Chicago in Michael Moriarty's Meditations & The Genius of Steve Allen

The guy can act, write, compose and tickle the 88s. Michael Moriarty is in the process of writing a series of prose reflections and this is the eighth rendering.

I have been blessed to know some really talented and good people in my 58 years of stomping on the terra. Michael Moriarty is as complex a moral man as the other Chicago rooted genius, actor, musician, comic, writer, composer and television pioneer Steve Allen, who was kicked out of Mount Carmel High School in his freshman year thanks to singer/actor and classmate Richard Kiley. Steve Allen was related to the Donahues, Murphys, Regans and Quinlans of the south side of Chicago and often returned to the old neighborhood even when he was at the height of fame as founder of the Tonight Show and played Hammond Organ concerts at the Franklin House on south Western Avenue*.

Michael Moriarty's grandfather George Moriarty was a baseball professional and contemporary of Tyrus Cobb, Buck Weaver, Eddie Collins and Jiggs Donahue who played for both the Cubs and The White Sox, before becoming an icon for the Detroit Tigers.
George Moriarty was also a musician and composer, but nowhere near as deeply talented as his grandson Michael. I like to think that Chicago and especially the south side of Chicago - the Stockyards and beyond - had much to do with the evolution of genius in families Billy Allen and Bella Montrose to Steve Allen and George Moriarty to Michael.

In the Eighth edition of Moriarty's Haunted Heaven prose scatting, we consider eternity.


The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Eight: The Theater of the Mysterious Same By Michael Moriarty
web posted July 18, 2011

As one hovers above the first and one of the most defining moments of a life, patience is the order of not only the day but the essence of eternity.

Eternity is one factor, however, that people can measure their lives by.

The infinity of the Universe and the eternity of Time?

These are the precepts upon which I now measure my life, both its relative insignificance but its spiritual importance as well.

Oh, I know, Stephen Hawking, whom I have never had the privilege to meet, might dispute the infinity of the Universe, and then again, since he has admitted to making mistakes himself, he eventually – because he is now an eternal factor of the universe – he eventually might change his mind again.

He might not dispute the infinity of the Universe.

If he is even slightly a pantheist, he might be willing to accept the Universe in its entirety as God Itself.

If, however, the Universe is infinite, then God is ultimately and infinitely incomprehensible.

"Not if it is just more of the same, Michael!"

I'm sure that metaphysically "It" is just "more of the same". However, the "same" is so infinite within "Itself" that It, Itself, demands to be capitalized.

The God of Same.

If we know that God looks in wonder upon Himself, then the "Same" is as bottomless a mystery as Life itself has proven to be for millenniums.

Then again, Stephen Hawking, as well as some of his certainties, might be exposed as hoaxes.

Global Warming, chapter two: Science as Inevitably Political Propaganda.

Therein lies the mystery!

Perhaps the Devil, at times, can put even God Himself in doubt, into anxiety.

Does God then call upon another God for reassurance?

No.

This is God The Father and whatever doubts He might have?

The Doubts must come from one question: what is He to do with His own creation, which in this case is the Devil?

Evil in all its secret and manifest forms, a fact that God Himself created.

The Devil Himself as a blessing in disguise, as it is the very necessitation of Human Free Will.

That makes sense to me.

I'm now listening to a playback of my Seeds, the title for my own, little, musical inspirations, melodic and harmonic thoughts that … well … might very well fit themselves together into a masterpiece?!

The Seeds themselves, at this point in musical history, are nothing new. It is the order in which they are placed and developed that will determine whether or not they are the seeds for a work of art or the distracted pastimes of a wannabe.

Ah, ego mania! The bane of all exceptional creativity!!

One must be patient, particularly with one's own shortcomings.

I look at myself metaphorically, feel and see the considerable amount of damage that Life and I have done to myself, but, then again, I look at it as God's own work of art.

The Devil had a hand, that is for certain. Must we think of God and the Devil as Rogers and Hammerstein?!

