#ROW80 POST 18 – IN MEMORY OF RASMUS RASMUSSEN

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to write this today, I feel so strongly and am so lost, sad and very bitter about this. The best way for me to do this is to tell the story quickly, chronologically, surgically and get the hell off the stage and let others tell it.

Back in 2007, when I was playing Runescape pretty obsessively and was a very mediocre player, I met a very, very fine player and a fine man, when I joined the Clan SpiritZ. A player named ‘Sal.’ SalSomething, he probably remembers what the rest of his player name was; I don’t. Anyway, I knew who he was, through the RS grapevine. He was pretty much like Zezima, a legend. Actually, as I later found out, he’s better than Zezima, in my humble opinion. My respect for Sal has only grown as I’ve gotten to know him over the years. Sal rocks, as a player, a computer whiz and an all-around great person. Shit, let the waterworks begin.

Time goes along, he and I are on SpiritZ Council together. It’s like I have diarrhea of the mouth, he says 3 words, where I say 8 pages of nothing, to say when one of the other players comes up with stupid ideas. He gets it done; he says, "no", I say "blah," repeat 8k times. We’re perfect that way together. We both keep in touch through my losing it, taking abuse from a domestic partner, and being hospitalized, homeless, getting an apartment and on SSDI. The whole thing, Sal’s right there, saying his 3 words, but being encouraging to me, as I blabber all of this to him. He listens to me and says 3 words at the right time. 

I have my famous melt-down (well, to me) when I stay up all of February and forget and am hospitalized most of March. I meet Andi-Roo and read her “Depressionis a Lying Bitch, Wouldn't' You Say?” and I understood clearly for the first time why I went through all of that shit, and for the very first time in my 56 years, my life was drilled down to that crystal-sharp diamond point. It matters. Cruelty and uncaring-ness, attitude. It ALL matters. How we treat one another, how we treat ourselves. This is life. We should care about it passionately. But not to the point that we bruise, bully, maim and injure others.

My psychiatrist understood immediately that I wasn’t depressed-depressed from all of the ‘homeless’ stigma people threw at me. It was deeper than that. We started medication for bipolar. We’d have to change meds, later to Topamax. I went on Runescape and ran into Sal. I had been in a “manic” phase, but I was like that most of the time anyway. I said, “Hey, Sal Hi, blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber blabber. I’m bipolar.”

Sal said, “So am I.” I said, “I didn’t know.”

He said, “I may have mentioned it. I ” I know now he did. Because the week before last, the day after I read and watched the video that George Takei urged everyone on FB to watch the special message he recorded for the Presidential election, which I did, although I’ve already voted for President Obama, and you can see here Sal popped up and responded to a comment I’d made to Zeitgest2012, in a most “unSal-like” way. We talked back and forth for a few moments. I just knew something was not right with my friend. What we talked about is precious to me, it’s ours, but what I learned is a very, very close friend of his died by his own hand.

A very dear and talented man that he met in the asylum, named Rasmus Rasmussen killed himself. Sal and Rasmus Rasmussen met in the asylum during their respective stays there for depression. That is what they are called in Europe, “asylums.” We don’t call them asylums here. We call them hospitals, or state hospitals. I’ve gotten to stay there. I’ve had other friends go to asylums and state hospitals and hospitals. I just am so, so very glad that Sal came to talk to me. This is why I always reach out. A fine, and beautiful person is dead because he was bullied and because he felt alone and because he was silent. Frankly, I think we should call them asylums, here, too. Because, my dears, that shit is rough, asylum-rough. We're sick, but it's a sickness that you have to be tough to weather and we just simply cannot do it alone.

This is just beyond the pale. Rasmus Rasmussen produced music and wrote music. His music soared with birds. He wrote of eagles, crows. His spirit was expansive. His was so vast, the earth couldn’t contain him. His was so generous, he gave kindly and expansively and helped others to share their music. He worked with different genres, lots of black/doom metal, but I’ve heard tons of life-affirming music that he has written and produced. My muse and protector, Beethoven; were he alive, he'd be into all of this, metal, rock and roll, all of it. I listened to Pink Floyd's "The Delicate Sound of Thunder." Younger friends don't believe me when I tell them that I like Rammstein. 

I can’t really do justice with words when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs, and make no mistake it is a magnificent tragedy, in the most ironic sense of the term. That a man, from Iceland, is bullied to the point of extreme mental illness in a European country that should be a guiding light for civilized behavior is ironic. I would expect that of the United States. That the same man; ferociously gifted and loved by many, should feel so bereft and loathed and alone and in agony that killing himself is the only way to end that terror and pain is so pointedly, catastrophically wrong, that it’s really a crime against nature, and that’s ironic, isn’t it?

The only thing of any good, any worth and I think it’s damn fine, is that someone reached out. Someone went to someone. Sal. He came to me, to tell me about his friend. You see, none of us with mental illness are weak, or need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We’re stronger than the hottest cauldrons of Hell. We burn hotter than the Sun. But eventually? We’ll break, if we don’t have a lifeline, or just a voice out there in the wilderness. So, for Rasmus Rasmussen, his spirit out there now, up there flying with the eagles, swifts and crows he so very obviously loved, you haven’t died in vain. You’re remembered. I may not have know you then, but I do now, Rasmus Rasmussen. Thank you.

