Elephant (for Andy Keogh)

Andy Keogh: March 19, 1971-December 27, 2010  (photo credit: Allyson Seconds)

"We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them."

-Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

There is an elephant in the room. And I feel I need to address it.  

Last week, I received the news that a dear friend of mine had passed away. His name: Andrew Allen Keogh, and I wrote about him here.  Every evening this week, I've been visiting his fan page on Facebook, created by his sister, Jenny. I read the comments posted by friends of Andy, each caught in the undertow of their own private loss. He was both black velvet and cut-throat diamond, our good friend, Andy Keogh, and his early exit tugs at our eyes, and we leak our sorrow.

It's with a clumsy slowness that my mind sinks the fact in: our Andy is no longer with us. My grief feels thick and dull; I hadn't seen or talked to him in years, so the effect of his absence in my case is not immediate.  Instead it is a slow burn, a smoking, numbing hollow to fill the back of my throat and settle like soot in the curl of my ribcage. My sympathies are aimed at those whose pain sears more immediately: the sister who lived with him, the son who survives him. My heart breaks like an egg for the crushing grief pressed upon his great love, a certain unforgettable Karen Simmons, who now bears the misfortune to bereave like a widow.

Let me state for the record: I know I am not only mourning the loss of my dear friend Andy, I am mourning the loss of every death I have ever endured; the good souls & great loves from my personal history that pulled anchor and set sail for other darker shores.  I am mourning my own inevitable-evitable: the sure-fire warranty of my expiration. Death roars like a lion, and I've stuck my head into the maw of the beast, only to catch a glimpse of the infinite, scattering a trail of stars like bread crumbs across the sprawl of the galaxy, ending at the doorstep of my dying breath. 

When I'm in need of comfort, I'll usually look for some soothing quote, usually a book of poetry, usually T.S. Eliot.  Today, I am in need of comfort.  I am in need of words, words to carve out some sort of meaning, words that push past the safety-net of cliches. 

A friend, former co-worker, Amber Magnolia Hill, wrote these touching words regarding our dear friend Andy: 

"Most people are relatively special. That is, more special to the people closest to them than to the other people they come in contact with in their daily lives... But some people, very few, are universally special. Recognized by everyone who meets them as extraordinary. Not because of their looks or celebrity status or even their achievements, but because of their heart. It is innate, this specialness. Andy, more than anyone I know, was such a person.

Dressed all in black and drowning in tattoos, his heart of gold radiated out to all who encountered him. A heart full to bursting with love and compassion for all of humanity. Never did he have a conversation with someone in which they did not receive his full attention, his total presence. He heard and felt everyone fully for just what they are and he knew that we are all alike... Andy strove to help anyone who came to him in any way he could.

Along with his big heart came a brilliant mind. I was blown away... watching him at work, realizing that he could instantaneously categorize information in his brain and store it away for future use. I had never seen anything like it, and I haven't since."

I suppose I want you to see how amazing this man was. That his brilliance still blazes within each of us who knew him, and that our heartache, this raw wound of misery, is still a fair ransom for the price we paid to know him. 

For some reason what comes to mind are tiny micro-moments of Andy: his striped mohair sweater; the way he'd clear his throat before he spoke, his limp when he walked with a cane (after the bite of the brown recluse spider); his delicious curl of a smile; and the one delirious afternoon a million years ago, miles away from any sort of heartbreak, the both of us young, beautiful and indestructible, and Andy shared with me a slice of HIS life, his one and only confidence to me. 

He was a tide-pool of influences and contradictions. His gift was to wear those contradictions with aplomb. He was a bright star dancing tandem with a dark cloud.

Misfit. Musician. Dandy. Dreamer. 

There's a roomful of elephants:  elephants, a lion, divine horsemen & monkeys. And still I'm at a loss of what to say. 

The need for words, now that I have none: I am reduced to quoting, cannibalizing even myself: 

"The heartache is at a low-simmer.  I hope you know that you were loved, Andy. You came and went in the river of my life, and my life is better for it. Handsome, charming, whip-smart and compassion made for the lovely bones of your original style. You are, now were, a one-of-a-kind, and I only hope you left knowing the impact you had on others.
I celebrate your life, Andy, and I will now mourn the loss of it, in mine."

Andy Keogh's memorial takes place this Saturday, January 8th at the Townhouse. I plan to attend to pay my respect to his loved ones, to commiserate this tragic loss with friends, and celebrate Andy Keogh's life. Until then, this blog is on hiatus. I will resume my Citizen's Choice BEST Blog series next week. I've got a handful of wonderful interviews and blog reviews, that I can't wait to share with you.

Only it can wait.

Life beckons. 

                                                                                                                     -Bella Q 

Andy Keogh and THE UPSETS, circa 1997

Curiousity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask old questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails. 


Face it. Curiosity 
will not cause us to die-
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all. 
Only the curious 
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.


Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are chaneable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their 9 lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay 
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.


A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do, and 
that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.





                                                         -Alastair Reid