I was walking out of the West Hollywood Library a few blocks away from home, when I suddenly noticed a half dozen men hunched over and running between parked cars, Most of them wore hooded sweatshirts and all of them had cameras thrust out, with foot-long telephoto lens attachments. Naturally I wondered what was going on.

A minute later, I passed a woman sitting on a bench in the adjoining park watching her little blond-haired boy on a slide. It’s a children’s playground, always busy at midday. I thought, she looks familiar. Ordinarily I’d walk by—there are celebrities all over my neighborhood: in supermarkets, walking dogs, at pharmacy and take out windows. But something about her stopped me.

“Excuse me. I’m really embarrassed,” I said to her, “But I know you’re a celebrity and I just passed a bunch of paparazzi.”

I thought she would ignore me.

Instead, she leapt up. “My son!”

She ran to her child and all but covered him while she pulled out a phone and speed dialed. “Where were they?” she asked.

I pointed out the direction, off San Vicente Blvd.

“Take Robertson!” she said into the phone urgently. “Come now!” To me, she asked, “Help us?”

By now, the entire media apparatus set up to honor/degrade the death of a show business personality of unquestionable talent but somewhat doubtful life choices is set firmly in place. Two years ago, it was just getting started when Michael Jackson took that final dose and found the peace he’d been searching for since he was beaten at age eight for not singing ABC to his father’s taste.

Looking back on that amazing circus, it now seems sheer amateur-ville, all just getting off the ground a la the Wright Bros. in their skimpy biplane. And even though it lasted for months and tried to involve every single person who had ever met the singer/showman on this earth, it looks by comparison like mere sketch-work compared to the media take-over of the Houston story. This is full blown media frenzy and there’s a good reason why it’s happening.

In case you lived in a cave, here’s a few facts: a good singer emerged from a family of good singers. Her youth, charm, good looks, and amazing purity of tone netted her one of the best music producers in the business. Because of him she made astoundingly successful hit records which you had to be hearing-impaired to have missed in that decade, and one blockbuster movie still worth seeing which helped a bit to break down black-white relationship taboos long in place. .

After that, she decided to go her own way. She met a rap artist the family disapproved of and like any other girl finding her freedom from gospel, intense church going and Big Mama, she rebelled. This is not a new story by any means. What happened after that is not new either. But despite Oprah Winfrey moaning “If there was only something we could have all done?” the truth is, Whitney was a grown woman by then, an empowered woman, and she did what she wanted.

Even in a field as noted for its eccentrics as Classical Music is --Beethoven, Alkan, Satie, et al -- Alexander Scriabin stands out by virtue of his personal strangeness, his unusual life-style, his advanced compositions, and especially for the world ranging utopian vision he formulated for his last works. 

Born into the upper class of late Tsarist Russia, Scriabin was an exact contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff, but two composers could not be more different. While Rachmaninoff’s compositional style is closely attached to the 19th century just past, and he adapts it to his own time, Scriabin rapidly progressed from the influence of Chopin almost directly into the 20th Century, with his own version of Twelve Tone Music-- and beyond.

Faubion Bowers wrote the standard biography, still available, but Oliver Decker’s marvelous, informative, and visually brilliant hour long film, Toward the Light, serves informatively and entertainingly as a perfect introduction.

Born in 1872, Scriabin lived to know of World War One, but he died in 1915, before the Russian Revolution: died of an infected pimple on his upper lip which led to blood poisoning. Both facts seem strangely relevant to the man and musician.

The nearly breathless phone was from my High School friend Jerry Blatt, Bette Midler’s manager. Nina Simone was in town and would be playing one night only at the Village Vanguard. It was by invitation only and I should tell Art D’Lugoff or whoever was at the door that I was Bette’s guest. Simone, that great singer/pianist/composer, had been battling the I.R.S. and had fled to the Caribbean in 1973 and then taken up residence in France. This trip to New York as well as this one night only concert was totally hush-hush.

The Vanguard was packed and excitement filled the air. Looking only a bit older then when I’d last seen her at the Newport Jazz Festival, almost twenty years before, Simone entered the room, dressed head to toe in brilliantly patterned colors, clad like an African priestess.
“Hello friends,” she said. She was alone, without her famous band. She sat at the piano which had defined her life from when she’d been a child prodigy in North Carolina through her years as a classical pianist at the Julliard School to this day.

In the midst of one of her jazz/soul concerts Simone had been known to toss off a perfect minute-long Bach Gigue or Debussy Etude. But then when Nina Simone was on stage, it wasn’t just a concert, it was a happening, a visitation, a revelation, a political lesson, and a communion. This night would be no different.

She began her concert with standards: "Someone to Watch over Me," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," and “My Funny Valentine,” mentioning other Jazz musicians. Then she stopped, as though receiving a communication from Beyond, and began caressing the piano keys in what I knew was the intro to her cover of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”