Good Stuff, Good Man, R.I.P.

Peter presenting in Memphis conference for Cormac McCarthy, 2015.

 We lost a friend of ours this week. I've known him about 15 years online...in a bookclub and forum focused on Cormac McCarthy. Peter was an absolute avid reader and investigator of many topics. Some of which included the Grateful Dead, morel mushrooms, golf, movies and popular culture, politics....and he was just a damn fine kind sweet person. He and his wife, a woman I adore and consider a friend too...put us up and collected quite a few of our paintings. I gave a painting I did of Cameron Diaz as a druid from the Counselor to him. He aways had an ear ready to listen to an idea and I felt a kindred spirit to him as I over wrote things...obsessed about things and was nervous at times...and yet...I also loved getting obsessed about things and letting ideas lead me...and Peter was an idea person too. I feel we had this obsessiveness and idea-compulsion in common. He was also a mans man and yet very vulnerable person. He made the most extraordinary connections between topics and concepts. He was also a pen pal of mine. He was ready to read something I might be working on and he would share what he was working on. We met online but we also had the chance to meet in real life too at a couple of Cormac McCarthy conferences.

I would love to share a little bit of the kind of thing he would email me...we often spoke about what was happening online in the McCarthy forum. "Your assessments seem spot on. I operate from fear too much and should just let it all hang out more often. I can take criticism pretty well depending on how I'm spoken to. It's interesting how things go on the Internet compared to a face-to-face chat or what have you. One thing I'm sure about it that I've always admired how you can go toe to toe with anyone when things heat up, but I also appreciate and have certainly noticed your more diplomatic, gentle side. Good mix that."

He was so kind like that. We both shared an insecurity of sorts and fear of rejection. Our emails sometimes said how we would be so afraid of being rejected by someone at the McCarthy forum...and it was so cool to share that sort of fear with him. We had both encountered some rejection from some of the people there...in part, I think because we both would write so much...and be so obsessed. It was one of the things we had in common. In some ways he and I were very opposite sorts of people too. He so very often would read what someone said online, or in emails and say "good stuff." It was a classic thing he said. Often. And it felt so good when he would say it to me. He was terribly encouraging about things I was thinking about or exploring. And what I have come to learn this week is that is is YOU PETER WHO IS GOOD STUFF!!!!

I have been collecting footage of people I met online...and I have more of Peter, from Knoxville I think, but this short time clip is from Memphis. In Memphis I met Peter's wife for the first time and we really hit ift off. I am so sad for her....I feel sick about the whole thing and I am praying for her. I have also really enjoyed reading posts on Facebook by his friends and family. Everyone is shocked and so gutted. I feel so lost for words and just so sad.

It's so strange because in a  way Facebook has the feeling of an afterlife. I have found out that Peter was a man of faith from a  cousin of his. I was not really aware of that side of him...although I know he had a lot of inner strength from some of his life story. And he had gone to see ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD the day before Stagg and I went. And when I saw the movie I couldn't wait to go to the McCarthy forum to see if anyone else had seen it. I have obsessed over what he wrote about the movie on Fb and re-read it several times. And now...his Facebook page has the sense of eternity as people are posting tributes on it. So profound.

                

And here is the last post he made on Fb on Saturday: