Tuesday, February 17, 2009




BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
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BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Mike
This is beauifully written and a rare tribute to a friend. However, I disagree when you say Hal was surrounded by creative people but he wasn't one of them ..In my occasional get-togethers with Hal over the years we often talked about business, first his advertising work and later his role as producer/director of TV commercials. It was his job to be creative, and I think he did his job well.
John

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

When I think about Hal I try to bring together each of the facets that made up his personality. He wanted to be outsize and memorable but he banged up against his limitations and couldn't bring himself to accept them. He was in a business surrounded by creative types but he wasn't one of them. He wasn't 'talent' but he wasn't a 'suit' either.

He kept his insecurities to himself, he was very closed, very private, so it is doubly hard to put him together in a written sketch. He hid so much of himself from us, and only occasionally, when he was bleeding, did we glimpse a little of what lived under his skin.

His self-protective shield was anger, not a blistering anger, but rather a blustering anger. I loved him for it. It was clear to me that he used his anger to keep himself separate from his life's accumulation of ticks and harrumphs, experience and memory.

When Hal dressed for his role -- the role he played before us, his audience -- when he prepared the fiction that became his self, his character, he dropped deep into his unconscious and the role he played actualized into himself, without deliberate intention, and therefore, paradoxically, into a genuine self. The man we saw on on stage was real.

He never told us that he was dying. We are not sure whether he knew it or whether he was in denial. By not telling us, he deprived himself (and us) of a farewell; we never got to tell him directly how much he meant to each of us, how important to us he was, and, most important, how much we loved him.