{"id":4726,"date":"2013-04-09T01:02:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T05:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=4726"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:32:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:32:02","slug":"unpacking-her-library-or-the-liberation-of-theresa-duncan-a-remembrance-in-letters-photos-art-and-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2013\/04\/09\/unpacking-her-library-or-the-liberation-of-theresa-duncan-a-remembrance-in-letters-photos-art-and-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The Liberation of Theresa Duncan -a remembrance in letters, photos, music, books"},"content":{"rendered":"

part one: <\/strong>Michigan is Weird, Weird, Weird<\/span><\/p>\n

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.” <\/em> -Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”, 1931<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a good many roads here,\u201d observed the shaggy man\u2026 \u201cSeems to me a person could go \u2018most anywhere from this place.\u201d <\/em>– Frank Baum, <\/span>The Road to Oz<\/em>, 1909<\/p>\n

In the mid 1980s, Theresa was a precocious teenager and frequent customer at Book Beat.\u00a0She was a part-time student, speed-reading through Balzac, Victor Hugo, Henry James and Baudelaire. She read the symbolist poets in French, hung out at the goth clubs and was known as Tracy then. She worked as a hostess\/greeter in a swanky Italian restaurant, a cataloger at John King\u2019s bookstore and clerk at the main Detroit Library. She mentioned how she once roller-skated down the vast maze of book aisles in the library\u2019s cavernous basement after hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cDid I ever mention that since the age of ten I have been able to quote the whole of \u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d<\/a>? A minor peccadillo, but its mine\u2026 I\u2019ve always wanted to have a flaw or vice that was tragic and glamorous like the ether-soaked hankie to the nose.\u201d <\/strong>–T.D., Letter 1990<\/em><\/p>\n

[left:\u00a0illustration by Harry Clarke from\u00a0Tales of Mystery and Imagination<\/em> by Edgar Allen Poe, 1923]<\/p>\n

Poe\u2019s gloomy ode made lasting connections… as smart-alecky ten-year-olds we memorized the same trancelike poem and shared a streak of fatalism, dream-struck by Poe\u2019s dark eerie crypt, where lost souls drifted eternally among the demonic forces in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The echoing \u201ctomb by the sounding sea\u201d illuminates a hidden truth in the space where events beyond reality take shape. Many believe <\/span>Annabel Lee<\/em> was about Poe\u2019s dead wife Virginia, as it expressed his profound grief and anger \u2013 and was written just after her passing. The poet lost in despair, was on a nocturnal journey, following the specter of his spiritual love. Poe\u2019s vivid dreamworld worked its way into another reality, casting its shadow across the art and literature of the 19th and 20th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poe is often the first view children have into the psyche of the damaged adult world. Contemplating his dark dreams connects directly to the innocent heart and soul\u00a0 -and the creation of new worlds, where a child dreamer or future storyteller may discover new vistas, alternate journeys in the pages of a book.<\/p>\n

It was \u201cto the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities\u201d<\/em> – that Poe dedicated his grand philosophical work Eureka<\/a><\/em>, a dense prophetic prose poem he considered his greatest work. Poe\u2019s amateur cosmology prophesied the scientific nature and invention of the universe, and its metaphysical influence through Baudelaire and Mallarm\u00e9, wove itself throughout French symbolism and surrealism. Theresa was the godchild of French symbolism and cartoon goth America. She placed her faith in dreams and the author’s command of language.<\/p>\n

* * *
\n\"\"<\/a>MAD IN FRANCE, MAD IN FRANCE<\/strong><\/em> she once hand-stamped on the back of a postcard, \u201cI want to go to the New School in New York and study poetry:<\/p>\n

DEMI-MONDAINES (Like Edie) COME IN EVERY SIZE<\/em><\/p>\n

THEY\u2019RE REALLY MONSTERS IN DISGUISE\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

