Celebration at Big Sur

Richard and Mimi lived in the Carmel Highlands in a house that overlooked the sea. Richard and Thomas Pynchon attended Cornell, and were good friends of my ex-wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, who did a life-size portrait of Mimi. https://rosamondpress.com/2014/11/23/mimi-the-muse/

https://rosamondpress.com/2014/07/10/celebration-at-big-sur/

http://www.richardandmimi.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgtJZwjJmT0

http://www.richardandmimi.com/mimi-bio.html

In the Spring of 1962 many folksingers happened to be in Paris for an overseas stomp–there was a brief vogue of expatriatism–so one day in early April they all went on a picnic together in the countryside and visited Chartres Cathedral. In attendance were Mimi, her friend Todd Stuart, John Cooke of the Charles River Valley Boys, English guitarist Alex Campbell, Texas folksinger Carolyn Hester, and Carolyn’s husband Richard Fariña, who had planned the picnic. Mimi was to learn later that Richard Fariña planned many picnics, parties, and happenings. He was a writer and poet, eight years older than Mimi, and like herself, he was half Hispanic and half Celtic: son of a Cuban father and Irish mother. Handsome, charming, and learned, Richard dazzled Mimi with stories about the saints and demons depicted in the Cathedral. Mimi, feeling very sophisticated at sixteen, celebrated with wine and cigarettes. She got drunk for the first time in her life and threw her up sandwich on Richard’s face. Soon they were in love. Days later, Fariña sent her a poem, “The Field Near the Cathedral at Chartres,” which he had written about their meeting–though with poetic license he tactfully omitted the part about Mimi throwing up on his face.

Mimi and Richard moved in a one-room cabin near Joan’s home in Carmel Valley. Richard worked on his novel during the day, and at night they would entertain themselves by making music. They began composing songs based on a unique, polyrythmic and improvisational interplay of guitar and dulcimer, an unusual combination that opened up unknown musical territory as wild and beautiful as the Carmel countryside

Richard Fariña is buried in the Monterey City Cemetery, which I view every morning over my right shoulder, while riding to work. His small, flat stone is emblazoned with a peace sign. Judy Collins sang at his funeral. Mimi Fariña died of cancer in 2001. Her sister, Joan Baez, built a home on Miramonte Road, not far from the spot where her brother-in-law died.
Richard and Mimi Fariña’s house on Mount Devon Road is still there (and is shown on this page): a low, flat structure that’s unspectacular in comparison to the multi-million dollar estates that now surround it. It nonetheless still  commands a striking view of the rocky coast, and it’s easy to see how it would impel the writing of any book, as it did for Fariña.