RIP, BLK

The first time I remember seeing you was when I was in 7th or 8th grade. I was 13 years old and full of the anguish that comes with that age plus the added sadness from still feeling not quite at home where I lived, the idealized longing for what I'd lost. There was a "poets in the schools" thing, and you came with Arthur Butler to my school and both of you were so much cooler than I'd ever imagined poetry to be. I loved poetry but thought it was like, mostly spinsters and sadness or long rhymes or both. Together we all wrote poems about what our names sounded like, smelled like, and you didn't choose mine to read which hurt but less than I was usually hurt by these kinds of things. I was enchanted. It did not feel like children writing forced rhymes and acrostics, it felt very adult and exciting.

The next time in university. My best friend and I would adopt people and follow them around campus and report our findings; this may have only happened once but it became a way of thinking for me so it feels like many times. I adopted a woman with a fascinating haircut and a face lit with an inner processing that I guess I'd call Slavic now, that kind of watchful calculation that is simultaneously present and a million miles away. My friend picked you; her report was more interesting. Sometime later, you came to Kathryn Hohlwein's class and read "Howl" with spit flying from your mouth, you were howling. And then you both talked about how Ginsberg performed it, what choices you were making when you did it differently. I was 18, maybe 19, writing furiously by then, and thinking about writing all the time, but I hadn't thought about performance and poetry together, and a door opened.

I know you were friends with my friend, but I don't know when you and I became friends, I don't know if it was friendship, it was mostly you talking with overwhelming passion and volume about something and me listening. Which is fine; you knew more than I did. In my recent move I found about a dozen drawings you'd done when you lived in my apartment, which I had forgotten about. A month? Two? The thing about forgetting is that half the time you don't even realize you've forgotten; it's just gone. I remember going to an event you organized, a tribute to Jack Kerouac, and I had a necklace I wore all the time and Victor Wong bent to look at it, touched me briefly, and I told everyone for years that Victor Wong touched my chest and that was my nearest brush with celebrity. But I remember feeling like part of something, to the extent that I ever feel like I belong; in my mind I am on the periphery of wherever I am, but just feeling like I belonged in the room at all was incredible. 

You organized so many poetry readings that they blur together, but I remember one that I was in with Arthur Butler and Scott Soriano. You introduced me to the concept of how mismatched performance was messy and potentially the most beautiful. Arthur, all rhythm and images (and the 13-year-old in me crowing with delight), Scott put a steak on his face and sang "Au Jus", and me with sad girl poetry. My family came, Arthur Butler talking to my sister. I remember Ann Menebroker came to one reading and stayed after to tell me she liked my writing which is just, the honor is so much. It meant the world to me to be treated like I mattered, doing what I wanted to do. 

Looking back it is stunning to me that you never tried to make anything sexual about our relationship, back when I was young and impressionable and probably would have done anything for your attention, which you just gave freely. I remember two women that you were with, in the time I knew you, and that you spoke of them in glowing terms, as artists in their own right, not as muses. I find this remarkable now.

You could be very loud, you could be very rude, you rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. You were self absorbed like I guess many artists are. When I was in my 30s we were back in touch for a bit, and we'd sit on the floor of your apartment listening to music and talking about poetry and talking a lot about people who didn't understand you and your genius, but we also talked about my life. I paid for dinner and you paid me back in paintings, which I cherish. Your health was never good, and we fell out of touch; the next time I tried to find the number didn't work, and you never figured out social media, and I thought: well, not everybody needs to stay in contact. It seemed to me that you might have been dead, and I have lost enough people before they die that I know their death isn't the end of anything for me, other than the end of a possibility. 

I don't know why I took the news of your death in October so hard. I hadn't seen you in two decades, I think. And I don't necessarily wish we'd stayed in touch; I don't think I had anything to teach you and you had already taught me so much. By example: Be chaotic. Do what you love. Plunge into things and let the world catch up. By warning: Don't care so much when people don't like what you do. I'm working on it. 

There's a parallel world where I am still there, writing. 

There's a parallel world where I am still there, not writing.

In both of those worlds and in this one, you changed my life. I'm so grateful.