March 08, 2004

Spalding Gray found dead. Monologist Spalding Gray disappeared two months ago, and now everyone's worst fears have been confirmed.
posted by klausness 20 years ago
  • sigh. also: "The body was found off the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, near Kent Avenue" is it wrong to wonder what the cross street was? i live in greenpoint, a block from kent. again: sigh.
  • How sad.
  • Suicidal depression is very hard to deal with, you can't stop them. I know this from experience. My heart goes out to his family. The depressive seems not to be able to see past the filter of their own misery, clamps down on them like a great weight; unendurable. What a waste. His poor kids. :(
  • Aw, fuck. I guess I knew this was coming but I'm still sorry to have to hear it. He was dealing pretty well with the depression; it was the wreck that seems to have put him down. I really liked Spaulding. This makes me unhappy.
  • Very sad. I find it interesting that he suffered from depression and severe suicidal tendencies after he was in a car accident that caused brain damage. I wonder how much it was a factor. I feel sorry for his 6 year old kid.
  • When I was a young teen, I caught Monster In A Box on HBO. It was so different from anything I had been exposed to before and I have been a fan of Gray ever since. This is terrible but, unfortunately, not entirely surprising news. My condolences to his family and friends.
  • Kimberly, I think he had depression for many years before the accident but had it under control, so to speak. But with the recovery after the accident, well, yeah.
  • I've been a huge fan since "Swimming to Cambodia". I went to see him do his monologues onstage at Emerson College (his alma mater) and in SF. I even had his phone number for a little while (had a friend in Emerson alumni relations), called once and got his answering machine. I feel like I've lost a friend. I hope he's found peace.
  • Tribute. Sanug!
  • Interview with the Dalai Lama. Short & sweet.
  • Not Waving But drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning. -- Stevie Smith
  • thank you bees
  • Yes, very nice
  • A Sign-Seeker Thomas Hardy I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry, The day-tides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude, And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by. I view the evening bonfires of the sun On hills where morning rains have hissed; The eyeless countenance of the mist Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done. I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star, The caldrons of the sea in storm, Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm, And trodden where abysmal fires and snowcones are. I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse, The coming of eccentric orbs; To mete the dust the sky absorbs, To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips. I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive; Assemblies meet, and throb, and part; Death's soothing finger, sorrow's smart; --All the vast various moils that mean a world alive. But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense-- Those sights of which old prophets tell, Those signs the general word so well, Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my watchings tense. In graveyard green, behind his monument To glimpse a phantom parent, friend, Wearing his smile, and "Not the end!" Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment; Or, if a dead Love's lips, whom dreams reveal When midnight imps of King Decay Delve sly to solve me back to clay, Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real; Or, when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her Strong, If some Recorder, as in Writ, Near to the weary scene should flit And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong. --There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust, These tokens claim to feel and see, Read radiant hints of times to be-- Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust. Such scope is granted not my powers indign... I have lain in dead men's beds, have walked The tombs of those with whom I'd talked, Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign, And panted for response. But none replies; No warnings loom, nor whisperings To open out my limitings, And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.