JP Deni has been diagnosed with 4th stage liver cancer.We've been friends since we were 16 (that's 43 years ago, folks), and while I believe we've shared many other lifetimes and will remain friends through many more, that doesn't make it any easier. Not really. This news is what has made it so difficult for me to blog this week; I only reveal it now because she has done so, publicly. Deni is the kind of person who cannot hurt anyone or anything; it must have been terribly hard for her to lay this on her family and friends. I can't even imagine what she's going through right now.
I've said to Deni that 40-plus years of constant, interactive, hands-on friendship must certainly be a marriage of some kind (neither of us have ever been married that long). I'm pissed as hell and, for the first time in my pacifist existence, I want (as Arlo Guthrie said in his song, Alice's Restaurant) "to kee-ill". I want to kill cancer. I want to kill the fucker until it's the metastasized, cowardly, stress-feeding piece of fuck that it is. I could go on indefinitely, but words mean nothing at a time like this and stupid fucking blog entries mean even fucking less.
So here's some music, the thing that has been the magnificent connection between Deni and me all these years. This clip takes me back to when we were 17 year-olds and we glued ourselves to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour every week because, a) we both loved and played folk music and, b) we both possessed social conscience. It was folk music that brought us together, in fact. What's cool about this particular clip is that it so perfectly depicts our musical tastes. She loved Peter, Paul & Mary, I loved Donovan, and we met right in the middle with our love for Tom and Dick Smothers.
I hope this makes you smile, Deni. It's been umpteen years since I've seen this, and yet, it's so fresh in my memory!
