Now for the bad news.
On Saturday, I discovered that one old friend from the fanzine days, Sean Pettibone from Michigan, has died this April, just shy of 30 years. He most likely never knew this, but he was a tremendous influence upon me, a 20-year-old kid who never really had any chance to live, and desperate to reinvent himself and connect to the flow of life. Strange, that I was older in years, but not in spirit. Pettibone was my teacher.
I just discovered this sad fact today, almost by blind happenstance. It's a sadness that washes up like the waves, dragging along the sands of my memories, memories long absorbed and log forgotten. Thirty years old. Snap your fingers, children, and it's gone.
Where does it go, these memories of the past? What is the past? Where do we go? No one knows but the mystics or the materialists. Try to determine if the sound at the center of your being is the voice of God Almighty, or the sound of your own voice, without going mad.
So, anyway, I don't wish to drag you all down. In this course of this life, you will be handed some pretty hard blows. We must all face these; first, as those around us pass into the darkness, then, when we follow them.
The spirit of death hangs over this land. We must be mindful. I can do nothing but pray, meditate, and weep.
Sean Pettibone wrote and published In Between the Lines, one of the great videogame zines. He also contributed to countless others, and was one of the giants of the scene. He was also one of the core members of GEA, the first...well, I'm not too sure just what it was. I think it was our attempt to create some kind of industry organization, or mouthpiece for the underground. Nothing much came of it, apart from a couple issues of the GEA zine, and my radio appearannce in Duluth, MN during the Joe Lieberman video game violence controvercy.
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