The division between my responsibilities and Life's gets blurred very quickly when Progressive Psychology becomes involved. So involved that Good and Evil, even High and Low become a relative matter.

That is when Madness sets in and Evil becomes the Master to destroy all Masterpieces.

What is Progressivism?

"Anything but the Same!"

"Damn the Same!!" cry the Progressives.

Just now, I came to a possible format – and I only say possible format – for my symphonic series: the first movement always being an Overture of sorts, there to introduce the audience to the themes of the coming movements. Oh I would love to wait and wait, as Brahms did before he unleashed his highest symphonic achievement, his First Symphony, but I'm 70 years old!

"On, don't go back!" as the great English director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie would order us to do.

We poor but proud players of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

This poor but proud composer soldiers on.

What theater am I working for now?

The Theater of the Mysterious Same!

Old songs but eternally new settings.

Those who know the old songs best?

They lead!

We follow.

The goal?

Our destination?

Heaven!

If you are really serious about your life, why settle for anything less?

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and 4Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.

I remember a top rated loud mouth FM radio personality, as they were termed, horse-laughing the mention of Steve Allen, in the early 1990's. His side-kick buzzed and hooted slight regard for the man who won Emmys for Network and Public TV and Grammys for some of his 5,000 songs, comic genius, artistry at the piano and prodigious literary output. Hell, he had the drive-time slot!



* Both Moriarty and Steve Allen are criticized for their defense of eternal truths:

Michael Moriarty--like Jon Voight before him--turns Right.

It's a sort of ritual for certain aging male celebrities to publicly retreat into social and/or poltical conservatism. Steve Allen, in his last years, became a cranky crusader against what he considered "filth" in entertainment. The late Ron Silver (once involved with the left-to-moderate Creative Coalition) became vocal about his rightist beliefs after 9/11. Jon Voight, who won an Oscar for playing an anti-Vietnam War paraplegic (inspired by Ron Kovic) in COMING HOME, now can be found opnionating on Fox News. And don't get me started on former comedian Dennis Miller.

Michael Moriarty has now come to the proverbial fork in the road--and has turned Right. Here are links to an interview and a Moriarty-penned article for Andrew Breitbart's showbiz-liberalism-bashing site BIG HOLLYWOOD.

http://poetry-arts-confidential.blogspot.com/2009/12/michael-moriarty-like-jon-voight-before.html

I Have Absolutely Nothing to Complain About . . . But, This Gent Just Might!

Michael Moriarty reminded me this morning that it is the small blessings that mean everything.

Five people have been injured in the first day of the San Fermin festival, in the race known as the running of the bullsA Spanish Red Cross spokesman said that a total of four people needed treatment by medical staff and one was hospitalised after falling.
Tens of thousands of people packed into Pamplona's main square on Wednesday for the start of the annual event... Sky News London.

"Sarah Palin Is America," Michael Moriarty Calls It Correctly

Any people who agree that the killing of a child is choice, will also agree that two gentleman can procreate, that America can only win by losing, that up is down and round is square have been educated pretty badly.

When Washington sent Cornwallis and his redcoats out of the trenches at Yorktown, the Crown forces bandsmen played a song -"The World Turned Upside Down." The Monarchy was sent packing. The colonists fought to become Americans. The Americans fought the British again, as well as Napoleon's Navy and the Barbary Pirates to maintain a flawed but free democratic republic that eventually ironed out the slavery issues with the blood of Americans.

After two World Wars, a catastrophic economic and climate disaster in the 1930's, the America meant to be was built in the 1950's - a revolution in life style. That lifestyle brought ease and comfort to the Nation. Wars were no longer declared, but remained horrific. Korean and Vietnam war veterans returned to comments from neighbors and even family members, "Where have you been?" Bleeding.

"No matter, we have a new two-car garage, color TV, and free college tuition. Only dummies go in the Service."

Perhaps that ease gave us too much time to worry about ourselves. I know that I am about self-absorbed as one can get - well, maybe not always.