I was doing a window of table settings and the dishes were \u201cMade in France.\u201d I loved the misspelling. (Above) FOU EN LES ETATS-UNIS\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Tracy, 12\/09\/1989<\/p>\n

\u201cliterature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.<\/strong>\u201d<\/em> \u2013Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author<\/em><\/p>\n

Tracy once described a strange event that occurred in Paris, something other-worldly \u00a0-a reality based hallucination or vision that came to her while standing on the Bridge Mirabeau<\/a>. She always seemed cautious and skeptical of anything that smacked of the supernatural, eastern mysticism or the occult, but she explained in detail how a wave of love, an emanation or spirit seemed to transport her through time as centuries flashed in front of her eyes while standing frozen on this historic bridge. There she floated in cosmic time, causing a loss of identity and physical self. She searched through the rows of poetry at the bookstore and pulled out Apollinaire\u2019s famous poem:<\/p>\n

\u201cLove runs away<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Like running water flows<\/em><\/p>\n

Love flows away<\/em><\/p>\n

But oh how slow life goes<\/em><\/p>\n

How violent is hope<\/em><\/p>\n

Love only knows\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

— Apollinaire, Mirabeau Bridge <\/em>from Alcools<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Later inspired by the poem and Tracy’s vision, I recorded a music version in 1994 with the acid-folk group Monster Island: bridge mirabeau<\/a> – she would also inspire several other songs released on the Ecstatic\/Yod album “From the Michigan Floor”.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tracy grew up in Lapeer Michigan, a quiet Midwest Irish-Catholic city surrounded by open spaces, rolling verdant hills and natural beauty. Lapeer lies about an hour north of Detroit and was once a flourishing lumber town founded in 1833.<\/p>\n

[Photo left<\/strong>: Pix theater, Lapeer]<\/p>\n

The Duncan family home was situated in lush farmland a couple miles from the center of town. It required long idyllic walks or rocky bicycle rides through dirt roads to reach the nearest neighbor, the corner drugstore or high school, miles away. Lapeer was a countryside foil for daydreams and fantasy -fortunate roots that Theresa would draw from. \u00a0Many of her fondest moments were spent at the downtown library, where she found books to be another road to freedom and adventures.<\/span><\/p>\n

The downtown library was renamed the Marguerite de Angeli library in 1981 after Lapeer\u2019s most famous resident, a children\u2019s writer\/illustrator born in 1889. de Angeli and the entire town, including the Duncan family was present at the rededication ceremony that coincided with Lapeer\u2019s Sesquicentennial, a huge event in this small town.<\/span><\/p>\n

de Angeli was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1950 for <\/span>The Door in the Wall<\/em>. Her books often focused on common working class people, the forgotten and those overlooked in life. At her Newbery Medal acceptance speech de Angeli said, “It is really true, as we used to tell our children, “When you come to a stone wall, if you look far enough, you will find a door in it.” One of the best doors I know is the help of Librarians. I don’t know what I would do without them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a child Theresa began to read the dictionary front-to-back, over and over, memorizing meanings and spellings \u2013 a daily routine encouraged by her maternal Grandmother, a retired artist-teacher she loved dearly and shared a strong magical bond with. From that relationship sprang her love of language. Words are a powerful tool, a celebration of all that was indefinable and mysterious within life. In language she found empowerment and the door to new realities.<\/span><\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0 * <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \u201c\u2026what I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 Walter Benjamin, <\/span>Unpacking My Library<\/em><\/p>\n

[illustrated left: The Black Sun Press version of Alice in Wonderland <\/em>by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Marie Laurencin]<\/p>\n

