A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

gonna go there & suggest bumping it with an unannotated frowny emoticon is not cool

schlump otm

I'm going to take the relative silence as a good thing. Like Elvis said I don't need extra shit after today here.

A good sign! Posted just now on FB:

Enjoying an awesome T-DAY feast with Alley, my brother & my closest friends in my hospital room. Wish you all were here. There's nothing I'm more thankful for! BENJAMIN

Rest in Peace, Ben.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2013/12/benjamin_curtis_rip.php

rip

oh god.

this thread popping up again.

this time its the one we were dreading ..

rest in peace ben.

Fuck. NO. Has this been reported anywhere else?

Don't even know what to say.

Well, maybe this, but no more.

Fuck you, cancer. Just fuck you. He's the best man I've ever known.

I'm sorry. Even if something has been expected, it's still a shock and it's a loss on so many levels. Just... no.

fuck cancer.

35.

jeeeez ..

evil fucking scourge ..

was going to go to bed, but have to listen to secret machines loud now ..

rip ben and hugs to all

:(

awful. my thoughts with those of you who knew him.

fuck

terrible. rest in peace, ben.

School of Seven Bells were a constant soundtrack during the breakup of my marriage last year, and helped me a lot at the time through some low points. Rest in Peace.

Fucking hell. RIP Ben.

Going to play Disconnect from Desire this evening really loudly.

fuck. just terrible. may he rest in peace.

not to make this about me, but the same type of cancer took my best friend from "treatable" to gone in 3 months when we were 19.

fuck cancer.

The formal announcement:

Dear friends,

Last night, Dec. 29th 2013, we lost our friend and brother Benjamin Curtis to his fight against cancer.

While we had hoped to delay this announcement until a more suitable time when his friends and family could feel better prepared and settled to greet any correspondences from folks attempting to reach out, unfortunately the news has prematurely leaked. So we felt it would be appropriate to at least offer an official acknowledgement from us, in light of all the fans who loved and supported Benjamin and his music.

We kindly ask that his immediate family, friends & bandmates' privacy be respected during this time, and that instead, any inquires, well wishes, or notes-of-consolation be sent through School of Seven Bells’ management, where it can be shared with them at the suitable time. They can be sent to a special e-mail address here: sviib @ wizkidmanagement.com

If relevant, further information will be made available through the suitable channels in the near future.

We can’t thank all of you who supported him and his music through the years enough. All of you who attended or participated in the various benefits in and around New York City over the past year since his diagnosis, and of course those who contributed and gave generously to help support him throughout that journey. You made it possible for all of us, and for him, to see how truly loved he was and how many lives he had touched through his music by your gestures. We will all miss this incredibly talented and rare person every day, but we are fortunate enough that he shared with us his music, and that is something that we can keep forever.

I did this over the course of the past year to amuse / distract / cheerlead Benj while he was in hospital:

http://lightandloveforbenjamin.tumblr.com/

It hurts too much to read it right now (the story of every song on every album by SVIIB & TSM, and what they meant to me and how they entwined with my life) - I thought it was gonna be the first chapter of many, but I guess it's gonna serve as obituary now.

x-posts now

Do you mind if I share that out, B.B.? And mention that Ben saw it?

I guess you can share it since it's out there. (I'm kinda scared of what's in there.) Anyway, I don't know how much of it he actually read, considering the problems he was having with his eye, but he was such a sweetie he thanked me for it anyway.

Noted. I'll let it be.

oh BB ...
tis ace that your efforts were clearly appreciated by the reason behind the groove.
thats kind of cool and rather special ..

No, Benj was just the kind of person who would take the time to make sure that every fan knew that they were appreciated and that he was grateful for their love. He just *was* that sweet and kind and gentle and fuck I'm going to start crying again.

I saw the thread had been bumped and saw the number of new posts and feared the worst :( Shit, I don't even know what to fucking say. RIP Benjamin :(

Very sad

So sorry to hear this. RIP.