We allowed Roe v. Wade. To me that is akin to question asked of returning servicemen -"Where have you been? Out of sight; out of mind." Out of mind can mean madness.

Actor, musician, journalist and defender of the innocent unborn Michael Moriarty wrote a powerful endorsement of Sarah Palin in Big Hollywood. I agree with Mr. Moriarty.

Lincoln predicted that America would not be destroyed by a foreign power. If she dies, it will be by suicide.
Sarah is the only life raft America has right now. Any other candidate for the Republican Party, Romney in particular, will eventually be in the back room cutting deals with a virulently Progressive Democratic Party, a radically Leftist’s poison that has, with Obama, proven its own promise: “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”
After four years of Obama, the Dr. Jeckyll of America has already become Mr. Hyde. This radical experiment with a known Marxist in the Presidency?
Suicide.
Ms. Palin has said she will announce in the near future.
Should she even announce her withdrawal, I trust these words and those of others might help her to reconsider.
Sarah Palin is America.
America at her most beautiful, her most honest, her most simply eloquent and her most resilient.
Resilience is what America needs now.
Without Sarah Palin as President, America cannot bounce back.
Many might call a President Palin “bold medicine”.
With America on the edge of suicide, Sarah Palin is the “shock treatment” needed by the entirely moribund, self-defeated and suicidally depressed world.
The human race must either be pro-life or pro-death. Those “enlightened despots” who think otherwise and are certain we can “split hairs” into whole crops of Progressive New World Order Thinking?

Sarah Palin reminds me of the women that I admire. She is a happy person. She is happy because she is honest and unafraid. I always thought that Barack Obama was a pretty good politician, until he ran for President. He was elected to be sure. You can't take that from the man. Why he was elected will be the subject of history.


Well stated, Mr. Moriarty. I do not believe that Michael Moriarty is too much concerned about criticism. We still have the vote.

Michael Moriarty, Sergei Rachmaninoff and James Joyce

“She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the dusty odor of cretonne. She was tired.” James Joyce -'Eveline' from The Dubliners

Eveline or Evvy, refused to escape and buried her White face in the common-place -lace curtains, dust and a timorous obligation to the familiar.

In this very short story by James Joyce, the reader gets dragged into the soul-less commonplace that is Eveline.

She is a middle class woman in love with a a manly, kind, adventurous and alive man named Frank. Frank is leaving dear old dirty Dublin for Buenas Aires and wants to take Evvy with him. She refuses. She stays musty and dusty. Get these final lines -

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

"Come!"

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

"Come!"

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Old Jim could work a pen.

Another fine writer is my frequent e-mail pal, Michael Moriarty. This actor, musician, journalist and courageous defender of the unborn lives in Canada and is working on an autobiographical musical composition. This musical biography may be a Confessio like St. Augustine's or an Apologia ala John Cardinal Newman. We shall see, or hear.

Nevertheless, Mr. Moriarty wrote a touching remembrance for Exit Stage Right. Like his musical composition the essays are titled The Haunted Heaven. In the passage that I provide today, Mr. Moriarty explores the coming of the Holy Spirit through the music of Rachmaninoff. Here is the passage by the Russian composer refered to in Mr. Moriarty's essay -

Rachmaninoff!

What a Virgil, Sergei Rachmaninoff, to lead me into the Haunted Heavens of Life!

Then to be reintroduced to the Russian giant by a divinely gifted genius named Olga Kern!!

She is now ripping into the last movement with all the simultaneous speed, strength and sensitivity she can summon up with the same oceanic brilliance she has mustered throughout this virtual monster of a piano concerto.

Russian composers and Russian musicians will play a monumentally large role in my life as the years pass. The first of course was the vibrantly impassioned Russian genie, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

He and his Haunted Heaven entered my life before I could even talk.

To this day Rachmaninoff's protean lyricism seems unsurpassed by anyone.

He and his music became a virtual umbilical cord to my infancy's ecstasy.

