The Dark Mirror

It’s been quite some time since I’ve given much thought to the suicides who once lived on the canals. As winter came the conversation turned to other things, financial troubles dogged my circle (as did fecundity) and there didn’t seem much else to say, or wonder at.

Then recently I sat down for a long overdue chin wag with G., an old, old friend who surprised me by bringing up Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake apropos of his having known Jeremy fairly well in art school, and only just having heard about what had happened. So, oddly, I found myself having what felt like a very fresh conversation about a stale subject. I clued G in on the web-driven discourse, the mysteries and the conspiratorial theories, my own small place in the mythos and the sites that had contributed more, the journalists and preachers accused of various conflicts and motives, and so on.

And after I finish up, it’s “Funny,” says G, “that they think she led him astray.”

“Funny how?” says me.

“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. Let’s Just say that he was no choirboy. But I’m not surprised that it ended up looking the way it did. Some people are expert at looking lily white as the world turns to shit all around them. Poor things. I’m afraid they breed this kind of romantic idiocy in the classes we took.”

These days G designs hotel interiors for oil-rich investors, and has very little room in his life for the fancies of a young artist. But still, he sighs, there was a time when he too would have been eager to check out like Mayakovsky, Artaud, Crane or Rimbaud. Thanatos is strong before thirty.

The thing is, says G, there’s no such thing as a good looking corpse. The most you can hope for is not too many unflattering photos taken in life, and a good press agent who keeps your tale spinning long after there’s any chance you’ll pay his bill.

And in that, with we who became fascinated, Theremy struck gold. We made legends of them, crafted in pixels and glossy paper. Will these legends last? Do they have to, to matter? Digital fates flash past fast. Say that one six times in the mirror in a dark bathroom and see what appears.

 

Meditations in an Emergency

The eager note on my door said "Call me,"
call when you get in!" so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door.  It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame!  What a host, so zealous!  And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs.  I did appreciate it.  There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

 

Games People Play

I suppose it’s nice to have a fan.

 

Late summer miscellany

item: a recent brunch at the Chateau Marmont, attended by Los Angeles friends who wanted to muse on happier times. The garden is lovely this time of year. Talk of the media and the thin nets that bind friends across great distance. Also of Lance Loud and Helmut Newton and John Belushi. It is suggested that the male ghosts must be happy to have a pretty girl around the place. Discussion of book donations in Theresa’s and Jeremy’s names at select libraries. But what books, what libraries? And who will design the bookplate? Another pitcher of mimosas is ordered. People on low-carb diets eat French toast.
item:  bootleg CDs of Theresa’s games circulating among friends who often heard about but had never seen or played them.

item: at Burning Man, in the temple, an altar of forgiveness with printouts of accusatory emails from Theresa to several ex-friends. Some of these did go up in smoke.  Where are they now?

 

Two Troublemakers

The article in the Independent is interesting, to say the least. Jeremy didn’t set off my gaydar in the least, though in retrospect, I must say that Theresa did. That doesn’t mean much, for any tough-minded woman tends to. I’ve got to wonder if this is just the old rock and roll rabble rouser pushing buttons as he does best. Subverting the message is his very nature, and he’s neatly transformed the narrative with a few well-chosen sentences.

Well, who knows? It gets you thinking, either way. And if the boast of how T&J never spent the night apart in a dozen years are true, then figure either neither one of them was getting any action, or they were swinging. Which path is more likely to push you over the edge might depend upon your nature.

Thanks and a Kid Detective Badge go to Micha, who made a very interesting connection between Mount Lowe on the T&J travel list and a mysterious, fire-bombed aerial cat house run by Lowe’s grand-daughter in the Mojave Desert. I’ve been reading up on Pancho Barnes today–really fascinating story. This was a woman whose whole world was destroyed after she toyed with powerful Air Force people. She bedevilled them for a lark and was punished as with Thor’s hammer in return, though she did not die of it. Placed in association with Theresa’s persecution claims, this seems extraordinary and odd. I would be curious to know how Micha made the connection between these two places– and wonder if there’s more to Mount Lowe than meets the eye, or if it was merely a pointer to Pancho.
I cannot think of private air fields in the desert this week without noting that a very rich adventurer seems to have faked his own death rather neatly after flying away from one in a manner so casual as to be utterly unconvincing from so experienced an expedition planner. Or so it appears from the canal zone.

Thoughts?

 

Adaptation

item: there is talk of creating a film or mixed-media project based on the experience of being on the receiving end of Theresa Duncan’s suspicions, though there are concerns about what the copyright status might be of telephone messages,  emails and videos from/of a deceased person.

item: it will be interesting to hear the new album from The Real Tuesday Weld, The London Book of the Dead.

 

Nite Flights

Have you had any dreams about Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan? Kindly share in the comments.

This was my dream: Jeremy was sitting on the deck of a sailboat in the docks at Marina del Rey, up at the front of the boat with his legs dangling. He didn’t look cool at all, he looked like a dorky kid, but I knew who he was. He had a string of blue beads in his hands and was worrying it. I walked over, on the dock so I was looking up at him, and when he didn’t notice me I grabbed his foot and stopped it swinging. He looked up then, and his eyes were terrible black storms. “She’s down there,” and he gestured to the next slip, where no boat was parked.”With all her silverware and her scarves and the boxes inside of boxes that are locked[I think I'm remembering this right] . I hate all that stuff!” He shook his head and bits of black clouds actually flew out of his eyes. And before I could speak or stop him, he melted away down the side of the boat and between the slats of the dock and into the water. As he melted, there were so many colors, and when I looked up again the black clouds were gone.

 

Suicide as collaborative act

Before Harry Crosby and Josephine Rotch Bigelow perpetrated their 1929 murder/suicide, or joint suicide if you will, they spent several days in Detroit, on the 20th floor of the Book-Cadillac Hotel, where they registered as Mr. and Mrs. Harry Crane. Crosby, like Duncan, left no note, but a vast quantity of written matter in which his biographer wallowed in search of an answer to the eternal question WHY (young, beautiful, loved, rich, acclaimed, yet dead by one’s own hand).  Had Crosby died in a digital world, he might not have had to wait fifty years until those clues were shuffled and the answer, such that it was, revealed.
Below, from Geoff. Wolff’s book on Crosby, Black Sun:

“YES.” -A

 

Dis-Connect

(this seems unlikely to me, but I am passing it along after two people brought it up independently)

item: there is a real-world connection between actor Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt and Theresa and Jeremy. It is unclear if the relationship existed before T&J died. Was Wilson practising Duncanology along with the rest of us?

 

Working Notes

item: Curators received a FedEx envelope containing a set of elaborate instructions for the installation of Jeremy Blake’s posthumous exhibition at the Corcoran this fall, including a digital file of a spoken word voiceover track to be made available to museum goers on iPods.