These were the real deal. Heartbreaking.

RIP

This is just too sad - it seemed like he had been doing so well lately too. RIP Benjamin, you made some beautiful music.

oh no, RIP :(

I'd thought he was getting better for some reason. 35 is too too young.

crying :(

I can't think of anyone who so cheerfully pushed me into being a better musician. Fuck cancer. Fuck this year.

Too sad, the whole thing..

Loved to the end

He was in my dreams last night. Well, somehow appropriately, he wasn't, but traces of him were everywhere, trying to find him and failing (as you often do at big events).

Listening to Alpinisms this morning, because nothing else feels appropriate right now. (And I've been thinking of Alpinisms constantly, because I've been reading this book about the history of mountain-climbing and wondering if he'd read it. The brain is funny like that.) And everything feels weirdly flattened right now (this is the last shittiest thing in a whole shitty year) but also crying at every bit of that record that always made me happy. (Which is most of the record to be honest.)

And feeling selfish and overly-dramatic, like, who the fuck am I to be feeling this loss, compared to his family, his bandmates, his close friends. This double sense of loss, both that this person I knew will never come striding into Sonic Cathedral again with his big boots and his massive grin and enthusing about some piece of gear or krautrock record. And this sense of loss, of there will be no more music. I was looking forward to the 4th album they'd been working on. I was looking forward to the 8th album. And then 20th album when he'd given up the pop game and gone on to make 20 minute electronic soundscapes. There was supposed to be more, and now there isn't.

Public grief seems so embarrassing and somehow also so grotesque. I don't know what else to do with it, though.

Before disappearing into the haze of Egypt, Thelema and the OTO, Aleister Crowley wrote some great essays about mysticism and mountain climbing. I had no idea he was one of the leaders of the first expedition attempt to climb K2.

Listening to Disconnect From Desire until I pass out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlaaIIEj2Wk

Also: http://vimeo.com/13924411

(think I posted those before, but worth your time)

http://www.spin.com/articles/benjamin-curtis-obit-dallas-icon/

http://blog.ghostly.com/post/71755440915/ghostly-remembers-benjamin-curtis

(I will never get used to that bizarre half-life of the interface between social media and the dead. The heartbeat of hope and terror when a retweet or something makes you think someone is still alive for a brief moment.)

35 years old. fuck.

An appraisal.

this is so terrible, my best wishes to anyone who knew him.

R.I.P

Just feel gutted by this. I'd looked up current treatment and prognosis, and thought BC had a very good chance of a complete remission, at least for a while.

Sincere condolences to his family, friends, Alejandra, and everyone else whose lives Benjamin touched.

The full Berlin set from the 2012 tour.

some good viewing/listening

That Grantland piece that Alfred linked - like, I can't even articulate why it made me both angry and kinda sad, but it did.

Partly, I guess, my feeling is, it's too soon for that kind of "appraisal". More it's because, for a piece that claims to lionise him as an artist, it sure has a lot of lazy dismissals and "I didn't bother"s dressed up as "Things People Think". But mostly it's just because that kind of bean-counting "why didn't they sell more records? people are stupid and have bad taste" approach to discussing an artist's career is just... I find that way of conceiving and thinking and talking about music way more depressing than an artist I love not getting the attention I think they deserve.

But this shit:

But the immediate and wide-ranging outpouring of the condolences and nostalgia was a surprise, as was the consensus and faintly apologetic nature of it all; people wish they were more adamant about this sadly overlooked and underrated artist in real time.

Speak for yourself, man. This sounds like some Grade-A level projection. "faintly apologetic nature"? Seriously, what the fuck. People spontaneously outpoured condolences and nostalgia? That might have actually been because Benjamin was that rare thing, a genuinely good human being who had the gift to connect with others, and people miss him, not some weird projected collective guilt for not paying his music enough attention.

I've read a lot of obits and memorials over the past couple of days. That's the first one that's actually made me cross. Timing as much as approach, but still.