M4rk Cr4ig (aka Bimble) RIP

i almost miss Bimble more than any other person i have known in real life. just trying to say that i think he was a very special person, even if i haven't met him.

The Durutti Column - "Believe In Me"

Oh God I miss you. :(

"in a world of no hoping, there's no hope, there's no point in hoping!"

YO MAARK, thanks for coming down and being so genuine for us. you gave me a lot of inspiration which i haven't exercised yet, but i will do some of that in 2011.

you're the greatest, i want you to be really happy.

i clicked on this thread for no particular reason and ended up engrossed - its so hard to be kind to people - but its really the only worthwhile thing

rip bimble and everyone else who didnt make it to 2011

otm.

I feel kind of bad that I never made those mixes..
But it was overwhelming

:)

all the people i like are those that are dead

I was listening to Kristin Hersh's Strings EP just now, and in searching an old thread on here I found this from Bimble, a few weeks before he passed:

I've unexpectedly found myself back into Hips & Makers after all these years. I revisited with it around 2001 but couldn't really bring it into a present context at that time, it was more about memories for me. This time it's resonating with me in the present moment. It's funny that I always tend to think of it as an good album with a few really standout tracks, but in reality it all hangs together very well and feels very complete, like taking a journey through different parts of a forest or something.

I was so disappointed in Strange Angels that I quit paying attention to her work at all after that. The way I remember it, the songs that appear on Hips & Makers are ones she'd been saving up for years.

Haven't heard this Strings EP mentioned upthread...will have to track it down.

Also this line especially gets me - "I've been on the other side of the Blue Ridge, seen the Shenandoah rolling there" because I grew up in Virginia and it makes me remember the mountains there.

The combination of hearing the music and reading the words, especially the ending, perhaps more than anything else all this time, brought home the fact that despite differences -- and my sense of frustration with him, for lack of a better term -- that he wasn't simply an obsessive person about music like myself, but someone who had his own life story to tell and go through. And that it's sad it ended as it did, and I wondered if he ever did track down that EP, which I had recommended on the thread some years earlier.

I don't think I ever wished him this, when I've wished it to so many others I didn't know at all:

Rest well.

when i come across his posts, it just reminds me that it's important to be decent to each other.

Yeah.

Stumbling on old posts of his reminds me that we're all out here, living unseen parts of our lives between what we choose to write here. I like that reminder.

<3

"pictures of you" itt makes me bawl my eyes out

Lovely post, Ned. Choked up here....

He did, in fact, track down that EP.

all the people i like are in the ground / it's better to be lost than to be found!

<3

miss your enthusiasm and sense of humor !!

never saw ned's last post -- i spent some of my formative years around the blue ridge mountains, didn't know bimble did too!

mark was so fucking funny, man. loved when he would lose it over remembering sheena easton video or some such

:) yeah

i never really knew bimble but when reading through old threads (esp kate bush ones), the best and most enthusiastic posts are usually his. i'm grateful that he was able to leave such a positive mark on ILX

makes me wish i could've been posting right there with him

he had a lot going on. i'm really glad that i got to know him.

it's like, i know what kind of music he liked, which artists he got super excited about, bits and pieces of his humour and personality. i feel like i sortof know him without ever directly interacting with him

i think that's kindof a magical thing about persistent hypertext

There is not a week that goes by that I don't come across some great post of his on the old threads. Really wish I knew him and appreciated him better when he was here.

^^^

i just listened to songs for drella and when i bumped the thread i saw this bimble post, and maybe this was the most "bimble" post of all:

"Images" sets my soul on fire, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. There are people who know what it is to feel passion about music, and there are those who don't. There are people who can write sane, 1000 word essays about music, maybe they are even paid for it, and I respect that because I can't relate to it. I side with those who are speechless.

It reminds me of when the last Kate Bush album came out after 12 long years. Now didn't that separate the men from the boys? Some people said "oh shame on you fuckers for losing your critical faculties" and others said "for god's sake shut the fuck up and listen". You know which side I'm on.

― Lucking Faptop (Bimble), Saturday, April 11, 2009 3:41 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that is a great post

yeah.

hard to believe he's gone

I react to music much like bimble did. I try vainly to couch it in eloquence, but inside me, it's basically that quote M@tt just posted all the way.

Argh. The first anniversary of an old friend's suicide is in a couple of days...

eh i wish i could talk about some things with mark right now . but i guess it's just a bunch of studied bullshit so fuck it all

it's fucked he's not around anymore...

looking through old bimble stuff today, emails and threads and such. i wish i had known how bad off he was. i was always so frustrated with him for forgetting entire conversations we had had or w/e, and especially him thinking people were against him that weren't. if i could go back in time i'd just take it in stride, mark.

i found an old post where i jokingly asked him who the people who hated him in seattle were, and it makes me feel terrible. i remember in chat he claimed that there were seattle posters who were against him. i just flat out was certain that no one in seattle hated him and was trying to get him to realize that. looking back i feel awful about stuff like that, because with hindsight i'm sure he thought there were tons of people that were legitimately out to get him. but everyone liked you bimble, even when you were frustrating, and obv everyone still loves you and misses you, bimble, and thinks about you every august.

(especially, but more often than that of course)

Aw. I was just thinking the other day how much better the upcoming Kate Bush poll would be with him in the mix.

nothing could reassure him sadly. But plenty tried. I just wish he had spoken to one of us when it got too much for him. I miss him. Chatz was never the same and partly the reason I stopped going in it was because of that.

otm xp

As you say, plenty tried and its very sad. But would any ilxor have made that difference? We can't know..

% found his blog/dl site by chance its still 'live' but not 'current' obviously

and no sense of anything wrong either...

i was googling for his old nom de plume and google said:
Did you mean: bimble is more cute than you?

This is a fallacy that people often thing, when they are dealing with someone who is mentally ill: hey, if I could just *talk* to them, I could explain how their thinking is flawed, and that this delusion that they have, it isn't true, and if I could just find the right words, I could make them see this.

But that isn't the way it works. That mental illness, depression, paranoia, it's this thing that eats you from the inside out and turns truth into lies and lies into truth and there is no way to just ~explain~ these things away because they are not rational, that's what makes it sickness.

I guess what I'm saying is, don't beat yourself up for what you did say or didn't say. It is a horrible thing that he took himself away from us like that. But it's impossible to know what might have made him feel differently or not do it.

otm

i had a suicide in the family last week and that's how i've seen it.

Oh god I'm so sorry Gukbe.

you're totally right. and i should be more mindful of that coming from a fam pretty rife with mental and emotional problems. i feel like everyone knows theres nothing you can say to "fix" the problem, but for some reason it's difficult to not try in vain to do it anyway.

xxp

im so sorry.

Thanks, but it's alright. The pastor at the memorial (though the deceased was an atheist so it was a bit strange) actually said something very similar to what WCC wrote. Outside of physically being there to knock the pills out of his hands I know I couldn't have made a difference.

So sorry to hear that, gukbe.

wcc otm about external influences having no impact. thankfully i haven't had an episode for some time, but i clearly remember the helplessness and the rage and the isolation and the...dislocation? don't know that that's the right word. the feeling that whatever anyone says isn't ever going to be what you think you want to hear, because you're so set in your feelings of no-one understanding.

It makes me sad everytime i see a bimble thread on ilm and hes not there. Also every few months someone asks about bimble and someone has to explain he died.
I miss you my friend.

i cant ever say he was my friend like you AG, but damn, i do miss him on ilx ..

I saw his blog the other day, frozen in time obviously...

want to talk to you about catherine wheel right now

<3