Who: Olivia Harrison, Martin Scorsese
What: New York City book launch
Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. between Ninety-First & Ninety-Second Sts., and online
When: Sunday, November 20, in person $31.50 – $55, livestream $25, 8:00
Why: “Only the past is carved in stone / So that it will not be forgotten. / This sand, once granite, / Covers and clings to my wet feet. / Ancient geology as I walk to the sea / Each grain a memory being set free / To solidify and be carved again / Marking the time once more / So the past will not be forgotten.” In her new book, Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George (Genesis, June 2022, $35), Olivia Harrison, the widow of beloved musician George Harrison, remembers her husband through twenty poems, photographs, drawings, and more, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of his death from cancer in 2001 at the age of fifty-eight. (The book includes contributions from Henry Grossman, Sue Flood, Mary McCartney, Marcus Tomlinson, Klaus Voormann, and Brian Roylance.) Among the poems are “End of the Line,” “My Arrival,” “Without Hummingbirds,” “Keepsakes,” and the aforementioned “Carved in Stone.” Olivia, who married George in 1978, writes, “Here on the shore, twenty years later / my message in a bottle has reached / dry land. Words about our life, his death / but mostly love and our journey to the end.”
On November 20 at 8:00, Olivia Harrison will be joined by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese at the 92nd St. Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall for the New York City launch of the book, celebrating the life and career of the Quiet Beatle. (A special-edition signed book-and-print edition will be available December 6 for £125.) If you can’t make it to the event, it will also be livestreamed. As George Harrison sang more than fifty years ago, “Sunrise doesn’t last all morning / A cloudburst doesn’t last all day / Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning / It’s not always gonna be this grey / All things must pass / All things must pass away.”