A unique aspect of this issue is the public death or the death of pop-cultural figures. It isn't important that we never knew the people. What they did and who they were meant something to us just the same as friends and family. Yet there must be a difference. To try to understand this I thought about the many people famous people who have died that have meant something to me, and there are three that define this phenomenon for me more than any others: Heath Ledger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Lou Reed.I remember Heath Ledger’s death. I learned about it at work in San Francisco when I was working for the government. That was probably 2007. He was an incredible actor, and he was probably around my age. It was strange to think of him dying. It felt like I had been robbed of seeing more of him. It was sad. It was also interesting because when I went to tell one of my coworkers she told me she’d already learned that “like an hour ago.” It was odd at the time to think of the competition she felt about who learned news the fastest. This is now a daily occurrence.
Kurt Vonnegut died around the same time -- I’m going to guess also in 2007 -- while I was working in San Francisco. When we heard, we started talking about his books, and I even went and bought a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House at a shop on Van Ness. I remembered reading Breakfast of Champions in high school and thinking for the first time: “Wow this guy is saying some things I’ve never heard before. Critical, yet informed things about America. Cool.” It made me sad to know that he had died, but he was old, and he seemed to want to go. He kept mentioning the disastrous state of the world and saying that humans were no good for the earth. So maybe it was a plus for him.
Finally just yesterday Lou Reed died. I've spent a lot of time in my life listening to the music of the Velvet Underground. I can probably sing every word to all four of their albums except for “The Murder Mystery” from White Light/White Heat. I have learned and sung many songs by them over the years: “Candy Says,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Jesus,” “Who Loves the Sun,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” and others. Some of his solo stuff is also amazing. I swear, I even enjoy Metal Machine Music in the background. I don’t really care if it was a joke. But Lou Reed has been mostly irrelevant for years so I am not sure how sad I really am.
Reed and Vonnegut weren’t producing much of interest anymore, but they meant a lot to me over the years. Ledger was a wonderful actor who was just starting out. Maybe some day I’ll understand why it is certain deaths mean more to me than others. Maybe I’ll understand my reaction to these deaths and my reaction to deaths of people close to me. Right now though I am lucky as I don’t have much experience. I’m sure I will learn more in the future, and that is something that's bittersweet. It'll make me cherish the times I live, the music I’ve grown up with, and the friends I’ve made all the more. Without death I probably wouldn’t care much about now. Cliched but true.
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My reaction to Lou Reed's death has been fairly personal. He had Hepatitis C and then a liver transplant. I remember sharing an apartment with Rich Kelly my sophomore year at Michigan, Rich would put on the Sister Ray side of White Light White Heat, leaving the arm up so it would repeat over and over again for hours. If you want to see something from him late in life, watch Spectacle: Elvis Costello with... on Netflix.
Thanks. What was your story with Kurt Vonnegut at the University of Michigan?
My freshman year I lived in a dorm called South Quad. The dorm was divided into "houses" -- a house was actually just two floors in a midrise -- and each house had an apartment designed for a "house mother" to live in. Even in 1968-9 the idea of a house mother had passed. In early 69 we had a writer in residence move into the apartment, it was Kurt Vonnegut. I didn't know who that was and I don't think that I ever saw him, although I had to pass his apartment to get to the elevators. I found the following account on the internet:
“In early 1969 popular underground author and raconteur Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was invited to spend two weeks on campus as Writer-in-Residence. The chain-smoking novelist started off well with a lecture at Rackham liberally sprinkled with his trademark wit and deceptively simple philosophy. ‘Be kind,’ he said. ‘Don’t kill for any reason. Don’t even kill out of self-defense. Don’t take any more than you need of anything. Help others.’
But Vonnegut perhaps started having second thoughts when he realized the true intensiveness of the WIR program. At an American Studies seminar he said, ‘I don’t particularly like to talk to people, or listen to people.’ To which a student responded, ‘Why are you here?’
Soon thereafter Vonnegut announced he would be cutting his stay in Ann Arbor short by a week. Tossing back shots of scotch whiskey in his South Quad quarters, he said that he wasn’t having a good time, and had run out of things to say.
‘It makes more sense for me to go home and write more.’”
That's a great story, Dad.
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