His melodies are only the beginning of his abandon to whatever muse God chose to both plague and adore him with.

Oceanic is the only adjective that seems sufficient.

Unlike Eveline in Joyce's tale, Moriarty plunges into the waves.

Michael can work a pen.


http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/959/

April 5, 2011 - Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty - Actor, Musician, Essayist and American

Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty! This Chicago-rooted American actor, jazz musician, essayist and patriot is a thoughtful critic of American folly and powerful voice for the unborn. I am very proud to correspond with this wonderful man of principle, wit and courage. I first witnessed this man's talents at the Chicago Theatre in 1973, when he starred along with Robert De Niro in the poetic baseball film Bang the Drum Slowly. Mr. Moriarty portrayed a self-interested pitcher who restored his soul by caring for a dying catcher whose career had been notable only for his being the butt of jokes, pranks and ridicule for his team mates. At the end of the film Moriarty narrates a closing sentiment that is one of most heart-wrenching epiphanies in film - " From here on in, I rag nobody."

Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941 in Detroit, Michigan) is an Emmy winning American actor. Tall and lanky, this 6'4" actor is known most for his role as Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Stone on the long running TV series Law & Order. He attended the University of Detroit Roman Catholic High School, and then matriculated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire in 1963, where he was a theatre major.

After he received his degree, he left for London, where he enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship.

In 1973, Moriarty was cast to play the egocentric Henry Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly, a film about friendship between two unlikely baseball teammates (the second being Robert De Niro, a slow thinking catcher who becomes terminally ill). Moriarty had a strong baseball background on which to draw for the role, as his grandfather George Moriarty had been a third baseman, umpire and manager in the major leagues for nearly 40 years.

In 1973, Moriarty starred in a TV movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with Katharine Hepburn. Coincidentally, the film also featured Sam Waterston (who replaced Moriarty as the Executive Assistant District Attorney on Law & Order in 1994.) Moriarty's role in Menagerie won him an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actor of the Year (see ).

Moriarty's career on the screen was slow to develop, while his theater career was flourishing. He starred as a Nazi bureaucrat who degenerates into a coldblooded murderer in the miniseries Holocaust (which earned him another Emmy). Through the 1980s, Moriarty starred in such Larry Cohen movies as Q, The Stuff, It's Alive 3, and A Return to Salem's Lot, as well as Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider and Hanoi Hilton.

From 1990 to 1994, he starred as Ben Stone on Law & Order. He ended up leaving the show in 1994, alleging that his departure was a result of his threatening a lawsuit against then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who had cited Law & Order as offensively violent. He moved to Canada, declaring himself a political exile, and lived for a time in Halifax and Toronto before settling in Vancouver. Recent projects he has acted in include Courage Under Fire, Along Came a Spider, Shiloh, Emily of New Moon and James Dean, for which he won his third Emmy.

Moriarty today lives in British Columbia, where he still acts and has become politically active, describing himself as a "centrist", which will prove questionable (see http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1105/1105eugenics.htm]]) to the reader of Enter Stage Right or MMUUUHP (Michael Moriarty Unofficial, Unauthorized, Unsanctioned Home Page).

Moriarty has recently announced his intention to run for President of the United States in 2008. He also has been a frequent contributor of numerous political columns to the ESR (Enter Stage Right) on-line Journal of Conservativism.

He has a website, the allegedly unauthorized MMUUUHP, and his recent blogs there and on ESR contain scathing denunciations of Bill Clinton, Thanaticism, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, anti-Catholicism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George W. Bush, both major U.S. political parties, Halliburton, the College of Cardinals, and most of Catholic theology, although he states that he had a Jesuit Catholic upbringing.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Michael Moriarty ]

Michael Moriarty is also a fine jazz pianist and a cat of quality:

He sees, why Nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity.
God loves from whole to parts: but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race

Alexander Pope Essay on Man

Henry Wiggins - "From here on in, I rag nobody."