George Carlin Died Yesterday

George Carlin died yesterday. He was not a baby-boomer, but I think he spoke for a lot of boomers. He came of professional age in the Sixties, when things pretended to be wide-open and ripe for change. I think he bagged quite a few of his early riffs from Lenny Bruce, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I see it as standard artistic behavior. Find me a guitar player who says he doesn't steal from everybody and I'll show you a liar, or at the very least, an airhead in denial.

All artists borrow. They (we) can't help it. It's the nature of learning and knowing. Instincts are true and original, usually, but we are all influenced by what we see, hear, and feel. It can be something we want to emulate or something we want to avoid like cats avoid baths. So, George learned from Lenny Bruce and all the other comics of his early times and he applied that knowledge to his own work, his schtick, his life that was all there for his audience to see. Stand-up, more than any other artform, is being naked on stage. It's the ultimate in wanting to be liked and being nearly psychotic to make it happen. This is why comics "kill" and why they "die."

Carlin made me laugh at myself and that is a rare gift. His humor pointed out the weaknesses and the foibles of a broad range of people, but he managed to direct that clarity of view to each individual in his audience. We didn't laugh at another person, we laughed at our own blunders and recognized those same blunders in others. If we paid attention, we learned something.

I'm sad that George Carlin died at 71. He was going to teach me a lot about aging. He was a generation, or so, ahead of me and I was going to pay attention as he developed material that depreciated his own slow falling-apart. I'm really sorry that it fell apart for him too soon. Well, too soon for my taste, anyway. Maybe he welcomed it. I don’t know. I wonder if he passed with that wry, knowing smile on his face.

I guess this means that I'll have to start writing more in this space and attempt to chronicle my own slow entropy into dotage. Stay tuned. Perhaps I will learn something myself. If I do, I’ll be sure to share.