J'ai une âme solitaire.

A friend of mine (technically D's, and also Mob's best friend, but I really adored this guy) killed himself Monday night. I rarely got to see him but I was still happy knowing he was there, and it goes without saying I wish we'd been able to see him more often.



I was so happy to still have this picture with me, rather than back in Texas. He loathed having his picture taken, but he was being a very good sport here at Mob's wedding (he was also meeting me in person for the first time so maybe he was going easy on me). You may have seen his blog in the past (it may be invite-only, I don't recall) and comments here--he ("MacGuffin") always had great comments.



I don't know much, but simply that the years of sickness and depression took their toll.

We hadn't emailed in a while, but I was looking back at some of our past correspondence and I hope it's not totally inappropriate, but I wanted to reprint one that, while perhaps not uplifting, I still found moving. We were discussing the recent death of his dog, whom he'd owned during some of the hardest times in his life. This was about two years ago, maybe a little less.

Yeah, the passage of time helps but it doesn't make the pain go away, grief simply changes you. My brother **** committed suicide in 2002 and to this day I think of him every single day but it's become bearable somehow. [My dog] was with me through so much pain and misery (I've had cancer twice), we formed an unusually strong bond that I simply cannot begin to describe. He's been my constant companion and joy and now I feel so damn bereft... I've been sobbing and carrying on to such an extent, it's even surprised me.

I'll muddle through somehow or I won't... either way I'm not the same person I was two weeks ago. Nothing can change that now. Thanks for the kind words and take care.

You are sincerely missed.

Dead Kennedy

From the Telegraph obituary of Ludovic Kennedy:

Indeed he never really lost a certain aristocratic contempt for television and dismissed as ludicrously self-important the views of those television executives who believed that “a thing said simultaneously to 15 million people will carry more influence than something said privately at a pub or dinner party or picked up elsewhere in the course of the day.”

I suspect he never got the hang of Twitter.

It’s real but it ain’t exactly there

Caught me a bit by surprise, as it’s not meant to be out till next month, but my new Leonard Cohen biography appears to be available from Amazon UK.

Feasting on Stephen

...and the next time someone suggests that poorly argued, badly written, self-indulgent blogs are debasing culture and making it harder for conscientious, thoroughly researched journalism to get a look-in, just refer them to this.

Jondrytay, Anton Vowl, Charlie Brooker and Michael Deacon weigh in, as do many others.

Eventually, Moir apologises, but misses the point. Her worst sin isn’t the snide fag-bashing that’s been a staple of the right-wing tabloids for decades. It’s the standard of her journalism that stinks; and it took the derided Twitterati to point it out.

PS: Another angle.

For the typography spods among you

By Tom Gabor.

Do you know where I can get, like, a really great dress?

So the other day my sister and I were on the train trying to get from my apartment to downtown. Out of nowhere, this crazy old man (odder still, I don’t think he was intoxicated) proceeds to ask us (more than once since we did not understand), “Do you know how much better Boston would be without the colleges?”

Obviously I had nothing to say to this. I mean, I do, but this man was not someone I really wanted to have a conversation with. “Oh, is this South Station?” I suddenly said, getting us off the train. (So what if we wanted Park Station?) No big deal.

Today. I’m leaving school around 4 and for the second day in a row as I hit the platform, my train is just pulling up. Considering my train comes every other train, this was pretty fucking cool. There was a man next to me waiting to get on, and he pushed himself in front to be first, then slowly turned around…and it was the same fucking guy. “Do you know how much better Boston would be without the colleges?”

I immediately ran away to a separate car.

It was totally alarming and freaky, I don’t care how small Boston is. I was worried it might turn into a Drag Me to Hell-type scenario where I’m perpetually haunted by a crazy fucker…though admittedly I don’t think he’ll try biting my face off. I hope.

And it was also less cool than being trapped in a This Is Ponderous moment--you know, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be at work?" It was just all sorts of wrong and unwelcome.

So that was the weirdest part of my day. I'm glad there wasn't something else competing, at least.

On a completely separate note, I’m totally sad I have to miss a book launch party in two weeks hosted by Dennis Lehane. It’s the same night as a school function and though I’ll probably end up being pretty unsocial, I should at least make the attempt. The book launch is noir-themed and part of the Boston Book Fest, it sounds very cool. Balls.

Breaking glass

I’m not a big jazz person. But I heard Ornette. I couldn’t afford to go in, but I heard him through the window.
–Lou Reed in this month’s Wire

But isn’t that the best way to hear him? And I mean that in a good way.