On July 4, my friend Len and I attended our first Hollywood Bowl event in two years. We had last attended in the summer of 2019, and, of course, the summer of 2020 was effectively obliterated by the outbreak of Covid and its attendant devastating consequences.

The headliners were old timers of the Baby Boom Generation, Kool and the Gang. Dennis Thomas was there with his tenor sax. I remember being impressed about his energy as one of the co-founders of the group. And his talent, of course. I don't know if this was his last show, but it was certainly his last tour on this earth. He died August 7 at home in New Jersey, in his sleep.

I keep hearing in my head this phrase from the late psychologist, Harry Stack Sullivan--"We are all more human than otherwise."

Whatever our status in life, our wealth, our intelligence, gifts, liabilities, there are simply some things that happen to all of us. Death, of course, is the last of those earthly happenings. We do a lot in our lives, all of us, to distract from that which appears final, if one does not believe in God or something after life.  And even those of us who believe in the survival of the soul and the resurrection of the body have an anxiety about the unknown-ness of heaven or hell or anything in between, and so we do the same in greater or lesser degrees.

Many of the distractions are essential. If you are a non-religious existentialist, you are fighting, rebelling against the absurdity of inevitable decay and death. (Another friend of mine a couple of years ago said simply, something like, "We are all decaying.") If you are religious, you see it as part and parcel of a larger plan, and you see your time on earth as work toward the fulfilment of that plan. 

But no matter what, believer or non-believer, I think it comes as quite a surprise to see yourself as contingent and readily dispensed with by the universe. Dennis Thomas was a man of 70. No doubt it had crossed his mind, as it does my own, or yours, that there wasn't much time left. But probably not that night of July 4. And certainly none of us in the audience had any thought of it. We were having too much fun. Life was in full force. As it should be. 

But his sudden death gets me back on the subject. And seems to require something of me, though as I write, I am not sure what.

Then a couple of other things I ran across this week emphasize that commonality of humanity and how foolish it is for us to focus on the things that separate us, and to have pride in our abilities to circumvent it. The two prominent examples of not being able to circumvent and I suppose how Hollywood has always attempted to deceive us for our viewing pleasure were courtesy of HBO. 

The first was a documentary on the late Debbie Reynolds and her also late daughter (who actually died just before her) Carrie Fisher made in 2017 after each of them died. 

Carrie and Debbie lived in the same compound, literally next door to each other. Debbie was over 80 by the time of filming of the documentary, called "Bright Lights". She was still working, sort of, going to less than glamorous nightclubs and venues to talk about being Debbie Reynolds to adoring fans of the same age. She had trouble walking. She was forgetful. She often did not feel well. She was like any of our old friends and family except that she had been Hollywood Royalty. Carrie, who also had managed to be Hollywood Royalty, at just under 60 looked just about as old as her mother, after all the years of drugs abuse and the monster effects of manic depression. But watching them in their moments outside of the public view (which of course became public with the documentary), they were familiar and loveable and frustrating, and if it is possible, ordinary "eccentrics" we have all of us known. Maybe we are one of those eccentrics in the view of  those who know us. Both of them were collectors of odd and sometimes wonderful tchotchkes they had gathered over their long careers. They interacted with the same love-hate intricacies familiar to our own relationships with our parents, and children, if you have them. They talked at cross-purposes. But they co-existed in what appears to have been an adaptive folie a deux. Somehow it worked. 

When I watched an assistant at one of Debbie's shows help her down a small set of stairs backstage on one of her reminicence tours--and it was a herculean task for Ms. Reyolds, I saw people I know, right now, at a similar stage in their not so famous lives. 

My thought is that we must, must, must prepare ourselves for this inevitability, somehow, and without rancor. It will come to all of us if we live long enough, unless like Mr. Thomas of Kool and the Gang, we are lucky enough simply to die in our sleep. (Oddly, as I wrote this, I find I don't know if I like the idea of dying in my sleep. Hmmm.)

"We ARE more human than otherwise!" The phrase screeches in my head. 

Then, when I came home from my second Hollywood Bowl sojourn, with Dave Koz and the Tower of Power, most of whom are also at a certain age, I flipped on the HBO Documentary called "Val" about Val Kilmer. Kilmer has basically filmed or had filmed most of his life, a video journal. And the Val we see who presents himself with the selected videos of years from childhood to date is nothing like the one you or I would remember. He is a baby boomer like I am, though several years younger (gulp!) and because of the treatment he had for throat cancer he has an artificial voice box and his speaking is difficult and halted. His son, Jack, narrates much of the documentary with Val's words.  This is a physically dessicated man, this once vibrant, incredibly handsome, successful (though difficult it is said) actor. Even in his diminished condition he also goes out on Comic Con type tours in the country to sign autographs for people who seem not to notice his current state, or, if they do, hold tightly onto what was, the fantasy of life as it should be. 

I wondered for a moment why we all (and of course I have) aspire to some fame and fortune in our lives. It is a transient illusion. What difference, really, does it mean if we are famous? Ask say, Ozymandias. How many young people today would know any of the stars of yesteryear, not just the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but the 1970s?

They do have the film, video and digital trails for people to discover. And we all have access to that now, we bloggers, and podcasters, and Tik Tokkers. I find I am glad of that. I am big on the preservation of the memory of people who have lived. But that doesn't change what happens to us in the short time we are here. 

And, if anything makes me feel compassion toward others is knowing that the same things happen to all of us, in variation of the how, but we all end up vulnerable and frail (again if we don't kick the bucket first). This is me. This is you. This is all of us. 

We should not pretend otherwise. And we should not run from the other who truly is us.