Val Kilmer B. 1959
Val Kilmer was constantly making art using materials from his surroundings — a sketchbook, a photograph, a lounge chair, even his own clothes. His white pants, which he scrawled on, tell a story of his preoccupations: HelMel, for example, was the studio and gallery where he created art and hosted art shows. “If he had an idea, he’d get it out there,” his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, says. “The pants are a canvas for that.” The actor, whose career spanned four decades, expressed himself through writing and doodling even more after he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He received a tracheostomy and eventually lost the ability to speak.
Kilmer had a habit of constantly, even obsessively, documenting his experiences. He was the subject of “Val,” a documentary about his life, which relied on over 800 hours of his own footage; he wrote “I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir” and two books of poetry.
When he traveled to film locations, he made scrapbooks; one from filming “Alexander” in Marrakesh includes drawn-on photos, call sheets, notes about Greek mythology and a hotel-room key. When he read books, he would annotate the pages and paper the covers with collages. “Wherever my dad would be,” Mercedes says, “even when he was sick in the hospital, he’d be collaging in the hospital bed.”
“To my dad, the world was very alive,” she adds, “and he had this fearlessness about leaving a mark on things. A lot of the things that he owned are the mark of his life.”
Ozzy Osbourne B. 1948
In the 1960s, John Thomas Osbourne worked nights as a welder. So when his son, Ozzy, helped start a heavy-metal band, he made the young man a cross with scrap metal, engraving it with the band’s name: Black Sabbath.
“That was the first cross that Ozzy ever had or wore,” says his wife, Sharon Osbourne. He vowed to one day buy a gold one when he could afford it. Once Black Sabbath’s records started selling on both sides of the Atlantic, all four members purchased gold crosses, each inscribed with their own names. “He said, ‘My music turned it into gold,’” Sharon remembers.
Over the years, Ozzy accumulated crosses and crucifixes from across the world, including one made from the metal girders of the Twin Towers, presented to him by New York City firefighters after 9/11. He kept most of them in his study, alongside his walking sticks and his collection of books about World War II. But he always carried two crosses — his father’s and his first gold one — with him in his bag.
“The golden cross is beautifully weathered, as it’s seen it all,” Sharon says. When her husband wore it onstage, microphones would pick up the thump of the cross hitting his chest. It was such a fixture of his daily life, Sharon says, that when you hold it, “it smells of Ozzy.”
Marianne Faithfull B. 1946
Through Marianne Faithfull’s many identities — as the child of a spy and a down-on-her-luck baroness; a teenager sneaking out to London nightclubs; Mick Jagger’s glamorous, self-destructive partner and muse; a homeless heroin addict; a Grammy-nominated new-wave singer-songwriter; a cabaret performer collaborating with generations of artists — she always wrote.
“It was the key to who she was,” her son, Nicholas Dunbar, says. “She had low points, but the ability to work by herself, on her own, to write the songs for the next album, stays with me as one of her incredible strengths.”
For years, she wrote at an ornate black lacquer desk, a gift from friends in Ireland. The desk was often cluttered with piles of CDs and notebooks filled with writing: lists of rhyming words for lyrics, phone numbers, a recipe for rum punch. “The desk was kind of like an engine room of her work,” Dunbar says.
In life, Faithfull was often portrayed as a character in someone else’s story. “Her identity had been written for her by other people for a big part of her life,” Dunbar says. But in her own writing — she published two memoirs, “Faithfull” in 1994 and “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” in 2007 — she was in control of the story. “Her work was one of the things that kept her alive,” he says.
Oliviero Toscani B. 1942
From the time he watched westerns as a child in postwar Italy, Oliviero Toscani was fascinated with horses. The obsession persisted into adulthood, as a photographer and later, art director of the clothing brand Benetton, where he designed bold and controversial ad campaigns, including one featuring a priest and a nun kissing. Toscani was working for the clothing brand Esprit in San Francisco when he saw an appaloosa and decided he wanted to be the first to import the horse breed to Italy, which he did in 1980.
