http://kuulrayspage.blogspot.com/

Goodbye my friend.

The following is my most recent column for the High Springs Herald.

******

Let us not observe a moment of silence for Jerry Lee.

If there was anything that my longtime friend and land partner hated, it was silence, the moment when the grand show of life came to a grinding halt.

Rather, let us prepare for the next act, the next bit of comic shtick, the next big trick to wow the crowd.

Start big, finish big, keep them interested in between. These were the words Jerry Lee lived by.

He was the consummate showman – Jerry Lee the Monkey Man; Alphie the Friendly Ape; Poppa Dollar of the Old West Medicine Show; Tico Manley; Ras Poppa of the Traveling Gypsy Show.

Jerry was part performing artist, part poet, part ringleader and all clown. He was the trickster, the huckster, the snake oil salesman, the teller of tales.

He was one of the world’s foremost advocates of clown terrorism – those random acts of inappropriate frivolity perpetrated by hit-and-run militant humorists.

One way of looking at the life of Jerry Lee would be to see it as a six decade escape from normalcy. Jerry didn’t do normal. He did unusual, surprising, astonishing, challenging, but not normal.

Jerry was more inclined to spend an afternoon cooking up a bigger and better balloon lift-off than more mundane activities like balancing his checkbook or managing his retirement accounts.

Jerry left that kind of work to other people. He was more drawn to the show business of daily existence, more comfortable in a clown nose than in a suit.

In a way, you could say he was constantly in search of the next big high. He lived for the exhilaration of the moment. Life was a rush, a madcap race to the finish punctuated with magic, theater, and spectacular feats of daring-do, tricks with whips, balloon animals, eating fire, lying on prickly beds of nails.

And all of it capped off with a rousing round of applause.

Jerry lived hard and fast but that was his nature. His addictive personality and habits were no secret to anyone who knew him. They were not a thing to emulate but a thing to understand, and forgive. He could no more live the straight and narrow than he could join a country club. Or apply for membership in the Elks.

The world was Jerry’s stage. He performed at fairs and festivals all over the United States. He organized balloon lift-offs in his adopted home of Costa Rica. He, along with various assortments of friends, staged impromptu street circus shows in out-of-the-way Costa Rican villages.

Jerry was always the instigator, the grand supporter of all things community. He pushed the rest of us to greater heights of community spirit. Jerry always said the creation of our Alachua artists’ retreat, the Blue Moon, which he and David Ballard and I pulled off back in 1990, was the best thing we ever did. After 19 years of campfire sing-ins and New Years celebrations, it’s hard to disagree.

So here’s to Jerry Lee, who followed his own path. He was the last of the great beatnik vaudevillian nonconformists.

When they came to get Jerry’s body, we sent him off with his clown nose on, a beer under his arm and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. And we all wore our clown noses as well and hummed circus tunes on kazoos.

Jerry didn’t live his life like a normal person. There’s no reason why he should go out like one.

Therefore, let us not observe a moment of silence for Jerry Lee. Instead, let us create a loud and joyful noise. Let us cheer and laugh and howl and cry, and blow on noisemakers, and play circus tunes on kazoos. Let us raise a great cacophony of inappropriate silly sounds. But no silence.

A pregnant pause for comic effect, perhaps. After all, the essence of all comedy is…wait for it…timing.

But no silence.

Two days before he died, Jerry Lee somehow found the energy to direct all the relatives and friends, who were hanging around to help ease the monkey man into the next world, in one last performance of the Old West Show. He was giving instructions and pointing and making it up on the fly. There was much laughter and frivolity and, in the end, applause.

That was Jerry Lee.

He started big, finished big, and in-between, he kept us all interested.

posted by kuulray at 12:12 PM on Feb 26, 2009

bozthebuzzman said...

I loved Jerry Lee. I knew him from Sarasota, back before he concieved (during a stint in jail) what was originally called The Rainbow Travelling Show. And I travelled with the show for just a bit when he got it going. Like a hundred miles, maybe. Couldn't deal with the monkeys, so I dropped out. My great loss.

We connected a few times after that, in Florida and in Myrtle Beach. The last time I saw him was the early 80's, but I always ran into ren faire folk and others who knew him, and some of our mutual friends would give me reports from time to time. Worked a couple of ren faires where his people were running games and rides for him, but he was elsewhere.
I always wanted to re-connect with this amazing guy. He was an inspiration to me. Having fairly recently given up all pretense of being a normal citizen and dedicated myself to producing burlesque shows -- in which I often appear, playing an electric kazoo in my underwear -- I've thought of him often in the past couple of years. Wanted to go to the Blue Moon this past Winter to see him, but couldn't pull the trip together.

Now he's moved on to the next show. I know I'll catch up with him, eventually ... and we'll laugh our asses off ... coz he knew all along I'd never be normal, no matter how hard I tried. I'll play "The Carousel Has Broken Down" on my Kazooka tonight for our amazing friend.

May 8, 2009 7:45 PM