MARTHA WAINWRIGHT IN ROUW

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peegee
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MARTHA WAINWRIGHT IN ROUW

Bericht door peegee »

Deze week weer enkele popartiesten het loodje gelegd.

Eerst en vooral Carl Smith, de eerste echtgenoot van June Carter én dan ook nog de mama van Martha Wainwright, nl. Kate McGarrigle....

Ook wij betreuren dit ten sterkste.... Het is altijd te vroeg !!
Laatst gewijzigd door peegee op za 30 jan 2010, 07:30, 1 keer totaal gewijzigd.
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bart depauw
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Re: MARTHA WAINRIGHT IN ROUW

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Martha Wainwright
peegee
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Re: MARTHA WAINRIGHT IN ROUW

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bart depauw schreef:Martha Wainwright
off cwourse :laughing: Is bij deze aangepwast
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Maledictus I
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Re: MARTHA WAINWRIGHT IN ROUW

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Artikel uit de Times Online:

Kate McGarrigle: tributes from Rufus, Martha and Anna

The singer Kate McGarrigle died of clear cell sarcoma on Monday at home in Montreal, aged 63. With her sister Anna she formed the acclaimed and influential folk duo the McGarrigle Sisters. McGarrigle was the former wife of singer Loudon Wainwright III (they divorced in 1976) and the mother of singers Rufus and Martha Wainwright — and the family played out their tangled relationships with one another in song. “That’s why the stage felt like a living room,” says Anna, “it’s where they met and talked.” McGarrigle made her last public appearance, with Rufus, Martha and Anna, at the Albert Hall six weeks ago.

Rufus Wainwright

I’m in the throes of grief, which encapsulates every aspect of human behaviour. I feel extreme glee and extreme happiness mixed with fear, and I’m reconfiguring the order of things. It’s fascinating if you’re close to your mother and if she dies it’s such a kind of statement from the Universe: “You thought she was in control? Just you wait and see who’s really pulling the strings.” It’s a pretty hard time, but my family and I have come together and experienced the end of Kate’s incredible life.

She told Martha and I that she loved us every day. My mother was always communicative, we had a great relationship. I didn’t speak much about her dying to her, but she didn’t want to go. She was not happy about the situation: her first grandson [Arcangelo, Martha’s baby] had just been born and she had just seen me produce my first opera [Prima Donna]. She was not ready to go, but she made provisions. Even before her diagnosis she must have known something was wrong. She had taken hardly any pictures of us as children. She was not a picture person. But in the last few months she bought a camera and recorded everything in her life.

She seemed so happy: she was going to put the situation out of her mind and drink up the world to her fullest. She travelled back and forth to Europe, she saw my and Martha’s shows, she went on a grand tour of the world, she swam in lakes in the country. She was a true individual, unique.

Once the disease started to take over she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t change herself at all, but she did — in a subtle and mystical way — prepare for her death. She made it private. She was in a coma for two days before she died, with us but she couldn’t speak. Before she went into the coma, the last thing she said to me was: “Have a beautiful summer in Montauk,” where I had just bought a house. She told me not to cry and of course I cried. I’m still crying. I think I’ll cry every day for the rest of my life.

When things got pretty dire for her, I had all these intense ideas in my head: we would read Rilke novels and watch Bergman films. I said: “Mom if you want to talk about any of this . . .” and she said, “No, I want to give you a foot kiss”. So I knew this experience was going to be about foot kisses rather than Rilke. My mother was one of the most glamorous women in the world, but she lived in a modest Montreal apartment which was a titanic mess. Her pearl earrings were stuffed into a sock, but when she dressed up she was the most striking person in the room. She was a grand dame in a mouse hole.

My parents loved each other very much, but along with that came a fierce love of music and when you mix those two, things can get pretty explosive. They had to ride the waves of showbusiness simultaneously, and when Martha and I joined them the waves got choppy. It was a bumpy ride, but a glorious, noteworthy voyage. The good thing was they really had a chance to settle their differences. Before Kate’s health went south my dad performed in Montreal and invited her on stage. Afterwards he told her how amazing it was to sing with her again. They made it back together, as parents of their children.

She was a magical woman, one foot in another world, a great songwriter, performer and bohemian, and she was surrounded, as she was dying, by family and friends. My father was there. Emmylou Harris was there. We sang to her as she lay there, in fact that certainly might have made her go that little bit faster.

As we were having this jamboree, her breathing became more laboured and she made a moaning noise. One of the nurses said this could go on for four days and we had already exhausted the back catalogue! Then Kate breathed a little differently, it was like she was saying, “Hold on, I’m going to end this show” and she died. I was looking right into her face, her eyes were open, and my aunt Jane was holding her hand. It was an amazing experience.

Martha came from London in very strenuous circumstances. When she walked in, it was a very dramatic moment, like the third act of Tristan and Isolde. She just howled. Just hours after Martha left, Kate was gone: she had been waiting for her. Martha says she could feel Kate wasn’t afraid.

Everybody’s shook up. We’re all very devastated, but on the other hand it’s been a great trip. Now I am dealing with the repercussions. Artistically I sought my mother’s opinions about the plethora of options in creating a work of art, and when she was getting iller I had to control myself so as not to become too demanding of her. I’ve started writing something about her and I’ve found myself instantly filled with her support and encouragement. Whenever I need her she will appear. To anyone else going through this, I’d say if you need to invoke your loved one, write about them and they’ll be there.

