Mystery Hearsay
Dec. 14th, 2023 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolfAbout first thing yesterday morning I heard the news that Mike Honeycutt died. That made yesterday a particularly rough and difficult day. I felt I should put up a word in his honor on the Memphis Concrète page and in the middle of writing something, my brain just kind of stopping working. I mean, I know with something like that you'll never get in everything you should say, but...speaking of which, I can't think of how to finish that thought, whatever. I spent most of the day just off-and-on crying. I wish I could have known him longer and better. He was an awesome and nice guy and he brought so much to the world and Memphis. I only met him about six and a half years ago and I was blown away by the decades of his work that I hadn't even known anything about. I'm honored and humbled to have gotten to know him at least a little bit in the past few years. I feel bad that we never got together more outside of shows. He'd email me now and again with the suggestion of getting together and going through files of his, and of course I'm like hell-yeah we should do that! But I'm very bad at actualizing personal plans and it didn't happen, which is a common story. I did make sure to comb through all the emails and grab the files he'd sent me. I know I'd downloaded them before, but that was on previous computers and I couldn't find them immediately. At least he'd kept all those dropbox links working! If it was me, after a couple years I always run out of space and have to delete old stuff like that, so I'm thankful he's better at that stuff and all the downloads still worked. I also went and grabbed everything he had on bandcamp. I often neglect getting anything that's download only 'cuz I don't really listen to music that way much at all. And it felt weird sending a little bit of money to someone AFTER they'd died, but I feared a later time if they all eventually went unavailable. So I got all that bandcamp stuff and downloaded it. I knew his health hadn't been great lately. The last time or two I tried to get him to play a show, he said he wouldn't be able to because of health problems. He did seem optimistic he'd be able to again in a few months. I never pressed about what the issues were (someone mentioned he died of a heart attack so that may or may not have been related to other health problems he'd had). Now of course I wish I'd reached out more. Other than that, it's been nice seeing the range of people who had nice things to say about him.
I guess I'll move on to the other bits of news. I got a SantaThing book in the mail yesterday (pretty sure one or two more should be coming): Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. I also got an order with a bunch of late 80s Tangerine Dream soundtracks: Dead Solid Perfect, Deadly Care, and Catch Me if You Can. After work I finished reading The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken. It was alright. There were some things about it and its writing that I liked a lot. It did do some things stylistically that I find in contemporary writing that I don't care for so much and that detracted a little bit. At night Mary Beth and I went to see an Indie Memphis screening up at Crosstown of recent experimental Philippine film shorts (called When the Apocalypse Is Over) and everything in it was phenomenal. There was a vast array of approaches in the five shorts we saw. I need to see if I can dig up the info on the titles and directors and stuff. The whole thing was really impressive. I think that's about all I've got for now. On to another day.
I guess I'll move on to the other bits of news. I got a SantaThing book in the mail yesterday (pretty sure one or two more should be coming): Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. I also got an order with a bunch of late 80s Tangerine Dream soundtracks: Dead Solid Perfect, Deadly Care, and Catch Me if You Can. After work I finished reading The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken. It was alright. There were some things about it and its writing that I liked a lot. It did do some things stylistically that I find in contemporary writing that I don't care for so much and that detracted a little bit. At night Mary Beth and I went to see an Indie Memphis screening up at Crosstown of recent experimental Philippine film shorts (called When the Apocalypse Is Over) and everything in it was phenomenal. There was a vast array of approaches in the five shorts we saw. I need to see if I can dig up the info on the titles and directors and stuff. The whole thing was really impressive. I think that's about all I've got for now. On to another day.
