Reflections On Mortality, December 18, 2022

I finished watching the Netflix series based on Warhol’s diaries. I liked it a lot, even the last episode, which was all about death and dying. Right after I watched it, I wrote a page about celebrities, like Warhol’s collaborator Jean-Michel Basquiet, who died at 27 years old. Me, I’m way past 27 and way past the age my father died and both my grandfathers died. On top of that, I kind of feel like since my cancer treatments, I’m living on borrowed time.

Extraneous pains and unfamiliar physical pressures here or there make me wonder if my time has suddenly come. My will is written; I hope it’s sufficient to not cause anyone undo hassle. I’m counting on Roland to make all the arrangements after I’m gone. He was just a kid when I met him over 3 decades ago. Now he’s as dependable as anyone I know.

You know why I felt entitled to put “Reaper” up top without feeling completely banal? Aside from being certain that the song is a masterpiece, I knew them not just when they were the Stalk-Forrest but as the Soft White Underbelly— when Jeff Kagel (later Krishna Das) was a member, not to mention Jackson Browne— and I put together their first live gig, backing Steve Noonan. I met Noonan, along with Jackson Browne and Tim Buckley at a Velvet Underground show at the Dom on St Marks Place in 1967 and brought them back to Stony Brook. For several months, they hung around the campus and played informal gigs, individually and in combinations. I hired Tim, who died at 28, to open for The Doors (for $50) and when the Underbelly needed a singer, I helped get Jackson Browne the gig for a few rehearsals. They also backed up Noonan, but, if I remember correctly, doing his songs. I hired the three of them to open concerts on campus whenever I could. This is me with Eric Bloom, the post-Underbelly singer, backstage at a Blue Oyster Cult concert somewhere, a years later:

Sorry for the fluffy tangent… mortality-- the finality of it-- can be tough to write about. Recently I stopped locking my bedroom door when I go to sleep. I figure the chances someone breaking into the house and coming upstairs and killing me is significantly less than me dying in my sleep. And if that happens, I don’t want Roland to have to bust down the door.

I’ve pretty much always been a careful eater health-wise. On some days I’m more careful than I’ve ever been, especially about avoiding sugar, but on other days, I just think that I probably don’t have that much time and I might as well enjoy it (within bounds anyway).

But before the mantle cell lymphoma, I used to imagine that a shark or a snake or a crocodile— not to mention piranhas— would get me in my pool, which wasn’t likely since it’s an indoor pool… but it was just irrational fear. That fear went away because I almost died from the cancer.

Because of my age, people I’ve known die more and more frequently. First it was friends’ parents; now it’s friends. And the celebrities I grew up “knowing” (and knowing). Because I worked at Warner Bros, a large company with tons of people, I hear about deaths all the time. Last week, right after I got done meditating on the Warhol film, I got word that Benjamin Bossi, the incredibly talented sax player from Romeo Void, had died. He was 69 and he died of complications from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. I liked him so much, not just as a musician but as a human being. Romeo Void was a huge part of my life when I lived in San Francisco. I hadn’t spoken with Ben in a very long time.

And, today, the neighborhood lion, P-22.