Goners

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Don Van Vliet (1941 - 2010)





Jean Rollin (1938 - 2010)





Peter Christopherson (1955 - 2010)





Ingrid Pitt (1937 - 2010)





Henryk Gorecki (1933 - 2010)





Jill Clayburgh (1944 - 2010)





Sparky Anderson (1934 - 2010)





Harry Mulisch (1937 - 2010)





Ari Up (1962 - 2010)





Solomon Burke (1940 - 2010)





Dustin Michaels (1987 - 2010)





Aaron-Carl (1973 - 2010)





Arthur Penn (1922 - 2010)





Jill Johnston (1929 - 2010)





Claude Chabrol (1930 - 2010)





Larry Cassidy (1953 - 2010)





Barbara Holland (1933 - 2010)





Christoph Schlingensief (1960 - 2010)





Bruno Schleinstein (1932 - 2010)





Derf Scratch (1951 - 2010)





Tuli Kupferberg (1923 - 2010)





Harvey Pekar (1939 - 2010)





Rammellzee (1960 - 2010)





Pete Quaife (1943 - 2010)





Jose Saramago (1922 -2010)





Sebastian Horsley (1962 - 2010)





Sigmar Polke (1941 - 2010)





David Markson (1927 - 2010)





Bill Dixon (1925 - 2010)





Kazuo Ohno (1906 - 2010)





Louise Bourgeois (1911 - 2010)





Leslie Scalapino (1944 - 2010)





Magnolia Shorty (1981 - 2010)





Will Munro (1975 - 2010)





Shusaku Arakawa (1936 - 2010)





Billy Taylor (1921 - 2010)





Chad 'Craven Cox' Noel (1985 - 2010)





Ronnie James Dio (1942 - 2010)





Werner Schroeter (1945 - 2010)





Malcom McLaren (1946 - 2010)





Alex Chilton (1950 - 2010)





Mark Linkous (1962 - 2010)





Barry Hannah (1942 - 2010)





Alexander McQueen (1969 - 2010)





Marion Brown (1931 - 2010)





Colin Ward (1924 - 2010)





J.D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)





Guru (1961 - 2010)





Kate McGarrigle (1946 - 2010)





Jay Reatard (1980 - 2010)





Eric Rohmer (1920 - 2010)





Bobby Farrell (1949 - 2010)