We shared our thoughts on reading and I made suggestions for books she\u2019d enjoy. We discussed St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s poems for his dead son, <\/span>A Tomb for Anatole<\/a>, <\/em>the works of Artaud, Breton\u2019s <\/span>Nadja,<\/em> the river poetry of Jim Harrison, the Paris expats, the grim stories of Angela Carter, off-beat young adult fiction and various novels by Stefan Zweig and Pierre Klossowski.\u00a0 She loved the wickedly funny and urbane <\/span>Zuleika Dobson <\/em>by Max Beerbhom \u2013his only novel, a satire of a femme fatale who kills off her suitors one by one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tracy had a sweet-spot for the gothics;\u00a0Perfume <\/em>by Patrick Suskind, and the short illustrated \u00a0oddities of Edward Gorey. She recognized Kathy Acker\u2019s stolen plotline from Akutagwa\u2019s\u00a0Hellscreen, ( a story we both loved) and brought it to my attention.<\/p>\n

She’d often burst out laughing, suddenly and loudly while reading \u2013a wonderful habit, interrupting the lunchtime crowd at the local diner. In between cigarettes and grilled cheese sandwiches, Tracy would be howling her way through <\/span> John Fante\u2019s<\/a> <\/span>My Dog Stupid<\/em> and\u00a0 Steven Millhauser\u2019s <\/span>Edwin Mullhouse<\/em>, devoured by laughter, as the lunch patrons glumly watched on. There were often calls or visits to the diner to yank her out of her lunchtime reading and return to work.<\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Book collector, publisher and eccentric poet Harry Crosby\u2019s diary<\/span>, Shadows of the Sun<\/a>, <\/em>was perhaps the first hardcover first edition she bought. That was followed by Geoffrey Wolff\u2019s superb biography; <\/span>Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby<\/a>. <\/em>This set off a spurt of interest in roaring twenties Paris.<\/span> <\/em>Tracy was a disciple of the Sun herself, perfecting and dreaming of the ultimate tan she\u2019d collect one day in California.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his last notebook entry on December 9, 1929, Crosby wrote, \u201cOne is not in love unless one desires to die with one\u2019s beloved.\u201d\u00a0 Crosby once came to Detroit, checking into the Book Cadillac hotel to enact a double suicide pact. A day later on December 10th, Harry and his mistress Josephine would be dead by their own hands. That tragic romanticism was elixir for Theresa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Duncan interiorized the <\/span>wild party literati<\/em> or \u201cLost Generation\u201d \u2013characterized in Hemingway\u2019s <\/span>Sun Also Rises<\/em>, featuring the unstoppable Bret Lady Ashley, <\/span>“his most enduring siren”<\/a>, an attractive force of revolutionary female sexuality that exploded on the page. Bret was an uncommon beauty weaving spells of violence and seduction \u2013 a life later channeled by Ava Gardner in the film version.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Thus there is in the life of the collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order.” <\/strong>-Walter Benjamin,\u00a0Unpacking My Library<\/p>\n

Benjamin\u2019s \u00a0Unpacking My Library, <\/em>was an outline of clues and passageways to the mind\u2019s interior. The library as labyrinth and keyboard, as a kind of living playable entity, would absorb Theresa throughout her life.\u00a0She could never part with a book or be away from her library for long periods and in her spare time, searched out philosophy and antique children’s books. Her library was a source of pride and being away from it for long, invoked anxiety and depression. Her life was dependent on a deep immersion in literature that only another mad bibliophile can imagine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Theresa’s own Moveable Feast, <\/em>was a\u00a0long 1920s phase that included the biography of Sylvia Beach and her expatriate bookstore Shakespeare and Company<\/em>, Published in Paris<\/em> and Women of the Left Bank <\/em>. She was enthralled with vintage Paris and that led to other works on or about; Kay Bole, Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner, Nora Joyce, Isadora Duncan, Nancy Cunard, Mina Loy, Lee Miller and Caresse Crosby – a secret lodge of radical women modernists. Actress Louise Brooks was another inspiring rebel \u2013her independent spirit and \u00a0spark-like intelligence was captured in her autobiography Lulu in Hollywood<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[photo<\/strong>: Louise Brooks film still, Pandora\u2019s Box, 1929<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

