Bumble-Ardy
I’ve had this file, 20111229_fa_02.mp3 sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s Terry Gross’s final interview with Maurice Sendak, on the occasion of the publication of his book, Bumble-Ardy. I knew that, in 2011, it made me think when I heard it, but I had forgotten what it was: a creative human, successful in his time, looking back with his hand lightly brushing old scars and lamenting the accretion of new cuts as he watches, unable to affect the marching-on of time:
…the fragility of life, the irrationality of life, the COMEDY of life. My tears flow because two great, great friends died close together, a husband and a wife, who meant everything to me and I am having to deal with that. And it is very, very hard.
And on art and seeing:
There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio: I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. They’re there, they’re beautiful. And, you see, I can see how beautiful they are, I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old, it is a blessing to find the time to do the things to read the books to listen to the music.
And:
I have nothing but praise now, really, for my life. I mean, I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more. And I’m in a very soft mood, as you can gather, because new people have died, and they were not that old.
…
Oh, god, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die. But, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.
You really should listen to this, because the tone and inflection deliver at least as much as the words when Sendak speaks. There’s a difference between talking of the past, on his troubles with his parents, and talking of the present, on losing those he loves.
