| Notes |
- Wayne Rostad
April 19 at 12:26 PM via Facebook
I will try to keep it short; however, there is much to say about my lifelong friend, Lawley Rae Parker.
I was 16 years old, living on Frank Street in Ottawa when I first met Rae. He lived one street over from me on Waverly. That summer day, in 1964, I was walking home from the Party Palace Restaurant with my buddy, Freddy Thomas. We were typical teenagers of that era…black jeans, black boots with steel clicks on the heels; trucker wallets in our back pockets chained to our belt loops; hair slicked up in Jelly Rolls---kind of like punk kids cruising the neighborhood when we spotted Rae up ahead walking homeward with a guitar sitting atop his shoulder. I had seen him once or twice before and wanted to talk to him because I had just started to seriously play guitar myself and needed to learn from someone. So, we hollered out asking him to stop and began running up to him, which not surprisingly, scared the living daylights out of him…two punk kids coming at him, and for what, he did not know. So he started running the final block to the sanctity of his home porch where he stopped all out of breath just as we caught up to him. Well, he was quite relieved when I told him why we chased him down and, to make a long story short, he agreed to give me some lessons the very next day. He was my first real guitar teacher, and a most interesting man, a graphic illustrator for a book company in Ottawa. He had a goatee beard, black-rimmed glasses, and spoke phrases like “Far out, Man” and “Cool Daddio”. Rae was a Beatnik, a genuine member of the beat generation of the 60’s. Rae was 26 years old when I met him and he became my best friend and mentor for most of my life, guiding me through my late teen years, teaching me how to keep musical time with my feet tapping time as I played, and teaching me how to write stories and songs. What I am today, is a man that was shaped by Rae. He always had time to listen to me and helped me through so many decisions and career choices.
Rae was also a schizophrenic. In his world, he was seven people and struggled with self-identity as a result. Nevertheless, he was a brilliant man, an academic Beatnik of the day. He saw the world in a very special way. He didn’t like a lot of what was going on in the troubled Middle East; hated politics, thieves, liars, and basically the direction in which the world was heading. So, he began pulling away from society, choosing solitude and peace as his world of choice. As we grew together in friendship over the years, I went on to marry Lynda (Rae was the Best Man at my wedding) had my son, Josh, and later divorced. Rae continued to shelter himself more and more as the years went by. Then one day, he announced he was leaving his city home in Ottawa and would be living on a remote farm in the Gatineau Hills, where he could meditate, much like a Tibetan Monk would.
I went to visit him often, talking about life in general, and about his life in particular. What he taught me is contained in my song, Lawley Rae. I moved to the Gatineau Hills and following Rae’s lead, determined to write songs about real people and the place I called home. Again it was Rae that mentored me in that direction.
Rae remained Schizophrenic his entire life, ending up on terminal social welfare, choosing not to mingle any more than he had to with the world around him. I sat and watched him cry more than once over simple, beautiful moments, like “taking time to watch a flower grow”, or listening to the wind outside his farmhouse window. In short, I saw Rae die, spiritually, on one rainy day visit to the farm, when he was particularly sad about what societies everywhere were doing to our world. He so appreciated this beautiful planet he called home.
My dear friend, Lawley Rae Parker, died his physical death, two months ago. He was living in a Senior residence for the past four years. He could no longer live alone and went to a home filled with sadness. Eventually, he lost the will to live and stopped taking his heart medication, much to the dismay of his doctor, and died from a massive heart attack. He was 85. Coincidentally, I had spoken to him “just about a week…before he died”.
I’m so happy you enjoy his song as much as I do.
|
1933 - 2022 (88 years)
