a day in the life...

I read the news today, oh boy...and had to share it with those I knew from way back when...NYU days...School of the Arts days..before there was Tisch...when classes and studios were in an old shitty building called "South Building"...where we joked that the tv studio equipment looked like it was dropped out of a plane...when film students bowed at the Scorsese shrine...way back before the Village and Soho became high-end shopping grounds...when you knew exactly where the back entrance to Chumley's was...when the bathroom was unisex at McSorley's...and when we were impossibly young...blessed with many talented professors, some not that much older than us...and so when I saw that obituary...Mark Chernichaw...there was a catch in my throat...my advisor...my teacher...my friend...I remember his laugh...his caring...I remember him barely holding back the tears as we sat around the morning after John Lennon was murdered...yes, way back when...before we became numb to murder and loss...and how in that morning I saw him as a peer...and it was awesome...such is the grace of creativity...with the torch passing forward again and again...I think of his family and I am truly sad for their loss...but I cannot picture as he was now only then...and when I think of him...that time in my life...I remember with joy how I was then...art pooling at my feet and the world opening wide and bright...and for that I thank you, Mark, quite deeply...rest in peace...