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*

p.s. Hey. Happy New Year again, this time in the new year itself. Here's to some of the amazing people who got lost during the last one. ** Alexp336, Hey. Glad you liked the Didion. Yeah, that makes sense about the differences between porn and other writing. For me, I think that's why I always try to make my writing as tight as possible, and probably why I'm interested in circling around a relatively small number of ideas and archetypes and so on, trying to get that power by pressurizing amd reducing the world I'm writing about or something. But, yeah, I don't know either, really. I'm thinking about maybe posting parts of the porn scripts here. I need to go back and see if they work as stand alone things at all. Hope you had a great night. ** David Ehrenstein, Yeah, the Didion pic was great, no? I was really happy when I unearthed it. Hope the LA bloggers party was big fun. ** Scunnard, I just had a quick look at the site. Yeah, it looks really, really interesting and very, very promising. I won't link readers up to it yet since you said you don't want it to go public quite yet, but give a shout when it's ready because people should definitely get a chance to follow and get involved in it. If you find out more about that Godard, Smith, Badiou thing, I guess post it or let me know because I don't know it either, and, of course, I'm heavily wanting to. Yeah, it looks like a really exciting project, man. Happy New Year to you too. ** Allesfliesst, Hi, K. Thanks for the redspective link. Could be very useful. I immediately liked/wanted a few of their shirts. I guess the online shop is closed until they resettle in early February, so I'll just wait and set aside some Euros until then. Oh, your Xmas present ... right, I need to dig the DVD out and get someone to dub it. (My computer won't do such things, it seems). I will asap, probably not before I go to NYC, but as soon after I get back home as I can. HNY! ** Waiting for John, Oh, thank you, dear Tristram, for sparing a moment to say goodbye. It's a very sad day. It is. First thing I did when I got back from my NYE party last night was rush over to 'WfJ', and there it was. You worked wonders that will not soon be forgotten, sir. Misanthrope mentioned the idea of a book of the saga perhaps? Such a splendid idea. I second that emotion. It's been an honor to know you and to have had you, your mother, Ms. Winthrop, even John surface here. Everyone, the great Waiting for John saga/blog has been laid to rest as of very early this New Years morning. Please pay your respects and gain accordingly by clicking this and seeing WfJ off into its eternal rest and existence. Thank you. ** L@rstonovich, Happy 2011 to you! By Tuesday, oh, cool, you are too kind, man! The only good thing about the sluggish and barely useable internet signal here at the Recollets is that FB is hard to even open a lot of the time, so I'm 'lucky' to get a ten minute visit there a day. Not that I'm suggesting you install dial-up internet, mind you. Yep, get on that daily Duchamp project writing if you know what's good for us. ** MANCY, Hope you didn't wreck yourself any further yesterday, obviously. If you partied, I hope it lived up to the term, and, if you didn't, partying is very overrated. ** Alan, Thanks, man! A very happy new year to you, my friend! ** Sypha, Your reading lists are monumental, ultra-impressive, and very intimidating in a good, fire-under-the-ass way. Everyone, here's a list of the books Sypha read in 2010 (and in '08 and '09) too. He's just about the best friend literature has ever had, our Sypha. Take a gander and marvel. ** Dusty rose, Hey. Oh, cool, yeah, Didion's a god, right? What are your favorites of hers? I'm going to hold you to that making history this year thing. Knowing you even the little bit I did, it seems like a guarantee. ** Bernard Welt, Yes, wow, Xmas gift(s) via email, indeed! Holy crap, thank you, B! Yeah, I'm going to NYC on Tuesday to do three performances of 'Them' (8th, 9th, 10th), and I'll be there until the 11th. Man, if you can and want to get up there, that would be very cool. ** Patrick deWitt, Very happy days and love to you too, Patrick! ** _Black_Acrylic, HNY, Ben! A quiet Eve at home sounds nice to me. Especially with pizza. ** Fake/realjoem, Wow, yeah, I remember the fake you. The blog was so crazy back then. Ah, youth, or something. I so agree with you about the elegiac late WtJ posts. I was just thinking the very same thing. They became quite moving towards the end and, of course, just beautifully written. I hope Mrs. Winthrop is going to live to see many more days, though. Happy New Year, Joe! ** Heliotrope, Happy new one, Mark! I'm glad you got through the holidays with the great majority of you still on hand, my friend. A Buche! I miss mine already. When I'm in LA on NYE, I always stay home. Between the drunken car stewards and police check points, fuck revelry. Even the normally sedate-ish metro here was pretty treacherous last night. Very beautiful Didion-inspired memory of Scott Spaulding, the desert, etc. I went out to JT with you and the gang and a bunch of drugs once, you remember. Not sure if it was the same trip. I think the Integratron is real. Or I've always thought so. Hm. Wake up fresh, man, or, hm, since you're already awake, I hope you did. Tons of love to you, dear friend! ** Amccartney, HNY to you, A! Yeah, fingers heavily crossed on the visa thing. We have the best shot we've ever had, but, as you know, having a true aim isn't necessarily the solution to the problem. Glad you're feeling more inflated. You teach that Didion essay? Cool. I'd never read it before I found it last week, which is strange, I guess. May this year bring you lots and lots of time to work with your linguistic brilliance. Very best and love to you, and to Tim too. ** Ken Baumann, Hey, Ken! I started 'Solip' yesterday, and I'll have much more to say when I get further into and to the end of it, obviously, but I fucking love it! It's gorgeous, man! Something about it is bringing to mind Pinget's 'Fable', one of my very, very favorite novels ever. I'm not sure if you know it or not. Anyway, just an initial wow from me. Really amazing so far! Enjoy your Southern meal. Southern: grits, biscuits, and fried things for as far as eye can see, I'm imagining. It's going to be great year, no? The best one yet, I think. Love to you, man. ** Steevee, Hey. Sorry you're feeling ugh. Yeah, obviously, check to see if the meds are the culprit. Year ends are kind of weird in and of themselves too. Oh, no set plan about Panchitos yet. I have to figure out my NYC rehearsal and performance schedule and stuff. I'll let you know if a plan formulates. HNY! ** Postitbreakup, Hey, J! I think Didion's method is very interesting, especially given how chiseled and amazing her prose is. I preplan extensively, yeah, but I always allow myself a fair amount of improvisation once the schematics are in place. So her methodology isn't totally unfamiliar, and I'm very interested by how she makes it work. I played GTA IV sporadically, so I didn't really play the game itself so much, just explored all the possibilities available, and I was mostly just impressed by the scale and size and look of the game, really. The story didn't grab me so much. RDR sounds very interesting. The idea of that kind of game set-up in the Old West is inherently curious. One of my all-time favorite games is this old computer-only game called 'Dust', which had an Old West setting. I think I'll rent RDR and wander around in it the next time I get near an Xbox. The happiest of New Years to you! ** Chris Cochrane, Yeah, I'm nore into Sarah's non-fic than her fic, push comes to shove. The rehearsal starts at 7 pm? Hm, I must have looked at some early draft of the schedule, which had it starting at 1 pm. I'll go scour my mail for the update. Well, if it's at 7 pm, no problem apart from even greater bleariness on my part, probably. See you so soon! I'm really excited! ** Thomas, Hey, T. No way! They played 'Melted Pat'?! Listening to that little excerpt almost made me cry. Shit. Yeah, I know, missing the NYE GbV show has turned my body into an iron maiden, trust me. A little bird told me that Pollard has ruled out any UK/Europe shows, but ... maybe, please dear god. Anyway, I'm going to go download that Maxwells LP almost the second I click publish today. Thank you, man. All the very best back to you, big time, Thomas! ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey, there! Really good to see you, even a paragraph of you! Well, I'll look forward to a fuller catch up on your recent days on Sunday then. Excellent. My last days ... hm, I'll just pick and choose because it's kind of hazy and because I can't quite remember when we last exchanged reports. Uh, I'm working on the text for the new thing with Gisele, i.e. the short 'trailer' piece which will premiere in March and will be a piece in and of itself as well as a preview of the upcoming big maze piece we'll be making this year. So, I did that. I hoped to have a draft of the text ready to show Gisele before I go to NYC, but I don't think I'll manage that. Yury and I went to see the Larry Clark and Basquiat retrospectives, and I talked about them yesterday, so I'll leave it at that except to say that there was an hour plus wait in a long line in the freezing cold, which was the bad part. I started getting ready for the NYC trip. I washed my desperately unwashed clothes finally. I started getting nervous that I haven't heard back from my HP editor about my novel yet, but it is the holidays, so I think I'm probably just being weird when I worry about that, I hope. Uh, it's been pretty quiet around here, to tell the truth. I did go to a NYE party last night at my French publishers' pad with Yury, Gisele, and Stephen (O'Malley). It was actually kind of nice. They had endless champagne and cake and cheese and stuff to eat. I guess the most exciting thing was that the legendary French chanteuse/ actress Jane Birkin was there, and I was too shy to introduce myself and gush at her, but I got to watch her talk to other people and check/send NYE texts and stuff. That was very cool. People started dancing to old disco tracks around midnight, and Yury and I slipped out around then and came home 'cos the party was nice and all, but I was sleepy. The metro was free of charge last night as a NYE gift to Parisians, and people were using its free insides as a place to party, and usually the French metro is kind of a relaxed experience, but last night it was full of crazy, drunk French people, and they didn't do anything spooky or dangerous or anything, just singing and yelling and swaying around, but it's so rare to see crazy drunk French people at all that it was a little unnerving. Then I basically crashed. I'm probably forgetting things I did, but maybe I'll remember by Monday. Have a lovely, fresh 2011 weekend, man, and give me the scoop. ** Creative Massacre, Hey. HNY! Yeah, I feel really good about this year too. Your being on fire creatively is surely part of the positive vibe. I still haven't seen 'Control'. It's weird. I've been meaning to for forever. Your new art piece sounds really interesting, of course, Curious to hear more when you're further into it. Oh, nice new photo. Food photography: I like that idea, as you can imagine. Everyone, check out Creative Massacre's new photo entitled 'Fooooooood. Cake batter covered beaters.' It's a pretty, cool one. Yeah, here's to a Year among years! ** Misanthrope, Sharing a birthday sucks when you're little enough to believe in birthdays with all your heart, yeah. Poor Little Show. Undertaker duffle bag, ha ha. What next?! My year so far: bit of a post-champagne headache and, uh, a cup of coffee, and, uh, three cigarettes. And you! Well, like I said to Postitbreakup, I'm quite fascinated by the Didion piece. I had no clue that she wrote like that, and while I would never have imagined that methodology given how brilliantly her fiction works internally as well as on the surface, it makes a weird sense, now that I think about it, and that's what interests me at the moment. And, kind of being half an extremely calculating writer and half an improviser -- or half/half might be pushing it -- I'm intrigued, and I feel interested in the idea of maybe experimenting and trying to write something 'her way' to see what happens. ** John Veldhoen, Okay, you've entered and deleted enough now that I'm going to break with my policy of respectfully bypassing deleted posts and just say hi, man! Happy New Year! ** Little foal, Yes, a toast to our mutual awesomeness! What the heck, right? I'm like you. If I have my druthers, as my mom used to say, I'll stay home on NYE and watch the fireworks on TV and maybe eat something chocolaty and maybe drink a beer, if I'm feeling really wild! Still, as you said, the arbitrary marking point of New Years is useful as a kind of opportunity to make a break with year-long habits and challenge yourself to start anew and immediately. So, yeah, go for it, my brilliant friend, and ... here, I'll fire the starting gun. *Bang* That sounded a lot better than it looks in print. HNY, love, and etc. to you, Darren! ** Adjoun, Could be. Could very well be. Happy New Year to you, Mr. V! ** Okay, we're finally through the holidays, at least until, what, Valentines Day? Is that the next 'big' one? Today you get a roll call of some of the people who died this year who really, really shouldn't have died. Maybe you have people you want to add. Anyway, good weekends to you all, and see you on Monday.