“He wouldn’t do things halfway,” says one of his sons, Rocco Toscani. “He was extreme when we got into fights, in loving people, in collecting and in his work.” For his children, Toscani’s love of horses offered a way to feel closer to their father. “We’d go for long rides together on the weekends,” says Rocco, who now rides with his own son. “That was the way that we would get to know each other.”
Toscani went on to own up to 80 appaloosas and quarter horses and around 30 saddles. He also helped create the Appaloosa Association of Italy. His tack room showcased his deep love of craftsmanship: The saddles, which he sourced during trips to the United States, were often custom-made and adorned with his initials. “He wasn’t willing to compromise on quality,” says one of his daughters, Lola Toscani. “He really enjoyed a beautiful object.”
Kitty Dukakis B. 1936
Michael and Kitty Dukakis didn’t have a conventional marriage. Though his career, as governor of Massachusetts and as a Democratic presidential nominee, shaped their public lives, “they didn’t hold traditional ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ roles,” says their older daughter, Andrea Dukakis. “She drove the car, and she was the protector in many ways.” In her later life, Kitty stepped into the spotlight, speaking and writing about her battles with addiction and depression, putting a public face to private pain in the hope that others would seek help.
Soon after she and Michael met and started dating — Kitty was divorced, with a 5-year-old son; Michael was living with his parents — they decided to marry, without the formality of a proposal or an engagement ring. “My dad says they were reading The New York Times one Sunday morning, and they both said, ‘So when are we going to get married?’” Andrea says.
On their wedding day, on June 20, 1963, at her parents’ apartment in Brookline, Mass., Kitty wore a cerulean blue skirt suit. “It was not your typical wedding dress, but she didn’t care,” Andrea says. “The simplicity of the dress and their wedding was in contrast to the magnetic love they had for each other.”
Andrea Gibson B. 1975
Andrea Gibson was a prolific spoken-word poet, publishing seven books and performing rousing work about queer love and identity on stages across the country. But after a cancer diagnosis during the pandemic, they were forced to slow down.
Stilled from a life on the road, Gibson and their wife, the fellow poet Megan Falley, spent more time reimagining their house in Longmont, Colo. “Redecorating was a way to make us feel like we were in new places, like a collaborative creative expression,” Falley says. “I used to say that we painted our bedroom so many times that we must be half an inch closer than when we first moved into the house.”
Last year, Gibson asked Falley’s mother to paper over their piano with lines by Pablo Neruda, Rumi and Anis Mojgani, an old friend of the couple’s. “Decoupaging a piano in love poems is all Andrea’s idea,” says Falley, who is the subject of many of Gibson’s tender verses (from “Love Letter From the Afterlife”: “My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving”). “Even at its simplest metaphor, Andrea covered the world in love poems.”
Brian Wilson B. 1942
Whether he was performing in front of thousands or at home, surrounded by his family, Brian Wilson often felt overwhelmed. “He always wanted to be in the middle of what was going on,” says Jerry Weiss, Wilson’s longtime personal assistant and friend. “But he would get nervous.” As the creative force behind the Beach Boys, Wilson inspired David Bowie, the Beatles and Crosby, Stills & Nash, among many others, but he also struggled with his mental health.
For Wilson, a plush, worn recliner became a place where he could feel calm. There was a black one he took on tour, transported from venue to venue. Before shows, he would sit offstage, watching the audience find their seats from the comfort of his. “One of the first things we did when we got into the venue was to ask, ‘Where is Brian’s chair going to be?’” Weiss says.
He sat ensconced in his recliner in Carnegie Hall in 2004. At the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2016. The Red Rocks Amphitheater in 2022. And, of course, at his home in Beverly Hills.
As his dementia progressed in the final years of his life, Wilson spent more time there, positioned between the living room and the kitchen. He dutifully watched his soap operas, his five adopted children and their friends running past, his dogs playing in the kitchen. The recliner was his home within his home, Weiss says, “no matter what was going on around it.”
Charley Locke is a contributing writer to the magazine. Her last piece was about how A.I. sees humans.
Artwork (Val Kilmer): Photograph by Robert Dutesco, “The Wild Horses of Sable Island.”
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