Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Okay, late baby-boomers, and you know how crazy we are, another brilliant contemporary, lost!

Eric Douglas was friends with my friend, Jessica, some 20 years ago. It was always a pleasure to spend time with him. He was warm, energetic, helpful, funny and crazy. Parents found him suprisingly rude and this was on Candlewood Isle which, back then, was, well, a community most indulgent of the pranks of those late baby boomers. You'd think he'd have fit right in, but by then the 1970's were already a fading memory.

His awareness of a legend was compounded by his resemblance to it. His father's personality performance risks compounded the length and depth of the shadow over Eric. A man who follows his own code, sets his own standards, reveals his vulnerability as Van Gogh, how can you possibly live up to that without first buying the rights to One Flew Over the ... ???

There is seething anger and the feeling of alien presence in the appearance of Kirk Douglas in studio films of the 1940s. The man who put Kubrick behind a 70mm movie camera, who sang The Sheik of Araby with Hoagy Carmichael, so much more... Condolances to this liberating individual and his wonderful family.

I feel another example of: I lost touch with him and he probably could have used some friends.

He lived less than 20 blocks away.

Being once pro-choice on mental health I described the loss of Keith Feibush in uninvolved surface-terms of choice.

Well, I lost touch with him, too, indulging him... Another loss.

The full life.

Maybe all lifespans are the same length.

For some people, time moves faster than for others.