Theresa was employed at Book Beat in 1988, when she was nineteen and worked for almost a year. In her application when asked, \u201cWhat book would you recommend for a boy\u2019s Bar Mitzvah gift,\u201d her answer was, \u201ca subscription to Playboy<\/em>\u201d\u2026 Her art interests ranged from antiquarian illustration to Art Nouveau, surrealism, dada, photographs, the fairytale illustrations of Harry Clarke<\/a>, Arthur Rackham, J.J. Grandville, Edmund Dulac, Aubery Beardsley and Frank Baum\u2019s Oz series.<\/p>\n

“Photography conflates the notions of the “beautiful” and the “interesting.” It’s a way of aestheticizing the whole world.”<\/strong><\/em>
\n-Susan Sontag<\/p>\n

Duncan followed the small photo exhibits in our backroom gallery -a time when we showed work by photographers Madame D\u2019Ora, and Baron Adolph de Meyer, art deco spiritualist <\/span>Frantisik Drtikol<\/a>, Bernice Abbott, Camerawork pictorialism, James Van Der Zee’s Harlem portraits, Warhol Factory Photos by Billy Name and stills from the silent Hollywood era. When she came back to visit, she’d browse through boxes of old photographs. \u201cWhen I become rich I\u2019ll buy them all!\u201d she\u2019d say.\u00a0Photos are surreal, a mystery of distilled traces from the past, that hold their subjects forever beautiful. Each photo can act as container of compacted energy, of memory condensed. Photography seduced Theresa and filled her with wonder, a kind of instant d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu knowledge, it was history by osmosis, a romance for the eyes. She loved the flappers, models and bizarrely dressed dancing showgirls from the Ziegfeld follies<\/a>. Like the Madeline in Proust\u2019s <\/span>Remembrance of Things Past<\/em>, photographs held some fleeting essence, transporting as perfume.<\/span><\/p>\n

* \u00a0 * \u00a0 * <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the cult remembrance of dead or absent loved ones, the cult value of the image finds its last refuge. In the fleeting expression of the human face the aura beckons from early photography for the last time. This is what gives them their melancholy and incomparable beauty.\u201d<\/em> <\/strong>\u2013Walter Benjamin, Selected Writing Volume Four, p. 238 <\/em><\/p>\n

[ photo; \u00a0Frantisek Drtikol’s “Wave or Dark Waves,\u201d 1925]<\/p>\n

Theresa soaked up images from art books, postcards and ephemera; gazing on antiques, valentines, scrapbooks, and small bits of advertising – later reconstructing her personal blog as a museum or theater of the mind. Her visual intelligence was born complete years before, but suddenly became public on her website Wit of the Staircase<\/em>.<\/a> She presented culture as a looking-glass world, in window boxes that recall artist Joseph Cornell<\/a>\u2019s romantic reveries, poems created from fragments collaged, the past as a fairytale seen through shadow boxes.<\/p>\n

Theresa\u2019s tiny Oak Park bedroom was a half mile from work. She transformed it into \u00a0a wunderkammer<\/em>, a miniature museum decorated floor to ceiling with small art cards and magazine clippings; a collection of 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century sensibilities, a kaleidoscopic of artists, photos, poets and writers, a wall of dreams, where past and future collided together. It felt like a large version of Cornell box. Her make-up tables and mirrors were plastered with more images, perfume bottles, books and lipstick tubes. Under a window hung prisms throwing rainbow darts around the room.<\/p>\n

She once asked what I thought Rimbaud meant by the line “FOR THIS IS THE ASSASSIN’S HOUR” from the poem The Drunken Morning<\/a>. <\/em>I didn’t have an answer -but wrote\u00a0a song describing the memory of her room and the drunken violence of Rimbaud’s poem;\u00a0the assassin’s hour<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photographer Francesca Woodman\u2019s<\/a> first monograph was published by Wellesley College in 1986. Theresa read a review I wrote about the book and was attracted to Woodman, a rare\u00a0photographic prodigy that ended her life in suicide at the age of 22. \u00a0Woodman’s self-portraits were metaphors of discovery, sexuality, performance, death, ruins and identity – some were striking adaptions from\u00a0Alice in Wonderland. <\/em> Woodman created mysterious and surreal inventions -angelic diaphanous imagery inspired by literature that spoke in sympathy to Duncan’s own visual language.<\/p>\n

