I have already talked about 10 living people I would like to meet. So now, let me list 10 non-living people I would have liked to meet.
Jorge-Luis Borges
My beloved Argentinian poet, author, and director of the Argentinian library, this gentle man spins beautiful verses that are simultaneously stately, humane, sentimental (writing from memory as Borges lost his vision in old age and had to dictate poems to his wife Maria Kodama). Many believe that Borges’s vista of infinity and his concept of the endless library forsaw the advent of the internet. No one person has inspired me more than JLB to be worldly, encyclopedic, and humble.
Audrey Hepburn
Of course, in all of Hepburn’s movies, I always adored her pre-glamor, everyday person state (Greenwich Village’s Jo Stockton in Funny Face, the chauffer’s daughter in Sabrina). Daughter of Dutch Baroness Ella van Heemstra in real life, this gal’s easy graciousness came from true royalty where her Hollywood contemporaries had to marry into it. It was only this year that I found out that Hepburn had a funny thing about food. That endeared me more to her and I must admit, relieved me greatly as I was starting to develop a funny thing about food trying to get to Audrey’s weight.
George Bernard Shaw
My first literary love. I laughed loud at Shaw’s understated humor and conversational wit in his numerous plays. Long before I even knew the true meaning of feminism, Shaw’s Shavian ethics already promoted egalitarian ideals featuring strong outspoken female characters (Lady Warren’s Profession, Major Barbara). Though it’s true that Shaw nearly got a heart attack upon seeing how My Fair Lady eviscerated his original play Pygmalion, his diverse interests, spanning 30 volumes of works from political observations, art criticism, music performance reviews to wonderful plays and novels, ultimately formed the well-rounded person I aspire to be.
Andre Tarkovski
I fell asleep three times when watching my first Tarkovski movie Sacrifice. My boyfriend fell asleep even before the opening credits stopped rolling in Nostalghia. Still, the master Russian portraitist of the human figure has created an entire oeuvre in his filmography asking the lifelong questions, “why are we here?” and how the mystery of creation propels the lifeforce. Mirror (“Zerkalo”) remains the one movie I will bring to a desert island, seeing that everyone normally shipwrecks with a working dvd player and a portable generator.
Bill Evans
Jazz pianist of the 50s-70s whose introversion became inversely proportional to an increasingly profound beauty in his ballads, Bill Evans grew up in a town less than a few miles from my home. No jazz pianist in the modern day can play a passage that hasn’t somehow been influence by Bill Evans. In my teenage years You Must Believe In Spring was the album my youthful heart ached to. When asked to elect my prom song in high school, I excitedly piped out “Seascape, from Bill Evans’s I Will Say Goodbye! But of course!” A tumbleweed blew across the classroom, crickets chirped…even in the morning.
Glenn Gould
Pianist and Canada’s favorite eccentric son, Gould brought Bach back to the masses in his 50s rendition of the Goldberg Variations. Modernizing Bach’s Fugue, Gould used multiple speaking voices as a contrapuntal device. A fan of Barbara Streisand and electronic recording devices, Gould forecast MIDI technology by predicting a time in the future where audio components will have individual adjustments to control the pitch, attack, and volume of each instrument in a composition.
Malcolm X
Often portrayed by the media as a fanatic hatemonger, Malcom X actually did wonderful things for the black community in the 60s, bringing self respect back to a disenfranchised national identity. X’s sometimes harsh but always crisp pronouncements of the way things really were are constructions of sheer beauty. If knowledge can set you free, then Malcolm X was the model liberator. When he came back from Mecca – after seeing people of all races pray together side by side and in peace – his approach completely shifted into one of inclusion. Had he not been assassinated, Malcolm’s Camelot would, in my opinion, far outshined that of JFK’s.
Clifford Coffin
Above John French and Norm Parkinson, Clifford Coffin is my all time favorite fashion photographer. An American whose excellence in his work for Vogue Magazine in the 50s is only slowly beginning to gain reknown. His portraits of my all time favorite fashion supermodel Nancy Berg, are one to behold.
Carson McCullers
I voraciously read everything this Southern Gothic author wrote the moment I finished the Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. McCullers’ voice is that of an older sister; wise, open, curious, and queer. Imagined my fascination when I heard McCullers wanted to be a concert pianist and wedded to the music of Bach. A kindred spirit (in my estimation).
Ike No Taiga
18th century calligrapher and eccentric artist, this Japanese master of the brush created works integrating Japanese, Chinese and Korean culture alongside with his wife Tokuyama Gyokuran. The pair of aesthetes lived in squalor, living only to create objects of beauty. His works are regarded as National Treasures. An exhibit of the pair’s works were shown in Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. Gorgeously sumptuous. To see it is to understand the importance of living in the presence of beauty on a daily basis.
