2025-03-16
17 分钟Brendan Costello's funeral didn't start with the usual processional hymn.
Instead, it began with instrumental jazz,
a jazz mass for this lover of Charles Mingus and Pharaoh Sanders, just as he would have wanted it.
My name is Dan Barry, and I'm a senior writer for the New York Times.
I'm going to be reading you a story I wrote about a man named Brendan Costello.
He was an Irish American, a storyteller, a professor, really, a force of nature.
He was also a native New Yorker and an example of what makes the city so dynamic.
New York is filled with people who push this metropolis forward and its music,
its literature, its culture, and Brendan was very much one of them.
He liked art that recognized the lives of everyday people,
their struggles, and definitely their demons.
For example, he found deep meaning in the raggedy blues voice of Tom Waits, that great singer poet.
He felt like Waits spoke from the ground up, and that really resonated with him.
There was this one song of Waits that he loved.
It's called Hold On.
It's this, like, plaintive cry to hang in there.
And it has these great lines like, babe, you gotta hold on and take my hand.
I'm standing right here.
You gotta hold on and take mine.
Standing right here.