[photo: Francesca Woodman, Untitled, 1975]<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

Theresa watched and studied <\/span>classic noir films<\/a>. She\u2019d spout off long passages from forgotten B-movies, reciting tough-as-nails Barbara Stanwyck patter. Noir films were a passion and escape \u2013hard-core lessons on American grit and survival. There was comedic genius in these impromptu performances. Noir is about murder, light, shadow, love and revenge, where the leading man is nearly always destroyed by <\/span>the classic femme fatale woman<\/a> \u2013irresistible beauties that seduce and destroy the men they encounter. Theresa was the opposite of a femme fatale (although a true scholar of the genre). She understood that noir was also about dark humor, camp, reversing the script and a culture of bad clich\u00e9s.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1989, Warhol superstar Ultra Violet<\/a> came to Book Beat to sign her autobiography Famous for Fifteen Minutes.<\/em> Tracy stood by Ultra, chaperoning the visit. Warhol was the king of misfits, and his legacy was at its height. Snippets of video show them both, a couple of old girlfriends chatting away, sharing fashion tips, wearing the identical brand lipstick. \u201cHey, that\u2019s MY brand you\u2019re wearing! Wait here I\u2019ll show you!\u201d Tracy runs off-screen to get her plastic purse and flaming red gloss… Lipstick was her favorite accessory, worn thick, shiny and deeply scarlet, a costume signature mask with some obscure meaning I always thought was more comedic (a la Lucille Ball) then sexy. She\u2019d loose the gloppy shades in later years, becoming more light and subtle with makeup.<\/p>\n

Theresa was model tall and thin with large brown eyes and long arms -she often referred to as \u201cchimpanzee-like.\u201d\u00a0 Her hands smoothly tapered were neat and nun-like. She walked quickly with a hip-hop bounce, a loose irregular up-beat step, slightly off-balance, clownish, on the verge of falling off some invisible highwire. She\u2019d enter a room with loud steps, a combination of grace and klutz. Her laughter came quickly, infectious, slightly masculine and mischievous.<\/p>\n

Her style was a conglomerate of damaged fashion and street-punk kitsch; Catholic school-girl outfits, dirty sneakers and farmer overalls, combat boots and hot pants\u2013 an assemblage of the soft and hard. She had two coats; a musty second-hand faux leopard-skin fur that reeked of musk perfume and a scrappy black leather bomber jacket \u201cborrowed\u201d from a boyfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHi Dear \u2013 I just got back from an extended tropical vacation. We stayed in the \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d bungalow with bamboo walls and floors and mosquito netting over the bed. Now I\u2019m really brown with white hair like a Leni Reifenstahl photo. \u201cCharlie doesn\u2019t get much R&R, a bowl of rat meat, a plate of cold rice.\u201d<\/em> <\/strong> <\/strong>– Theresa 2\/28\/1997<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perfume, Crime & musical deafness<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In his autobiography, <\/span>The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, ( From A to B and Back Again),<\/em> Warhol said<\/span>, “…another way to take up more space is with perfume\u2026 Of the five senses, smell has the closest thing to the full power of the past. Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don’t want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I’m in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It’s a neat way to reminisce. \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Theresa\u2019s perfume interest may\u2019ve came from reading Warhol -as one of the great archivists, he collected rare perfumes and experimented with olfactory memory. Particular aromas are strong reminders of the past -an ability called the Proust phenomenon<\/a>.<\/em> Perfume and its ability to raise memory connect Duncan to Warhol\u2019s biographical approach to the world. They both had a serious interest in fame, glamour and the artificial mechanisms tied to film, photographic stills, archiving and glossy magazines.\u00a0Warhol manager Billy Name exhibited his Warhol factory photos and film stills at Book Beat around the time of Tracy\u2019s employment. We silver-foiled the ceiling together and blasted VU at the opening.<\/p>\n

