The band Chicago, back in the day. Public domain photo, more information).
Many RAW fans have picked up on his fascination with 23 and use the number for screen names on the Internet. I've used the number sometimes, too, but one thing I've noticed that is the 23 often crops up in rather dire ways.
I recently read an interesting new book called Gangster Hunters by John Oller about famous 1930s gangsters such as John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd (here is an article I wrote about the book) and I noticed some 23s in that book, connected with serious events (for example, Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death on May 23, 1934).
I recently ran across a pretty bad 23 I hadn't noticed before.
One of the first rock concerts I ever attended, back in the 1970s, was when I went with friends to see the band Chicago in Oklahoma City. (I still like early Chicago, but not the later version). When I saw the band, it had a guitar player named Terry Kath, and I remember reading about a couple of years later that ha had died of a gunshot wound.
I looked up Kath on Wikipedia the other day, and here are the events of May 23, 1978:
"Kath enjoyed target shooting and by 1978 was regularly carrying guns. On Monday, January 23, after a party at the home of roadie and band technician Don Johnson, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, Kath began to play with his guns. He spun his unloaded .38 revolver on his finger, put it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. Johnson warned Kath several times to be careful. Kath picked up a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol and, leaning back in a chair, said to Johnson, 'Don't worry about it ... Look, the clip is not even in it'. His last words were, 'What do you think I'm gonna do? Blow my brains out?' To calm Johnson's concerns, Kath showed him the empty magazine. Kath then replaced the magazine in the gun, put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Apparently unbeknownst to Kath, the gun had a round in the chamber. He died instantly from the gunshot, eight days before his 32nd birthday."
The event was so traumatic the band considered disbanding. According to Wikipedia, Doc Severinsen, leader of the old "Tonight Show" band, (older people like me will remember him) helped persuade the band to keep going.
3 comments:
23s often seem connected with death as I pointed out in my essay on the 23 Enigima. I surmise that 23 may indicate the Bardo.
I remember that day. I was in tenth grade.
Chapter 22
“... and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth.”
I didn’t get the reference, so I looked it up. Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was a famous English writer of hymns. So the pious Charity has placed hymn books with the sailors, to give them something to sing instead of bawdy songs.
“We … blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.” I love that phrase.
Chapter 23
“ … in the port of safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities.”
As I was making dinner, I thought how pleasant it was to be inside a warm, well-lit house on a cold night in northern Ohio. Poor Eric and Oz, it’s a pleasure that’s denied to people who live in California!
“For this reason, a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.” (A passage from Chapter 11, “Nightgown.”)
Also, I like how the chapter serves as the gravestone for Bulkington: “this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.”
Chapter 24
“Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship’s common log.” This appears to be a reference to George Vancouver, the British explorer (1757-1798), who penned books about his voyages. Vancouver, Canada, and many other places are named after him.
What a beautiful chapter, and I especially like the last paragraph.
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