Rolling Obituary Thread: 2021

awesome

ledge

A picture from the last time I saw you. Always beautiful. Nothing I could say would top the enormity of my love for you. Until we meet again darling. #clorisleachmanrip pic.twitter.com/9etOZo13Kb

— Ed Asner (@TheOnlyEdAsner) January 27, 2021

The power and beauty that was Cicely Tyson.

Cicely Tyson, an Emmy and Tony-winning actor known for playing strong Black leads in films like "Sounder," and "Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," dies at 96. https://t.co/8k094gYWRD

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 29, 2021

Just two days ago.

In a new memoir, legendary actress Cicely Tyson is opening up about her impressive career and personal life.@GayleKing caught up with 96-year-old @IAmCicelyTyson to reflect on the defining moments in her life, starting with a reporter’s question that caught her off guard. pic.twitter.com/86xvScQ4ys

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 26, 2021

And that's why you get the biggest advance possible for a book: because you're unlikely to ever see any royalties.

Sorry. RIP Cicely Tyson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dn6Me-IkGA

Cédric Demangeot, French poet, translator and editor, 46. RIP.

@GayleKing caught up with 96-year-old @IAmCicelyTyson to reflect on the defining moments in her life

Seeing her shed her first tear for a sexual assault that happened an entire lifetime ago really got to me.

Amazing woman

longtime temple men's basketball coach john cheney, 88

Jacques Rivette.

Oh no! RIP

He passed away in 2016. I guess today is the 5th anniversary of his death.

I was about to say, isn't he already dead?

I was wondering.

I was trying to think when I last watched Celine and Julie, and it must have been when he actually died.

I started to try to watch Out 1, Noli me tangere on Mubi last night based on reading about it Luc Sante's latest book which I was inspired by JBL to get, but then I chickened out and watched a 90 minute Jacques Becker movie that was about to leave instead.

I saw it at TIFF over a two day span, it has some amazing moments and some scenes that are literally there only to fulfil the pre-decided formalist structure. If you're open to a 13-hour failed experiment, then it's worthwhile.

Out 1: Spectre is a masterpiece, however.

Yeah, not sure how to see that right now.

That's funny, it was the "commercial" version and now it's obscure.

Right

Guitarist Hilton Valentine of The Animals

People who I didn't know were stilll... RIP

Out One: Spectre is available on a blu ray from Arrow that also contains Out 1: Noli me Tangere, it's not obscure at all.

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/out-1-blu-ray/FCD1886

L'amour Fou is the fugitive Rivette on home video.

"Out Of Stock"

Out One of Stock

Halfway There: I was probably at that same screening--10 years ago? Unless they've played it since then.

According to a John Harkness writeup in NOW Magazine, it was Feb 2007. I saw Spectre about 1994, also at TIFF.

Sax Legend Grady Gaines (Little Richard's Upsetters)

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/Houston-blues-and-R-B-great-Grady-Gaines-dies-15909115.php

(xpost) That sounds about right. I still think about the final shot 14 years later!

Noli Me Tangere is far superior to Spectre! I would never recommend watching Spectre first or instead of Noli Me Tangere.

Definitely watch Noli Me Tangere first - a lot of Spectre's interest comes from the rearrangement of the materials.

The Out 1 set is still available on UK Amazon but I didn't want to risk sic's wrath and link to them.

PC Music artist SOPHIE after an accident in Athens. Only 34. Fuck.

Whaaaaat?!

Jesus fuck

https://mixmag.net/amp/musician-sophie-died

Very sad.

ugh, that sucks.

I've heard maybe one song by SOPHIE but I was already planning on mentioning them in my lecture this week for my course before I saw this (course is Gay Life in the 21st Century; this week's topic is pop music). RIP.

I would love to hear that lecture, tbh.

Very sad about SOPHIE, 34 is no age and it feels like she was only just starting to really make the impact she could have.

Clayton Eshleman, one of the most gifted poetry translators of our times, has died. If you've ever read César Vallejo or Aimé Césaire poems in English, there's a good chance he translated them. Never met him, but the Césaire translations have been indispensable to me as a poet and teacher. Some can be found here: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/aime-cesaire-solar-throat-slashed/

Poetry translation is an absolute devil of a job.

Modular synth legend Wowa Cwejman.

Rupert Webster, who played the beautiful blond boy Bobby Phillips in If... Passed away in December but his death wasn't noted on the 2020 thread. He never returned to acting but lived in Boston and playing in several local bands, amassing a serious collection of guitars in the process:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/07/rupert-webster-obituary

Eshleman was a remarkable poet in his own right, working at the intersection between historical anthropology, psychoanalysis and mythology. I always thought of him as a kind of American Bataille/Artaud/Jouve. RIP – he will be greatly missed.

Pom, I admit that I always admired his work as translator and editor more than his own work in English-- just not my thing. But the other work, and the way he brought different writers together, is incredible. Reading the contents pages of the journals he started and edited over the years is like reading a who's-who of innovative poetry of the past 60 years. Really remarkable life and work.

It's not my preferred poetic mode either tbh, I just thought your post was amusing in its commitment to subjective pickiness, kind of like reading an obit titled 'Terrence Malick, Noted Translator of Heidegger's Vom Wesen des Grundes, Has Died' (don't worry, he's still alive, this is just the first example that sprang to mind). Anyway, Eshleman's English renderings of Vallejo are indeed phenomenal, but for equally picky reasons I can't bear to read them.

From what I've heard of Eshleman, he'd probably argue with me about my pickiness while being equally picky and subjective himself— this is the life of a poet, it seems lol.

I mean, another gentleman whom Eshleman is associated with, Jerome Rothenberg, is one of the best editors and language anthropologists of the past century. His own poetry is also not very good— not everyone has to be good at everything!

True, lol. Ron Silliman's reminiscences popped up in my feed this morning, which seems very apropos:

https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2021/01/i-was-just-22-when-clayton-eshelman.html

xp nah Rothenberg's poems are good not bad.