Harry Speaks From Beyond the Grave

a radio play based on a true story

As I prepare my new book Music and the 7 Hermetic Principles for publication, please enjoy this post from the TOA archives, originally performed as a Halloween broadcast on NPR’s ArtScene with Erika Funke.

I recently had a session with a medium who came highly recommended as someone experienced in communicating with those who had passed from the Earth plane.  She was very good; I appreciated her work and her abilities.  But when she said there was someone there named "Harold", all I could think of was my dear Chihuahua, Harry, who had died a few months prior.  

Harry had cataracts and had lost vision in one eye before becoming completely blind.  He eventually also lost his teeth (his jaw had decomposed due to cancer) and could no longer engage in his favorite sport, chomping on chewsticks.  

The final straw in Harry's decline was the sudden death of his mate Zsa Zsa, from congestive heart failure.  He was despondent but hung on for another eight months, a blind, toothless widower.  

On the up side, Harry had a good ten years or so during which he frolicked with Zsa Zsa, paraded down the streets of Aspen with a line of <OMG he's SO CUTE> teenaged girls in tow, vacationed in Florida, peed on the Washington Monument, toured the Palermo apartment building in Cuenca, Ecuador (where he took the elevator to the lobby and was found by a cleaning lady who put him in a bucket and locked him in the janitor's closet for safekeeping), and was taken to the finest restaurants, where he and Zsa Zsa enjoyed the aromas wafting into the mesh sides of their carrier located underneath the table.)  

Harry apparently had the canine equivalent of Bipolar Disorder, going from brief manic periods to depressed states in a blink of a cataract-covered eye.  When he was a youngster, he was always doing something wrong and had to be scolded.  My late husband Gil used to say Harry had a criminal mind.  

The following transcript of Harry's purported visit from the afterlife has not been altered in any way.  The medium did not know that Harry was a dog.  What she 'saw' was a man standing with his hands in his pockets.  For all anyone knows, that is indeed my dear Harry's preferred form! 

I reproduce this exchange with all due respect to the medium, who gave me lots of interesting and relevant information during our session.

MUSIC

MEDIUM:  Harry, would you like to come in?  

    PAUSE

    I'm not feeling him yet. . . what's his last name?

SU: Favisham.  But we never used that.  We just called him Harry.

    PAUSE

M:    He says he's a live wire.

S:    Yeah. . . is he with anybody? [Zsa Zsa had died the previous year.]

    PAUSE

M:    Harry, can you come in a little closer?

    PAUSE

    Did he know a "Linda"?

S:    No, I don't think so.

M:    Well, he's got a "Linda" there.

S:    A "Linda".

M:    Yeah, a Linda's there with him.

    PAUSE

    He's talking about Miami.  Is there any reason why he'd talk about Miami?

S:    Harry, it wasn't Miami.

M:    What was it?

S:    St. Petersburg.  Clearwater.

M:    Oh, well, thank you, I thought he said Miami.

    Harry, you know, you could stand in a little closer.

    (to me) This is what happens when spirits get shy.

S:    And he. . . I don't know if this is the same Harry that I'm thinking of.

M:    Uh, can you come in a little closer, Harry?

S:    (to Harry) Can you give us some identifying marks?  There's a lot of 'Harrys' out there.

M:    He's shrugging his shoulders, putting his hands in his pockets.

    PAUSE

    Was there a lake nearby?

S:    Not really.  [I realized later there was a lake we used to take the dogs to sometimes, it was about an hour away.  Harry was deathly afraid of water so he wouldn't go near the shore with a ten foot pole. Now the Medium addresses her personal spirit guide.]

M:    Mirabelle! Mirabelle, can you help?

    (to Harry) Harry, you'll have to work a little harder.

    (to me) I can't get him to work.

S:    I never could either.

M:    Yeah, he's a little passive here, and he doesn't know how to step up to the energy.

S:    It's okay Harry.  You're a good boy.

M:   Thank you, Harry, thank you very much.

S: Now we have an INTERLUDE WITH OTHER, MORE COMMUNICABLE SPIRITS.  The MEDIUM STILL HAS NOT BEEN INFORMED HARRY IS A DOG.

MUSIC

M:    Oh, Harry wants to speak.  Harry's back.

S:    Really?  Okay.

M:    Because Herbert [my deceased father, who had a great sense of humor] said, "Harry–speak!" just now.  So can we try again?

S:    We can try again.

M:    Okay.  Harry?  You ready?  You ready Freddie?  Step up to the mic!  Yes, we heard you say you were a live wire.

    (to me) Was he stoned a lot?

S:    Well, he acted like it sometimes.

