Doug S.
-----Original Message----- From: JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Mon, Feb 17, 2014 11:22 pm Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Chuck Grimes
As I write this, I am listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations. Chuck loved this recording and sometimes played it when I came to visit.
Chuck lived in a studio apartment walking distance from U.C. Berkeley, where he had obtained an MFA many years before. He was there when the tear gas flowed, when Mario Savio rallied the students, when the noose of a posting to Viet Nam was gradually tightening around his neck and that of his friends. The apartment had not changed much since his graduate school days. A spartan cot to sleep on. A desk for his computer, a drafting table for his art. That was the living room. A hallway to the bathroom, lined with books. A kitchen with an ancient stove that only he could light. A small, decrepit fridge with stalagmites occluding access to the freezer. Everywhere, books. When his son was small, the living room stretched to allow them both a place to sleep. Now his son was grown up, a doctor, happily married, the source of the little bit of peace that Chuck allowed himself to feel.
I got to know Chuck a dozen years ago through his postings to LBO. How could I not be attracted to the passion of his writing and thought? How could I not want to meet someone who had not given up on the dreams and projects of the sixties ...those few years when we all thought that change and freedom were possible? We lived just a few miles from one another. We met at a local coffee shop: Au Coquelet on Shattuck, in Berkeley. My sister had worked there throughout her undergraduate days. He laughed a lot. Insisted on having me see his place. He needed to know if I would turn my nose down at him -- he was very poor. Despite a lifetime of experience working with the handicapped and wheelchair repair, he had not been able to rub two sticks together. The little money he had, he spent on books. Travel was out of the question. Money for art supplies was out of the question.
He was on the small side. Maybe 5'6". I towered over him, but he forgave me. He was incredibly strong. What money and time he had, he spent rock climbing. I remember going to a mass rally after 9/11 with him and Sabri Oncu in San Francisco. Cameras dangling around his neck, he would hoist himself up seven, eight feet in the air on various ledges to survey the mass of people stretching out as far as the eye could see. He put up with my ululating and reveled in the teeming crowd. Had there been a revolution, he would have laid himself down and become the road if needed. But he never got that chance.
He was the angriest and the most forgiving man I have ever met. We shared a lot of interests: Bach, philosophy of science, film, art, history...and, of course, endless hours of lbo gossip. He took infinite care with his posts. Worked on them for days at a time. And without being writerly, they were beautifully shaped, honest, articulate, and always passionate.
Inspired by his step father, he had always wanted to be an artist. But his physique and his rough and ready manner barred him from the rarefied spheres of the impresarios and gallery owners. He was a consummate craftsman: photography, computer repair, wheelchair repair, rehabilitation, print making, framing, and cooking. Whatever he put his hand to absorbed his entire attention. He wanted to be loved, supported, understood. The middle class art of selling himself was foreign to him. He was perhaps the last hopeless romantic. He insisted adamantly on the revolution. NOW.
He had had a tough life. His mother died of a drug overdose when he was twenty. Instrumental in putting together a program for disabled students at UC Berkeley, he got politely tossed when the professional bureaucrats arrived to capitalize on his work. Despite superb training in the arts, he could not get a job teaching art nor doing web design in the emerging hi tech universe. He settled for wheelchair repair. Saved his energy for study and reflection, which he pursued without pause all his life.
He was very much alone. Hard drinking and hard smoking combined to make his last years difficult. A bout of flu seven years ago ravaged his lungs and left him dependent on an inhaler he could almost not afford. My family dramas and his mounting alcohol consumption conspired to keep us apart. I did not see much of him in the last couple of years. He wrote to lbo less and less. The last time I saw him he gave me one of his drawings. I insisted he draw more, and he insisted I write more. Now that he is gone, I shall have to be my own muse.
He taught me to understand art sensuously and to appreciate the infinite amount of knowledge and work that go into a work of art. He helped me feel that my passion for truth and beauty were eminently sane. I hope that the many hours I spent listening to him, helped him feel sane and understood. I hope that somewhere, somehow, he knew that my appreciation was echoed by most everyone who subscribed to lbo.
When I think of him I think of all that longs to grow and I think of everything that conspires against growth and life in this hellish system. There is no forgiving that.
He will be much missed.
Joanna
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