“The French perfumers,” he says, intently. “There were people of great class among them, but the industry basically was just a bunch of
\nkids from Grasse, which means typical C\u00f4te d’Azur, which means a bunch of criminals. I was talking to a perfumer raised in Grasse once, she said, ‘Either you became a perfumer or you stole motorcycles’<\/em><\/strong>.”<\/strong> \u2013TD\u00a0 June \/22\/2005<\/em><\/p>\n

Perfume is an ephemeral art like music or film – abstract, formless, emotional and molecular -difficult to describe.\u00a0 Anna McCoy<\/a> a respected artisan perfumer and perfume blogger called Duncan\u2019s perfume reviews, \u201cincredibly deep, sometimes twisted, always brilliant and to be respected, even if you did not agree with her.\u201d Duncan\u2019s attraction to perfumes was as intellectual as it was sensual. Thinking and writing on Perfume was a way to connect with her poetic nature, to fuse with a metaphysical \u201cvaporous reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHello from the banks of the Mississippi. I went to Oxford and saw Rowan Oak<\/a>, Faulkner\u2019s house. We snuck into the grounds after midnight. It was very dark with bright moonlight and millions of stars. I kissed on his grave<\/em><\/strong> and drank bourbon.\u201d<\/strong> – Theresa, postcard, October 17, 1994<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Theresa\u2019s zany humor reminded me of Lucille Ball<\/a>, the dizzy redhead\u00a0queen of comedy<\/a> and a successful (on her own terms) \u00a0star who was beautiful, mercurial and hilarious. Lucy created her slapstick style using exaggerated larger-then-life silent era gestures. Tracy too was a prankster and part-time goofball \u2013 not always on time or dependable, but always fun to be around.<\/p>\n

Her last day at work was worthy of a Lucy<\/em> episode. After a night of too much party, she went into the backroom office and vomited on my desk.\u00a0 That was her final scene at the bookstore.<\/p>\n

She was sent home and later I hand delivered her last check. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think its working out\u2026\u201d It was comedic but at the same time she couldn\u2019t stop crying. In a few days she called to thank me and said she needed to move on, perhaps to Ann Arbor and finish school. Later she\u2019d always say, \u201cI wear my pink slips proudly like a badge of honor!\u201d<\/p>\n

La De Da Da Dum: Where\u2019s My Fucking CD? <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am singing along with the new music you sent me…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am flying back to New York until mid-March on Monday and I will listen to it on the plane through headphones. It’s so sunny and warm here in LA I’m not looking forward to freezing my ass off in the nine feet of snow that just fell over NYC. How’s my little dog going to walk through that shit? She’s only six inches high<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong> \u2013 TD, 2\/21\/2003<\/p>\n

We usually agreed on art, movies and books but rarely music. It was like a dropped circuit. Each holiday since the late 1980s we\u2019d trade mix tapes or CDs \u2013 a holiday tradition that began at Book Beat to share favorite soundtracks we\u2019d play in the store during the past year. Theresa would respond with Steely Dan tracks (her all-time favorite), Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, the Kinks, Nirvana and White Stripes, the indie alterna-rock hit parade.\u00a0 Her musical taste was flat, MOR, mainstream. She didn\u2019t think about music too much. It \u00a0just drifted over her life from Jeremy and other contacts, with rarely much thought put into it, which came as a surprise. I\u2019ve since grown to accept and even appreciate some of her choices, but mostly she favored a kind of dullish mediocre pop music \u2013but why settle for that when there\u2019s so much creativity and richness out there?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Theresa knew I was a Dylan fan and once called me up after discovering Bob\u2019s born-again phase (ugh) \u2013\u201cwhaddya think?\u201d she\u2019d ask, \u201cdo you know anything about it? I can\u2019t stop listening to this.\u201d She particularly liked Dylan\u2019s Where Are You Tonight?<\/a> And wanted help decoding the lyrics:<\/p>\n

