A great tragedy, his passing. He was the centrifuge of my having a career. He was the reason for so many wonderful moments in my life.
After Charles’ funeral, I had to do a show that night, Richard Foreman’s Film is Evil, Radio is Good. After coming home from Long Island where he was buried, I only remember being back at the theater after a very long day of the church service, the drive to Long Island, and back.
As I sat backstage in a little cubicle waiting for the show to begin and after a few people in the cast had come by to express their regrets, I was sitting alone and an extraordinary thing happened. I was seized by a slowly growing feeling of happiness: starting from my feet, I was being filled with a miraculous fluid like a beeeeeeenediction but from the inside, and I thought of what my friend Joe Franza had said once after he had had a shattering acid trip, that as he came down from his high, he looked at the walls around him and clung to them and was filled with gratitude to them because they were enclosing him in the only reality he knew and that was good. As the waters of joy filled me I could say that I was grateful for my reality… I heard my cue… my heart thanked… somebody… and I went on.
