For Kirk, A Little About Kirk, But Mostly Because of Kirk
Kirk Lawrence -- 7/24/81 - 2/12/09
I just got the news. It’s 10:30am, Thursday, February 12, 2009. The Georgia Day Parade is passing not far from my apartment. I can hear bagpipes. I’m thinking, Kirk isn’t Scottish. The parade consists of elementary school kids dressed in colonial costume. No one is dressed as a samurai. Kirk loves some samurai. Samurai would make for a better parade. The bagpipes have stopped, and there’s nothing left for the present except to look into the past, plan for making the future the way Kirk would have wanted it. Hardcore awesome.
The year is 2002. I’m sitting on a mattress. The mattress is on the floor. From the living room of the house I hear conversation, laughter. From my stomach I feel nausea. I don’t travel so well, and the effects of the flight are lingering. I’m reading a book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. This is the first time I’ve read Murakami, so he is not yet my favorite author. I’ll have to read a couple more of his books before I make that declaration. But this is where it started – nauseous on a friend’s bed in New Orleans. Even after I feel better I keep reading. I finish the book in one sitting.
Kirk recommended the book. There’s a whole cascade effect from there. More Murakami, more reading, more writing. Seven years later I pull Hard-Boiled Wonderland off the shelf. It’s still in good shape, still one of my favorites. It’s only now that I realize it represents the beginning of something. How many times have I recommended the book to somebody else? I see the forking branches on a tree of potential beginnings.
My favorite author, courtesy of Kirk.
* * *
It’s evening now. I’m down in the coffee shop. There’s an art reception going on around me. Free wine and little blocks of cheese. I’ve been digesting all day. The news, not the cheese.
High school. Ms. Caldwell’s government class. We’re not discussing government. For some reason we’re talking about the future, college and such. I’m a few months away from studying music. Kirk’s a year and some months away from still not knowing what he’s going to do. He says chemistry, maybe. His dad’s a chemist, I think, or something like it. He doesn’t seem excited about chemistry. I’ve known Kirk a while. What about movies, I ask him. Make movies. He looks thoughtful, nods. Class begins.
Years later. I’m talking with Kirk. We’re somewhere on the Southside. I don’t remember where exactly. Kirk tells me that I convinced him to go with movies, to become the cinematic superfreak we all know. I say what? I don’t remember the conversation. But he does. He recalls it for me.
I’ve never felt better than in that moment when I realized I helped somebody get to where they wanted, were destined, to go. Kirk deserves all the credit for the doing. I’m a nothing in the equation. But I feel good as a nothing.
* * *
It’s the next morning. The news is older but not old. I go out in the morning to run some errands, meet a friend for lunch. A pedestrian makes a rude gesture at me. I guess he thinks I almost hit him. I have the desire to get out of my car and assault the poor pedestrian who I may have almost just hit. I’m wound a little tight. There’s a sick feeling in my chest. It’s either pneumonia or I’m sad.
Around midnight. Summer of 2003. I’ve just gotten home from work, evening shift at the TV station. The room is dark. I go around to the corners, flipping on lights. I log onto my computer, check email, catch up on news. The little AIM dialogue box pops up. A message from bottlerokit, aka Kirk.
Kirk asks a simple question: Have you seen Fooly Cooly? No, I have not. I flip on the TV, turn to Adult Swim. I watch a robot sprout from a young boy’s head. I am in love.
Fooly Cooly is my favorite creative work. Ever. It taught me that I don’t have to answer the questions why or how. It taught me everything I’ll ever need to know about storytelling. Earlier this week I was planning a Fooly Cooly marathon party with a friend. Now it’s a party and a tribute to he who introduced me to the show.
It’s amazing how many things that I love were introduced to me in an instant message from bottlerokit. Fooly Cooly, Murakami, half of my favorite movies.
The internet seems strangely silent.
* * *
Back in the coffee shop. No cheese this time. Just people like me, heads buried in laptops and books and papers. Most of them are SCAD students. Aspiring artists. Always aspiring.
The coffee shop is in a different location in 2004, around the corner, down some stairs. No natural light. No tourists. I’m scratching out the text of a story across the yellow of a legal pad. I’ve created a character, Rommel Busker. He’s a hitman, philanthropist, philosopher, nihilist. He hangs out with Death, the physical incarnation thereof. His pistols are active characters. I post the first few installments of The Long Tale of Rommel Busker on my website. Kirk reads them.
To my surprise, Kirk loves them. We talk about Rommel every night for weeks. I believe it’s called geeking out. The story takes off from there. It’s the first thing I write that I can actually call writing. It’s raw, unedited. But there’s something to it.
Over the next couple years, Kirk contributes five of his own Rommel stories to the website, develops the characters as much as (probably more than) me. We all know his brilliance with pulp, and this was a perfect venue for it to come out. The project took a back seat as I started studying writing for real, started trying to get published. But Rommel is the most fun I’ve had writing, and everything since then owes to it.
I suddenly feel like writing more Rommel. It’ll be harder without Kirk’s incredible support. But hard isn’t a bad thing. In this case, it’s the right thing.
* * *
Saturday morning. I went out and had a drink last night. I sat next to a drunken soldier. He fell asleep at the bar, full glass of wine in front of him. His friend, another soldier, departed and never returned. When I left, there still was the lonely soldier, asleep. I wonder if he ever made it home.
I keep a mental list of legitimately good people. There are four, maybe five people on the list. There are no concrete qualifications, just a feeling in the gut. It’s a list of people who are good at living life. The people who held onto innocence when the world beat it out of the rest of us. They’re the ones who always make us feel better. They are without pretense. They are happy, but more importantly fulfilled. And if you’re lucky enough to know one, you are more fulfilled by mere association.
Kirk is on my mental list of legitimately good people. This isn’t just some posthumous reappraisal of his character. Anyone who knows Kirk will agree. Kirk was a good guy. Legitimately and completely. He lived life awesomely. These past few years, even fighting through what must have been unimaginable suck, he did more living than most anybody. And he passed that on to the rest of us, revitalized us. Made life that much more worth living.
I don’t have much to fall back on in terms of what’s next. Nothing I can write is right. Here I am tearing up in a public place. That’s totally not cool. Coolness must prevail. Kirk is the world’s leading proponent of cool. To be other than cool would be a disservice to Kirk.
So let’s keep it together. I’m realizing it’s okay to be awesome, to want to be that way. It’s something to aspire to. If we each pick up a bit of the slack, we can keep this thing called Kirk together. We can spread it out from Tally to Cali to Atlanta, and everywhere beyond. Each of us owes him something. Let’s pay the debt. All forms of awesomeness accepted.
-Zach Powers