The truth was obscure,<\/em><\/p>\n

too profound and too pure, <\/em><\/p>\n

to live it you have to explode.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed, <\/em><\/p>\n

sacrifice was the code of the road. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u2013Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI used to hate these albums, but Jeremy has loved them since he was a little boy. I think there is something Gnostic, very odd, very beautiful about the writing now. I think Bob Dylan’s Christianity is the equal opposite of Beck’s recent rather dark religious conversion\u201d<\/strong>. <\/em>\u2013 TD 9\/05\/2004<\/p>\n

The White Stripes were Theresa\u2019s heroes \u2013chic pop-blues performers, garage-rockers of the moment, and almost every mix would have one or two of their songs on it. They represented the best of her generation \u2013 and there was sweetness and loyalty in that devotion to her hometown favorites. Popular music may\u2019ve been her way to really connect and understand mainstream trends. Her all time fave band was Steely Dan (named after a strap-on dildo in the beat classic Naked Lunch<\/em>) -a 70s light, pseudo jazz-rock band that put out seven overly produced studio albums, cranking out pop-hits like Hey Nineteen<\/em>, Do It Again,<\/em> Reelin\u2019 in the Years <\/em>and Rikki Don\u2019t Lose That Number<\/em>.\u00a0 The band resembled the Muppets with interchangeable members, making radio pop-schmaltz with cryptic stoner lyrics in the manner of the Eagles, crooning about\u00a0 \u201cHotel California\u2026\u00a0 oh, what a lovely place<\/em>.\u201d Sometimes I think she may\u2019ve been slightly tone deaf, joking or just lazy about listening habits – music was \u00a0a sore spot. Rarely were her sound mixes tolerable for long, except the last CD she sent around mid-October in 2006, and Steely Dan was not on it.<\/p>\n

Her last mix arrived around Halloween, close to her birthday and she asked for feedback: \u201cI wanted to test it out on you early,\u201d she said. \u00a0I always thought she was bulk mailing them to friends for the holidays but that wasn\u2019t the case. This was a sad coded mix, filled with songs of lost love, gloom and despair, and I dug it. The selection conveyed a sudden maturity and a sadness that echoed through that holiday season, tainted by greed, blood, and that wasteful Iraqi war. Medieval standards by Sufjan Stevens were mixed with southern blues and that great Fall song; HEY! Luciani<\/a> <\/em>(based on a play Mark Smith wrote on the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I in 1978). Then came a beautiful acoustic-folk rendition of the Yeah,Yeah,Yeah’s\u00a0\u201cOur Time\u201d:<\/a><\/p>\n

I may be dead honey<\/em><\/p>\n

But I was left with my eyes<\/em><\/p>\n

And underneath sugar<\/em><\/p>\n

Well I’ve been sunk by your lies<\/em><\/p>\n

And my heart baby<\/em><\/p>\n

Is cold and blue<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re two of a kind lately<\/em><\/p>\n

Both me and you<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

–\u00a0 excerpt from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Our Time<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Other depressing songs sank in: Guided By Voices Mushroom Art<\/em> – \u201cLiving without you is difficult, but our dead dreams await\u2026\u201d. A growing emptiness builds up: \u201dclose my eyes and shut the door, I can\u2019t seem to get up off the floor, nothing really matters any more\u2026\u201d (Its Different, Face on the Floor<\/em>) -all full of sarcasm, ennui and irony, foils for the holiday I thought, good stuff. I lifted several tracks and was impressed by the mix and told her so, but then I didn\u2019t stop to think about it much, until soon after her death. It began to feel like a code for something else going on, a cry for help or escape -and the last song was Big Star\u2019s melancholic \u201cNightime.\u201d<\/p>\n