The news of Hal Willner’s death shut me down for a couple of days. This was not supposed to happen. Hal Willner was not supposed to die at 64 years old; he was not supposed to leave a wife and 15-year-old son; he wasn’t supposed to go until he had nothing left to say. We know that that certainly wasn’t the case.
The presence of this virus, which was already scary and bizarre, has suddenly turned lurid, revolting. I want to get off this hideous ride and I know I can’t. I also know that, when we emerge from this shutdown, the world and my city will have gone a little duller, a little darker, a little less well-loved and well-understood, and I don’t like it.
I won’t go into detail about all the marvelous things that Hal Willner did in his lifetime (although I do encourage you to explore and enjoy) and I won’t go into a ton of detail about my life’s intersections with Hal’s. I’ll just say that we worked together on a number of projects, we listened to music together, we enjoyed meals together and we hung out a whole lot. We knew each other for many years and, even if we didn’t speak for quite a while, we always picked up right where we left off. We knew one another through some pretty substantial ups and downs and, through it all, Hal was always an absolutely lovely, hilariously funny and unquestionably forthright man.
I want to tell you briefly about two things that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. First of all, having worked with Hal on a number of projects, I want to tell you a bit about his particular form of creativity because, as far as I know, it was unique.
I work in a supposedly “creative” field but the truth is that most of us have, practically speaking, no original ideas. Some “creatives” are born closers; they do the fine-finish work. Some can take an idea that someone else has articulated and run with it. But very few actually invent new things out of (seemingly) nothing. Hal may have needed a text to work from but what came next was wholly original.
Most truly creative people that I work with, when they share an idea with you, they want to get you to buy into it. They give you some context for it; they tell you what problem it will solve or why it’s what people need right now (often it’s really how you (and they) will make money from it). Not Hal. Ideas seemed to flow out of Hal without any resistance or any need whatsoever to frame them. In fact, he seemed to share ideas in this way that made it seem as if the concept was already manifest on some other plane and we just had to execute it on this one that we are on. “Let’s get Sonic Youth to be the back-up band for Allen Ginsberg tonight.” Sure, yeah, would that work? Would they do it? Have they done that before? Has anything like that ever happened before? Would they need to rehearse? Do I have their phone numbers? Jeez, I dunno but, considering it’s 2pm now, I better get to work on this. And if it worked or it didn’t work, there was no judgment about it. Hal had 20 other ideas to work on.
And, just to be clear, an idea from Hal was never a posture or a contrivance that was advanced for its effect on someone else, to make Hal seem cool or clever. If you took the time to look, the ideas always came from a specific place, from an esthetic or cultural value that meant something to him.
And those ideas came at volume; they flowed out of Hal with vigor. In my experience, almost no one has that capacity. Hal had it walking around with him, like a pet ocelot.
The other thing that I think needs to be said is this: any time you see any sort of “tribute” show— a variety of musicians playing the songs of one artist— it is, whether the performers and presenters know it or not, really a tribute to Hal Willner. You never saw an “Opry Salute to Ray Charles” or “Aretha! A Grammy Celebration for the Queen of Soul” before Hal started doing his thing (and why do those shows ALWAYS have to seem so much less imaginative, inspired and inspiring than when Hal did it?!).
No sweet sendoff. This will always have to remain unfinished