M:    Okay.  Uh, I wasn't really stoned, he's saying.  

    PAUSE

HARRY:   I wasn't really stoned. I wasn't really stoned. Oh okay, maybe I was. Okay, I was a little stoned.

M:    Harry, you can't be stoned now.  What do you want to say?  You've got to work a little harder here.  You can't have us do the work for you.  You know, I can't reach into you and grab a message out of you.  And neither can Mirabelle.  It's not fair.

    PAUSE

    He's talking about music with you.

S:    Okay.

    PAUSE

M:    He says something about. . . he was not a good communicator.  He wished he could let the music speak for him all the time, is what he's saying.  [Gil and I played our saxophones in front of the dogs all the time.  In fact, Zsa Zsa's introduction to our lifestyle was being brought to a jam session at Dave Glasser's apartment in Chelsea immediately after we picked her up from the breeder at the Westminster show.  In retrospect, probably not the best thing for the dog, but it sure was a great session!]

M:    And part of it was. . . the music said it much better than he could.  He felt like, almost intimidated by the music.  There's a sense of . . . it's bigger than he is.

[Pretty much everything was bigger than Harry, he only weighed three pounds.]

  I hear you, Harry. 

    (to me) He's saying, I'm not a jerk. . . 

HARRY: I'm not a jerk. . .

    I'm not lazy, it's just that the music is more powerful.

    PAUSE

M:   (to me) Did you ever listen to Cole Porter?

S:    Sure.

M:    'Cause he's saying, Cole Porter is a way in which Harry tries to contact you.  Whenever you have Cole Porter on, Harry's right in there.

S:    Harry, I didn't know you had such good taste.

HARRY:    See, there's a lot you don't know about me.    

    PAUSE

M:    Let's try again Harry, you're doing pretty well.  Mirabelle?  Okay, all hands on deck with Harry.

    LONG PAUSE

    If we had lived in another culture in another time, Harry would have been a shapeshifter.  He would have been, like somebody who just. . . shapeshifted.  He says, the human condition, and having to stay in it, was weird for him.

S:    Uh huh.

M:    And he's saying, in my Druidic lifetime, it was easy, 'cause I could shapeshift.  And in the Navaho lifetime it was easy 'cause he could shift. . . and he's showing me a lot of other cultures. . . he's taking me to Africa, where he could shift. . . China, there were a lot of other places. . . Tibet, he could shift there.  But it was tricky.  And he's saying, it was a Karmic lesson for me to have to try to be one person.

S:    Or in one shape.

M:    Or in one shape.  Yeah.  And I'm still learning from that lifetime.  I'm still learning from it.  Because, quite honestly, you know, it's not my favorite lifetime, he's saying.

S:    The one he just had.

HARRY:   Yes.  Not my favorite lifetime.

S:    Yeah, I could understand that.  But there were some good times, though, Harry.

HARRY:    Yeah, no, you're right.  I'll buy that, you're right.  But my lesson, and I'm still working on it, they're still trying to get me to see that staying in one shape, that there's divinity in there.  So it's a big, big, big lesson.  It's a big spiritual lesson.

M:   I hear you Harry!  Well, now you're getting loquacious! 

    (to me)    He's saying, I had a lot of arrogance, a lot of pride to work through.  I'm still working through it.  And because I was used to being able to [she snaps fingers] shift--never be accountable.  Shapeshift, and never be accountable.  "Whoops, he's there, whoops he's there."  So, responsibility, accountability, these are all things he's still working on. 

 HARRY:   When I come back, I'm going to have to come back to a similar area geographically.  With similar circumstances.  The vibrations, the rhythms will be really similar.  But my physicality is gonna be such that I won't be able to move.

M:    (to me) So he's going to be--and he's choosing that--he says I think it's the best way for me to learn, is to be handicapped.

S:    As a human.

M:    Yeah.  So, to help to stay in one place.  To help him learn that.

    Thank you Harry, I know that took a lot of energy on your part.

HARRY:   Tell Su I think she's a great kid.  

M:    (to me) He thinks you're a great kid.

S:   Okay.

    PAUSE

M:    I'm sorry, this is getting a little personal.  Did he ever. . . want to make love to you?

S:    Not in the form that he was in, no.  I don't think.  [But I was always cuddling him
. . . I guess he could've taken it the wrong way!]

M:    Well. . . had circumstances been different--yes.

    PAUSE

    And it's something he thought about, actually.  It's something he wants you to know.

S:    Thanks Harry.  

    (to the medium) I think we're going to say goodbye to Harry now.

MUSIC - YOU'RE SENSATIONAL

–THE END–

Original NPR broadcast recording:

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