"Why Do You Love Judy Garland?"

"Why do you love Judy so much?"  It's a question I've been asked time and again by many different people.  How do you answer that?  Do you say, "Oh, she was so talented"? or "Oh I love this movie"?.  For me, it's very personal and I seldom talk about it.  But I spoke to a woman today who respected my feelings and it really made me think, "What the hell am I so afraid of?".  I've been judged, made fun of, ridiculed, it's an age old story...  But here's mine.

Many psychoanalysts have asked me what my first memory is.  And the answer is always the same:  "I remember a beautiful lady in a red dress sitting in a window singing to a little girl at Christmas time".  We now of course know, that the little girl was Margaret O'Brian and the beautiful lady was Judy Garland.  The film was "Meet Me In St. Louis".  It's such a clear memory.  The big brown eyes that I peered into, the sparkly knitted scarf she took off of her head.  I literally can't remember a time in my life without her in it.

Now, strangely enough, I saw "The Harvey Girls" before "Meet Me In St. Louis" but that didn't come back to me until a few years later when I saw it again and remembered the scene where they sing "It's a Great Big World".  I saw "The Harvey Girls" and "Meet Me In St. Louis" when I was about two.  Oddly enough, I wasn't exposed to "The Wizard Of Oz" until I was about four.  And let's face it, there's no coming back from that.

But it was her.  It was always her.  There was something in her I saw in myself even at that age.  I still get choked up which is why I don't speak about it often.  They're not sad tears.  They're tears of joy, tears of a time in my life when she was there.  She was always there and still is.  I never saw her as a movie star or a legend.  To me, she was just my Judy.  If I was sad, I'd put on a record and she'd make me feel  better.  If I was happy, I'd pop in a movie, and we'd celebrate together.  It's a tradition that goes on to this day nearly thirty years later.

The thing is, I didn't want to only know the "public persona" of this lady.  I wanted to suck up all the information I could about her as a person,  because that's how I saw her.  My first day of school I came home furious because I still couldn't read and had  pile of books about her that I couldn't wait to devour.  When I finally did, I still had that mystical image of her because she was so talented yet SO incredibly human.  For better or worse, we had a lot more in common than I could ever dream possible.  She taught me to see the similarities in all of us rather than just the differences.  That, along with the ability to laugh are the two greatest gifts she gave me.

I, myself have been praised, paid many compliments about my performing and so forth, and you kind of wonder after a while, "Who are they talking about?".  You're grateful and sometimes need the reassurance, but when you go home, scrape off the makeup, and get into a pair of pajamas, you're just you.  And that can be very hard to accept and/or understand.  So I can't even imagine what being JUDY GARLAND must have been like. Barbra Streisand talks about it a lot and I get it.  She sings a song called "Being Good Isn't Good Enough" and I encourage you all to listen to it.

In the final analysis, Why do I love Judy?  I can't answer it simply, except to say that she makes me happy.  She's there for a laugh, a cry, a lazy afternoon. SHE'S THERE.  She can't desert me and even though it's not physical, she's been the only constant in my life and at times the only one I can count on.  I find it insulting hen people refer to her life as "tragic".  Bullshit.  Look what she gave.  Look what she left us!  Nothing but joy and laughter and talent that can never be duplicated.

I hope that answers any question anyone may have on the subject.

Fear

   I've been doing a lot of thinking and self-searching lately (as usual, more than is for my own good).  As many of you know, lately I've been going through some health issues that have only made me much more aware of my already constantly lingering mortality.  I had a talk with a friend of mine yesterday who I know gets it but I decided to write about it anyway just to organize my thoughts a bit.  And who knows, maybe someone can relate.

  My mind works in a very theatrical way.  It always has.  It's just my natural thought pattern.  When I look back on my life I see it like a movie.  I see high points, low points, climaxes, sometimes I even hear an underscore.  I can go back to those past feelings so easily.  Even the ones I've let go of or at least put to bed or learned to deal with a little better.  You have to find away to handle them to survive.  In that way, I suppose I'm a bit of a method actor.

  Now, getting back to fear, I find the older I get, the more I spend the bulk of my life in abject terror ALL the time.  I'm going to use performing as an example just because to go into the deep personal stuff would be a novel and I think this will get my point across a little more clearly.

  I'm a born performer.  I don't know anything else, I can't do anything else well (at least not that I enjoy).  I could never have the love and dedication for any other career that I have for Entertainment.  As a kid, I was always in a top hat twirling a cane, sitting in front of the television memorizing every song from every MGM musical, every heroine's speech, and every star's life story.  As a teenager, I performed.  I did every show I could.  I sang, I told jokes, did impressions, hosted events, became drama club president, taught classes about musical theater, mentored people, you name it.  There was no question of where I was going.  The goal seemed so attainable.

Then I became an adult.  It happened a little too quickly for various reasons and I found myself being bounced around and forced to try to support myself out of necessity which led to many personal and physical problems as well.  But whatever crumby little job I worked, I knew it was just a stepping stone but still started to feel a little hopeless and stuck.

Fast forward a few years, I have a sudden span of time where I'm getting performance work left and right.  For a solid year I was recording, hosting shows, I did a Burlesque show which was a blast, I did two films, wrote a lovely ballad with two friends, and got all the creative juices flowing at full speed.  And the best thing about all of this is that it all basically fell into my lap. One gig led to another and parts and music was written tailored to me and my personality and stage persona. Now, the downside to this is gradually, this fear crept in.  I'm still not a hundred percent sure what it is I have.  I just go out and do what I do and people seem to respond to it.  I don't know where that comes from and therefore I don't always know how to summon it at command.  It comes all by itself and it's one of the only things about myself I've found I can rely on.  But what if one day it's not there.  As I said to my friend yesterday, "I wake up every morning and think 'This is the day they're going to catch me and find out I'm a complete fraud'".  What do they expect of me when they ask me to do these things?  And even worse what if I disappoint?  I realize this is completely irrational because I can honestly say I've never truly bombed in front of an audience even if I knew the material I was given to do was a piece of shit.  I learned that from Bette Davis.  Always give an A performance even if it's in an B piece.

These feelings and fears have carried on into my personal life and I'm at a point where I just don't know who to trust, who to believe, who really cares about me, or if I'll ever be on my feet and well much less, dare I say it, happy.  The song that explains this better than I ever could is "What Did I Have I Don't Have Now" from "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever".  In fact it's one of my favorite songs that I've alway been scared to death to sing because it hits so close to home.  Anyway, that's my neurotic rant.  Hopefully it made some sense.