There is a beautiful tribute from some fellow collaborators and musicians at the wonderful blog, "Let Me Introduce You" This post is written in English, but it seems the "home" language, if there is such a thing anymore is Italian.

So, Sal, this is for you, especially, and all of our friends, for everyone, really. "Nessun Dorme" by Giaccamo Puccini, from the opera, "Turandot."  This was the last opera Puccini wrote and it was unfinished when he died. I've played this opera several times and when the tenor sings this aria, I always cried. I'm a real professional. Musicians don't go into music to make money. So, let me get off the stage, and let me let love take over. This is love for everyone. We're all the same.

ROW 80 DAY 51 – REBUTTAL TO SUICIDE – BECAUSE SOMETIMES LIFE IS not ANTICLIMACTIC

REBUTTAL TO SUICIDE – BECAUSE SOMETIMES LIFE IS not ANTICLIMACTIC

No stall tactics here, because for once in artless way, I couldn't come up with anything, and I can usually stall and tapdance with the best of them.

God, I do so understand not wanting to talk about suicide. The thought of ending one’s life is fraught with just so many triggers, both atavistic and psychological. The idea that by our own hand we choose to cease to exist is just beyond contemplation. I get up to the idea of it, and my mind just skitters aound it, alá crazy bumper car style. I am Catholic and being raised so, the Jesuit priests made it very clear that I would be forever cast out and anathema if I killed myself, so there’s that. I admit that when I was at my very worst psychologically and when I couldn’t walk, the idea did cross my mind but it was almost as an abstract, a “what if?” scenario. But the pain was there and as tough as I may think I am, I really understand and sympathize with people who are in that kind of pain.

My mother after all, tried to take her own life when I was 7. I cannot imagine what kind of hell she was going through for her to think abandoning her child to an alcoholic father was a good idea, as kind as he was. I know she was truly, truly in deep misery. Andi-roo has suffered the same intense pain. I weep for them and people like them. I just can’t imagine the depths of suffering and misery. And then along come assholes who tell you shit like, “oh, you’re just blue, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” “Get over yourself; there are other people who are worse off than you.”

When I lived at Happy Acres, I had 2 roommates. One suffered from depression, the other suffered from assholery. I was keeping an eye on the depressed one, because she was becoming more and more withdrawn. I kept asking her if she needed help. She kept saying no. The asshole kept needling her, telling her she needed to get up, do this, do that, yada, yada. I told asshole to just mind her own business. Finally, one night, the depressed one, O, came to me after dark. A bunch of us were sitting on the front porch and O asked if I would call someone for her. I pried it out of her that she was feeling suicidal. My other friend H and JC sat with her while we waited for the ambulance. She held my hand and was crying. Asshole told her she just needed to get it together. H and I threw asshole off the porch. I’m so over that shit. I said, “go ahead, call the police.”  The women fought more than the men over there. We got O to the hospital and Baker acted. We threw her a welcome home party when she came home. She's doing well now.

Anyway, depression is a killer. It isolates a person from other people. It’s cunning that way. Depression doesn’t go for the weak like most predators, either. I notice that it takes the strong ones. The people who have gone on with out complaint and have shouldered more than their share for years. Depression is also an heirloom. Families pass it down from generation to generation. What a legacy.

Depression is no respecter of class, sex, race, creed or culture. I love the actor Zoë Saldana. She is spectacular looking and fiery. She also suffers from depression, as countless other artists do. It’s almost a requirement if you’re in any performing art. Some asshat said something along the lines of “well, she’s got a great career, money and a baby, what’s she got to be depressed about?” Almost as bad as Tom Cruise and his stupid bullshit with Matt Lauer over Brooke Shields after she talked about her post-partum depression. Tom was insistent that she didn’t need pharmaceuticals to be “cured.” First off, Tom hasn’t a uterus, second off Tom is a robot, I think.

The creepy thing and the timing about all that? I had a gig with Chicago at the Scientology Center over in Clearwater about the time all that shit happened. I had just been released from the hospital the first time after suffering heart failure, in 2004 and found myself playing this gig with a purse full of psychotropics. The creepy part is this: the Scientologists have cameras everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. They wanted me to surrender my purse on their property. I had to have my manager intervene and I told them I would have them slapped with a civil lawsuit so fast their heads would spin; I was in no mood for their bullshit, but the psych meds were keeping me calm and helping my heart heal too.

Depression really is a bastard, as well as a bitch. Women suffer more than men, but men suffer it and just as keenly as women. I go back to the reason I originally wrote this. Andi-Roo. She is my heart. Without a heart, I can’t go on. Oh, I could. But it wouldn’t be the same. We all have to have someone who we emulate. She is a dear lady. I know she had an icky patch. We all do. When I have one, I just kind of fluther through it, knowing that I will come through it. I do, and it’s always better than it was before. I think this just hits such a nerve with me, because I’m still haunted by the “what if?” What if my mother had succeeded?