Speaker For The Diodes - January 28th, 2008

05:33 am - QotD

"If I should die in a bright burning flare,
 Just take what you find and throw it in the air,
 Don't grieve for my death, don't ask why for ten years,
 Just build one more ship and call for volunteers.
 
 And show me the gantry, build me the ship,
 Give me the fuel and I'll go on that trip,
 Now, if I return you may say I was bold,
 But my place is in space as the heavens unfold."
 
  -- from "Starsoul" by Urban Tapestry (on the album Myths and Urban Legends)

[Note that the members of Urban Tapestry can be found on LiveJournal: allisona, ohiblather and jodimuse]

08:07 am - An Empty Chair In The Filk Circle

Between one thing and another, I didn't get around to reading most of my friendslist yesterday. I finally got to it this morning, expecting yesterday to have been a light day, as Sundays often are here.

Instead, I got quite a jolt. The shocking news, repeated by several friends, that filkergem has died. Suddenly, out of the blue. In a house fire.

As at least one other person observed, it doesn't seem real -- I'm still processing this news, still adjusting my mental map of the world to fit this fact. At the same time, it seems all too horribly real. All the more so as I try -- and recoil and fail -- to imagine what this is like for kyttn and lovensong87.

I haven't the words.

 

 

 

And then I went to check whether my quote of the day had posted correctly, and remembered what I'd queued up for today in memory of the Challenger disaster, and suddenly I don't know whether that quote is tackily jarring for everyone else who knew filkergem, because it mentions death by fire, or a fitting (if accidental) honour because it's a song about defiance in the face of acknowledgement of death -- a call to carry bravely on -- and a filk song, on a day we mourn a member of the filk community. I really don't know which way to call it. I'm still trying to accept that this has happened, and that I'm really awake.