WHY WAS HE BORN SO BEAUTIFUL…???
Today is Brian X. Gaul’s 50th birthday, which precipitated a flurry of text messages between us, and the near-chugging of a bottle of Guinness on my end, in his honor. “And you are making Dartmouth proud!” was prompted by something fairly sophomoric, thinking back to the 1980s. I was also thinking of the Wallace Stegner short story about two old college chums talking after a long while: “how’s the boy?” and all that. That’s a vague reference to “Beyond the Glass Mountain” a story by former neighbor wrote for Harper’s in 1947, before our time about college chums meeting up a mere 17 years later — I am excerpting some of it below, at the very bottom.

As my further gift to my old roomie and our Alma Mater, I am reprinting here, or recontextualizing two old posts into this one, which I am imagining I would send to a Dartmouth professor of studio art named Soo Sunny Park (whom I’ve never met or spoken to, but something sent me surfing towards a video of her recent work).

I am thinking she should produce a video installation, or an installation piece or performance piece based on the Rolling Stones song “She’s Like a Rainbow” which, as I understand it, is about Marlinda Fitzgerald coming to some party dressed in a wild get-up, covered with little mirrors, and a spotlight hitting her just so, refracting a bunch of rainbows, and the song is born, so to speak. That plus Dartmouth should underwrite my “Cherry Colgado Pie” concept; plus my little ditty about Thomas the guard being a frustrated artist, and his photo.

Recipe for Cherry Colgado Pie
1. While in Minneapolis, near or at the Walker Art Center and Walker Sculpture Garden, do not fail to notice the giant Cherry on a Spoon, by Claes Oldenburg. Take a picture, or get your hands on the brochure. (aku “Spoonbridge and Cherry 1985-1988″)
2. In Hanover New Hampshire, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College has a sculptural piece by Juan Munoz (1953-2001) called “Hombre Colgado Pie (Man Hanging From His Foot, 2001)”. If the piece is not to be found on display, the little gift shop usually has a post card of this work.
3. In your mind, or with a scissors and paste, or some high falluting high tech thingamajig, juxtapose or put together as in a dream or a mash, these two concepts. Cherry plus colgado pie equals cherry colgado pie.
4. Serves one to six billion. Store the rest in a container, well-chilled for future use, reissue, a caprice.
5. For a little more spice, listen to “Symphony for improvisers” while you work, or certain hockey broadcasts, BUT NOT BOTH. See also.

Note may also be served with couscous van bruggen
A two-hundred-foot-tall anthropomorphic being

I shot this photo and am bequeathing it to Dartmouth in honor of Brian X. Gaul ’86, signed his roommate Mark B. Weiss ’86

descended on LACMA recently and examined the nut part of Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” with his two fingers. He said his name was Thomas and had studied art in other galaxies.

BUT ICE AND INDY CAN BE CANBY!?

“Hello, you poop-out,” he said. “This is Canby.”

The old password came naturally, as if he were back
seventeen years. In their college crowd everybody had
called everybody else Canby, for no reason except that
someone, probably Mel, had begun it and everyone else
had followed suit. There had been a real Canby, a sort of
goof. Now he was a CPA in Denver, and the usurpers of
his name were scattered from coast to coast.

“Well, Canby!” the filtered voice said heartily. “How’s
the boy?”

There was a pause. Then Mel’s voice, more distorted
now, beginning to be his clowning voice, said suspiciously,
“What was that name again?”

“Canby,” Mark said. “Cornelius C. Canby.” He raised
his head, grinning and waiting for the real recognition.

“Cornelius C. Canby?” Mel’s thickening, burbling voice
said. “I didn’t get the name.”

“It’s a hell of a note,” Mark said. “Your old friend
Canby was here, and you didn’t even get the name.”

We don’t have a code-name like “Canby” but when we talk, even 30 years after first meeting, he do use terms and phrases and intonations that we generally don’t tap into in our current day to day.

(Note I did not publish this until a week later but did catch up to my old roommate via phone as he was driving up to Eagles Mere for the weekend and a small gathering with his wife. God bless them both, and all the Gauls. Slainte. I remember that Michael Gaul had in his Gonzaga High yearbook: “Michael played while Joan prayed”. Most were answered.)