment one year after his son Conor was born, ten years following the release of his infamous song, ‘Cocaine’.
Five years after penning ‘Holy Mother’ and four years after sobriety, Eric Clapton learned of Conor falling through a 53rd floor window in a New York State apartment. Man, oh man!! What more can a person take. It breaks my heart. The seal 🦭. An innocent boy accidentally falling to his death before living his full life. My bleeding heart and soul went out to Eric Clapton.
Five years later, ‘Holy Mother’ was performed with Pavarotti and the East London Gospel Choir in Bosnia at the ‘War Child’ concert supporting aid to stop ethnic cleansing and violence. It is this version of the song I came to love, downloaded as one of my ‘Favorites’, and play at least once each day. I’m reminded that time can heal and pain can produce beautiful things, including songs such as ‘Holy Mother’ and ‘Tears in Heaven’. I respect Eric Clapton’s courage and strength to overcome this beast of burden with beautiful lyrics, grace, and I assume forgiveness of others, and self.
Kevin Costner Interview ..
Not sleeping well the night before, the seal, our three hour drive home into arid conditions, and unloading and organizing our stuff left me a little mellow. I crashed upstairs in my ‘man station’ and happened to come across an interview with Kevin Costner regarding his upcoming independent film, ‘Horizon: An American Saga’.
Kevin Costner: Making Films His Way. Doing the dishes is required when a person is an independent movie producer, Costner chuckles. He is ok with that. He can extend scenes or make additions that otherwise could be cut when working for others. He emphasizes that it is the detail of characters, added moments in a movie that can contribute to intrigue a viewer. It’s what he likes so much.
Andy Stumpf, host of Change Agents on Ironclad and former Navy Seal of 17 years, compliments this attitude saying he also finds the greatest value in his life pursuing things ‘over the horizon’, not knowing what he will encounter when he gets there. This is courage. This is heroism, sharing that he relates to the characters doing hard things like riding on a wagon out west day after day without any suspension. Costner agrees, caring about the nuanced attributes or characteristics of Western movies is important to him, adding that he doesn’t like Westerns that are oversimplified, at all!
Thirty-six hours prior to this interview Andy Stumpf was at the American Cemetery in Normandy, France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. He relayed that he isn’t always a fan of the protagonist of a story always being victorious. He wraps this into the last thing he did in Normandy, walking the cemetery among 9,000 headstones, 45 pairs of brothers laid side by side overlooking Omaha Beach. These 45 are heroes, but not because they came out on top. Rather, they were willing to give it all, as Andy puts it, for what they believed.
Costner piggybacks about the ultimate offering, mentioning how young and naive they were; not knowing what they would encounter. Yet, they went into the unknown anyway. Stumpf pounds the point home describing the immense feeling standing at low tide on Omaha Beach looking at what these men were about to encounter. Andy admits that his limited vocabulary can’t express the sacrifice and service, the ability to put others above self, well enough. Costner acknowledges that he’s played smart, brave people but he has never faced what his characters faced, or what Andy faced as a Navy Seal.
Andy states a curiosity, asking Costner what it means to be a man? He brings Hayes Ellison, the character he portrays in Horizon, into the conversation saying in the West, back in the day, there was no lawman. Law was something you took into your own hands, such as a scene with Hayes walking up a hill with a guy. Hayes realizes this guy is crazy and will eventually try to kill him. Hayes conjures the courage to kill this guy next to him while climbing the hill, but he’s not a killer. He’s scared. Fearfully, Hayes clicks his gun at the top of the hill shooting this guy in the back. No shame in doing so, just courage.
I believe by Costner using Hayes character, his truth, facing a very difficult decision, enduring the tension, and taking action is being ‘a man’. Andy references ‘Dancing with Wolves’ saying he watched the movie years ago before serving in the navy, then again after returning 17 years later and he saw the main character (John Dunbar, a Civil War soldier) differently. He watched a person suffering from PTSD, isolated, putting himself back together again. Summing up the thought, it centers around people who have arcs (path above and below the horizon) in their life. Who they are before a significant life experience is not who they become after it. There is no need explaining that to anyone!
Emphasizing the nuts and bolts of acting, Costner states little moments in a movie like a hero reloading his gun shows a character’s nervousness making him human and relatable. It’s in these finer details that make his movies a bit longer than most, but more appealing. I appreciate Costner sharing that the architecture of a movie is bringing the audience to tension because one doesn’t know what will happen, but once something is done now it’s action. The tension is gone. Once you kiss the girl it becomes romance, the searching is over.
Costner answers two questions, the first being ‘the highlight of his life’, during a time of confusion, having a private talk with himself after realizing he wasn’t good in school, always trying to please his parents. He told himself that he wasn’t going to please anyone anymore. He was going to ‘put his foot on the yellow brick road’ and find his way. Getting in touch with himself was getting control of his own life, this was his pivot point, choosing his own fate.
The second question, what was the hardest thing you’ve ever had to work yourself through? Divorced with children was the quick yet brief answer. Both saw eye to eye on this being their most challenging time. Andy states that divorce exceeded any difficulty or pain professionally. “There were some dark moments, Holy Shit,” he says. Until going through his divorce, Andy considered himself pretty tough, but for the first time questioned his value as a man and his place in this world.
Costner’s response, “We outta have dinner some time,” as he raises his coffee cup for a drink.
In closing, Kevin Costner’s intention is to make a movie memorable for the person who takes the time out of their day to go into a dark theater. He hopes that maybe a line from a movie, a feeling, something someone can take with them for the rest of their life. This expression suggests Costner is doing exactly what he was put on earth to do, causing me to calendar the June 28th premiere airing of Horizon in a theater near me, and you.
Take care, my friend 👍