Martha Wainwright

I’m glad I have my baby as a distraction — though of course he is much more than a distraction — from how grim this is. (Martha’s baby Arcangelo was born two months premature on November 16.) The funeral has been postponed for us so we can prepare for the trip. When we get back to Montreal I expect the shit to really hit the fan — to be around all of Kate’s family and friends and her things, I’ll begin to really absorb what has happened. At the moment I have to stay healthy and stay strong. I can’t let my milk supply drop off. I can’t do drugs or drink. I have to eat properly and stay hydrated. It’s a nightmare!

My husband Bradley and I were walking in Regent’s Park (in London where the couple live) when Rufus called me to tell me that Kate was declining sharply. We were surrounded by couples with their baby buggies, and we felt like we were finally acclimatising to London life. By the tone of Rufus’s voice, I knew I had to go. I rushed home and got on a plane. I had only a small window — about 24 hours — that I could be away from the baby.

I managed to spend ten hours with Kate. I said goodbye, which was very good to do. I sang along to the song she sang about me at the Royal Albert Hall (Proserpina, based on the story of Persephone). I know she heard it. Her eyes were sometimes open and sometimes closed. It was a beautiful death, thank God, because it can be pretty gruesome.

Kate, Rufus and I saw ourselves as the three musketeers. She played a huge role in our formation and had a very hands-on approach whether we liked it or not. She had incredibly good taste and made sure we did too. She made us into the musicians we are, and influenced the music that we loved. I cooked what she did. I wore the clothes she wore. We were the same size. As a young woman I tried to distance myself from my mother. I was overwhelmed by her beauty and talent. I tried to play the independent girl. But I always came back, needing her cash, her assistance, her suggestion. In the last five years I totally gave in and realised I needed to be with her all the time.

Indeed, when Kate was first diagnosed I desperately wanted to be as close as possible to her. There was always the knowledge she would die; it was a very serious form of cancer. She battled it very well. Kate was a very mystical woman but not namby-pamby. She wasn’t into talking about her death as a therapist would probably suggest she do. She was holding her feelings in and grappling with what it meant. She did not want to give in to the illness; she wasn’t ready to go. She was very young and it was very unfair. I sent her some breast milk but I guess it didn’t help. I just hope she found a way within herself to free herself of the burden somehow. It’s odd: my baby has a little jaundice and so did Kate before she died.

My last conversation with her was on the phone from London. It was clear she was either confused or fairly gone on morphine. We were talking about me getting over there and she kept saying she’d see me on the 28th even though I was saying I’d see her on Sunday (last Sunday). I told her to try and eat something and that the baby was fine. She must have known something I didn’t because the 28th is when we intend to fly, once we’ve made the arrangements. Before I left her on Monday, I asked her to come with me and I think she has.

Anna McGarrigle

I’m very shaken from losing my sister and closest friend, although last week we had a little spat. She loved fresh fruit and we had bought her some grapes, which I called “those little sacks of fluid”. Maybe it’s the way I said it, because she snapped at me: “Why do you always see the bad in things?” Maybe she associated it with the state of her lungs. I lost it, we had words, and I left and then apologised the next day. It was all fine again.

Last summer, one evening, she turned to me and said: “How come no one will talk to me about dying?” We broke down on the couch together. Last week I asked her as she lay there what her deepest fears were and she said to me: “I’m not thinking about anything.” She was putting all the bad stuff out of her mind. Kate had spent the last year and a half lying on the couch speaking to friends by phone. A friend once went round and said “Kate you don’t have to answer the phone”, and she said, “Every call is important”.

We’re Roman Catholic but not overly religious — we light candles, have faith. Sometimes Kate could be complicated: she had the qualities of a confident performer, but she was unsure of herself in a funny way. She felt she hadn’t got the recognition she deserved, or made the money, though in recent years Rufus had bought her to the forefront to make sure that she did.

We grew up 45 minutes outside Montreal, in a big valley, rock-jumping across Lawrentian rivers. It was a musical house. My father had emphysema and played the piano all day— mostly sad tunes, too — which drove my mother mad. Kate and I started singing together aged 14, and then properly after she’d been to New York in around 1970. She went to a club and called me and said, “I think we can do this”. Both of us were stubborn, and Kate even more so. Rufus is a planner, he’ll say: ‘This is how we’re going to do this’, whereas Kate and I did things in a much more cock-eyed fashion, à la McGarrigle, you might call it.

The breakdown of Kate’s marriage to Loudon was significant — she often said that she took to her career as a reaction to it. It was hard for two musicians married, working as musicians, although she found happiness with Pat Donaldson [the bass guitarist] later.

Kate was one of the finest songwriters: her soul told her hands what to do. The song she wrote for Martha, which she performed at the Albert Hall, Proserpina, makes me cry. It’s amazing. For me, she’ll always be a contradiction: the widely read sophisticate who loved mixing with the high-end crowd with Rufus, and the rustic character, never happier than when riding an old bike, or cross-country skiing or knitting Scandinavian sweaters.
Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem
Quoniam cum probatus fuerit accipiet coronam vitae
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