Finally Tully and I ended up on the phone... because I haven't seen Dylan in a decade or more. I was 22 when I met my friend Dylan... I mean I had seen him before when I went to the Emelianoff's to pick up Aram, up on the frame of a building he was working on, looking quarrelsome and hurling curses around a mouthful of nails. It was later we became penpals (MySpace.) It all had to do with poetry through this one long Adirondack winter. There is kind of this line in my identity: before knowing Dylan and after.
Weep, scream, cry, beg, pray, sing for my friend, for his fight, his life, his love. He is the best one, the best human; the most compassionate, the smartest, the most talented, a good friend, and we didn't want to lose him. He was the first great poet I knew in real life. I was honored to be his friend rolling into 2006 and he brought such creativity and vibrance with him. So much of me from my musical tastes to a level of confidence in myself and my writing wouldn't exist if it wasn't for his encouragement and inspiration: my train hopping story, things I know about this world... about adventure, about anarchy, about compassion... We only hung out a short time (keeping a thread of friendship and respect over the years remotely) but I wouldn't have been the same person without knowing him and that isn't something I can say for anyone else besides my parents. He is the best person I know, empathic, compassionate, sharp and bitter-attuned with a deep compassion for what is flawed, for people, for those places between our darkness and our light; our paradoxes. He was genuinely empathic and perceptive- constantly growing and living and creating. I always thought that friendship was just there if I wanted to reach for it again, at my fingertips. I always thought I would be dancing at another Sai u Drom show soon... (I have always been in the Sai U Drom fan club...) ...and suddenly, he died. The heartbreak, the sense of the unfair is overwhelming. I listened to his music today. Cried. Tonight in bed I kept trying to mentally go back- to find a door to a past- I didn't realize until today was very far away. It wasn't a shut door...It was a lost door. I suddenly viscerally was in a fog, and in a terror, of feeling I had forgotten something important, something just out of reach, some bar room napkin scribble that could make it make sense or connect me- and staggering through the shadows of my apartment had a full blown panic attack. Tully, I called my brother. We remembered the storm that summer night, when all the power went out. Dylan Emelianoff came and they played music by candle light and we walked to the lake (secret beach) in the no streetlight darkness. Lightning had shattered a tree and the road was splattered with phosphorescent moss. We remembered the beginnings of Sai U Drom and Dylan playing rural gigs solo with his drum machine, and as that transformed into a full, wild, delicious, gypsy-folk-punk band. Tully still owes Dylan $70 from equipment he rented him for a show. (Both my brothers thought the world of him.) Dylan was a star- and yet he always put others in the light and uplifted them. He did it for me, my brother, so many. He was always the best. Even this year thru him I was able to meet his fiance, who is a beautiful artist and who I was able to share poetry with... which is life saving for me. Tully and I went to his lyrics and just read songs to each other- these brilliant songs and words Dylan has left us. After, I remembered finally where the scrap of a poem of his, that he gave me so long ago, was: slipped into the pages of a collection of Neruda (another thing he introduced me to.) I remember the poet's tower. I also found the poem I wrote the night we first hung out, after I ditched him with my friends in a moment of timidity and shock at his intensity and drama (can you imagine, he stepped out of his car head to toe clad in Adidas, booming with energy, & mid-dramatic rant, and I literally turned around and walked away, lmao) - and yet he found me again later anyway, just laughing at me- "What kind of socks do pirares where? AARGH-guile!" And he was (wearing arguile socks and nearly kicked me in the head making the punchline of his joke.) After meeting back up,, we walked down to the Lakehouse, in Schroon Lake, with a friend, and to the silver lit lake, talking and singing the night away. I remember feeling my world around me change, and become richer in his company and through his mind and perspective. I am struggling with my aloofness and lack of connection over the years, thinking that friendship would always just be there when I wanted. I am so broken-sad, I let so much time pass.
Dylan lived bigger and brighter and more brilliantly than anyone and he could build and do and tackle anything, and yet he was humbled, he connected people, he lit them up. He was and will always be what is good about us humans.
