"I was not surprised to learn last Sunday
that the castaway husk of Spalding Gray
had surfaced in the East River.
We had been told by the NYPD
that those who sink in New York Harbor
during wintertime will rise again come spring.
While I felt certain that Spalding
had gone for his last swim on January 10,
some others regarded my efforts to eulogize him
as cruelly premature and tasteless.
Their remonstrances, posted here
and in personal messages to me,
were often pretty cruel themselves.
It's been hard.
But it was also true that,
in the absence of undeniable evidence,
his widow Kathie couldn't guarantee his young sons
Theo and Forrest that their dad would never,
ever come moping back up the driveway.
Indeed, given the dogged nature of hope,
she couldn't utterly extinguish that vision
from her own heart.
As long as it flickered there,
we had to await the opportunity
to gather in our grief and celebrate him.
Now we can.
Of course, you've already begun that process virtually.
Since Sunday, there has been an extraordinary stream
of memorial comments posted to this blog.
I have received as many more e-mails
filled with the spreading contagion of his honesty
and raconteur's genius for investing ordinary details
with more universal magic.
Having him watched him
button-hole strangers for years,
I'm not quite surprised
by how many of you have turned up
with vividly personal memories of Spalding.
That he was able to weave
his quirky voice and viewpoint
so discernibly into your own
during those encounters seems proof
that the soul is not so easily contained
by its original bottle of flesh.
Though widely distributed, it almost feels
as if there's more of Spalding in the world now
than there was when he was still walking around
muttering to himself.
But funerals need bodies,
the living as much as the dead.
It's important to embrace those who share our loss
with actual arms, to shed real tears on real shoulders,
to praise the departed with audible voices.
To that end, there will be

a memorial celebration for Spalding
at Lincoln Center on April 15.

It will be open to the public
and will feature performances
and reminiscences by many of his friends,
including Philip Glass and Lou Reed.
I'll let you know more about this event as plans develop.
Meanwhile, I am still collecting your postings and e-mails
into a book I will give his family.
It already provides beautiful evidence
that Spalding was himself
the source of many Perfect Moments
and that, however grim the end of his life,
he leaves a legacy of joyous truth to his sons.
In one of the comments to my original post
regarding his disappearance,
one of you quoted some lines
from the Dylan Thomas poem,
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion".
It felt so uncannily appropriate
that I want to post it here in its entirety.
Death doesn't have Spalding Gray.
We do.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion... "

(from John Perry Barlow's blog
which is hard to read right now
on so many levels)