It’s been a rough seven days. Extend that by a couple of weeks and there’s been four deaths on varying levels of my community. Leonard Nimoy died (I hate the expression “passed”), striking a blow to the science fiction community that is so much a part of my soul. His voice is part of so many different universes in (or more accurately out of) our world, and of course Star Trek’s Spock has been and always shall be our friend. It was sad to be brutally reminded that the last vestiges of the crew of the USS Enterprise is slowly aging out and we’ll no doubt soon lose Shatner as well. Not people I know, but certainly familiar personas that have become a strange sort of extended family.
From here I’ll write in reverse – because otherwise the last two people chronologically become mere footnotes to the first person who died in the past week – and especially since these two are much closer in a literal sense, that’s fundamentally wrong.
Over the weekend Bill Pierengelli finally succumbed to the cancer he’s been fighting off and on for years. He was a personable, friendly and talented ukulele player and an on and off again presence in my open mics. I was sad to hear of his passing through Facebook. We weren’t close, but I sold him a couple of ukes through the store and gave him a stage and a microphone to express himself. I’m glad we crossed paths.
And this morning I got a text from an old friend’s sister – my friend Malcolm Pettus had a heart attack and died. He was 41. We’d been good friends in grade school – third or fourth grade I think? He was a rolly polly smiling and grinning kid. It’s occurring to me in hindsight he was probably one of the first black guys I was really close to. He was smart and quick, but as most grade school friendships go, when we went to different secondary schools we lost track of one another, only to be reunited years and years later through music. I think it might have been a festival gig, there was something familiar about a raver kid dancing to our music, and we were mutually blown away when we recognized one another. The smile was the same.
Malcolm had grown into a dancing, Life-Loving, lip stick-wearing gothchilde and had become a really gorgeous man. We never grew really close again, but we would encounter one another throughout the scene and judging from his friends list, we had a lot of Smalltimore in common.
A heart attack? It sure seemed like he’d ceased aging in his 20s. Farewell Malcolm. You’re going to be missed.
But seven days ago. Strangely, someone I never met was emotionally much, much closer to home. Terry Pratchett wasn’t someone I knew personally and I’m kicking myself for never having gone to an event to meet the man and am somewhat jealous of my friend Jade for having a chance to inhabit the same space as this great author. Last Thursday when I opened IO9.com with his death as the headline I was … I was shocked. And I was shocked by my reaction. Tears and heartbreak.
ilyAIMY performing at Cafe Nola with… well… I don’t know that he’s “ilyAIMY”, I think he counts as “ilyAUX” – but I think of Joey Jenkins as “our new drummer”. Really fun night with him – it feels like things are really locking together! Friday the 13th, March 2015 found ilyAIMY and the Honest Mistakes joining forces in Cafe Nola in Frederick, MD. Here’s Heather joining the Honest Mistakes for a tune. ilyAIMY rocking out at Cafe Nola in Frederick, MD.
I discovered Sir Terry Pratchett’s books on the sci fi / fantasy shelves of the New Carrolton library during a time when I probably had read at least the backs of everything in the section and was pretty close to exhausting the contents of the books as well – the comparison to Douglas Adams was what caught my attention, and the sexily strange cover illustration didn’t hurt either. He was funny, he was going places. (I think that was what Piers Anthony wrote about him) And his writing seemed to grow with me, developing away from simply silly fantasy books to very sharp satire, creating an entire ontological framework that was dangerously close to a religion. My own thoughts on morality, death, Life, our place in the universe and how we treat one another as humans – these have been very intensely molded by his writings and it was … well, it was NOTHING like losing my father again… more like a mentor of some sort. A favourite high school teacher? You know the one… the one the instilled a Love of something in you. I imagine it might be how someone feels when they lose a beloved family minister or something.
I was embarrassed to have Kristen come in to find me in tears, but I don’t think I can overstate what an effect Terry Pratchett had on me. Still has. I read and re-read his works and with every visit into his world I come away with something different. Listening to an audio book I came to the disturbing realization that your friendly neighbourhood rob, the same one that can barely get through a set without forgetting one of his own songs, has actually memorized whole books by this man. Yeah – it’s pretty ingrained. The slow humanization of Death as an anthropomorphic personification – and his Terry’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and right-to-die legislation… I guess his apparent comfort with the subject and his frequently stated desire to die as he pleased always made me feel
like… well… we’d get a warning.
Nothing. Just a headline.
Well Terry, I hope you’re finding your way through the desert – and I hope you know you’ll Live forever in the Overhead. You’re in my code too.
No really. CTRL-U.
