Last month -- in the evening, on Thursday, April 11 -- my friend Danny died. He had made plans with his girlfriend to go out, and he was supposed to meet her outside his apartment, but when she got there, he wasn't outside. Eventually, after not hearing from him, she went into his apartment and found him dead on the couch. He had one shoe on.
No one knows for sure what happened. One can certainly make assumptions or inferences, but his cause of death is still unknown, and depending on what his family chooses to do with the autopsy results, it might stay that way. The only thing I feel safe saying is that, whatever it was, it was sudden, and it was unintentional. He was putting his shoes on, getting ready to go out with his girlfriend. He had texted her half an hour before she found him. Danny didn't want to die.
The night of his memorial, I had a dream that I was driving to drop off this bag full of old 4-track recordings of his that he left at my house sometime during early Covid (that part is real). Just before I pulled up to his house I realized that I'd driven to the wrong house: I was at the first house where I had lived with him, way back in 2007-2008. So I think, "Wait a second, Danny doesn't live here. Where the fuck does Danny live?" And I'm all confused. Then, the thought hits me as I wake up with a stone in my throat: "Oh, that's right. Danny doesn't live anywhere anymore."
Danny and I were in a few bands together over the years, and ROHIT was where we really bonded. I had started it as a solo project, but midway through recording the first demo, I knew I had to bring him into it. I just knew he would get it. So I played it for him, and he loved it. ROHIT was now a two-piece. We used to play shows for largely indifferent crowds, and we'd walk away like, "holy shit, dude, we just fucking crushed it, we're so fucking good." We truly didn't care if other people liked it -- we were doing exactly what we wanted to. And he boosted me like no other bandmate ever had or has -- I have never felt as seen or respected, creatively, as I did working with Danny in those early years.
After a while, we decided we weren't heavy enough and we needed a bassist so we invited Ana, who was fresh off the boat from Sweden, to join. She was into it, and we immediately became the best version of ourselves. That's the version of the band that recorded
Trick, which I still consider our definitive recording. We had zeroed in on what we were best at, which was an extremely minimal synthesis of Ildjarn, Eyehategod, and Swans. It's not for everyone, and it's really not the point of this post.
Check it out if you like.
Over the first couple of weeks after Danny died, it felt I had something dead attached to me, like a phantom limb or a tumor or some kind of cold, gnawing growth. And I knew that I had to let it go or it would spread to the rest of my body, but I couldn't bring myself to, because that thing was Danny. And letting it go meant letting Danny die, and I wanted to hold onto him as hard as I could. Keep him from that void into which so many beautiful souls have already disappeared. Pull him back through the veil, downwards with the rain, through an open window into his living room. Safe again, on his couch, sliding that second shoe on.
We kinda grew apart over the years. We texted a lot, and I always figured we'd grow back together again some day. Start another band. Watch more horror movies and It's Always Sunny. Drink beers on the porch and argue about Neurosis. Listen to Bill Fay and watch the sun turn red and disappear behind the trees. There were times when we'd go months without seeing each other, and more than once, when we finally did hang out, he told me that he'd been reading my blog -- this stupid fucking blog -- because that way he could see that, even though we weren't together, I was still me, I was still funny, I was ok.
Maybe writing this, I'm hoping that he can still read it somehow. I love you, Danny. I'll miss you forever.
