It's Getting Hot in Here

(i am texting this blog post while riding a double decker bus to cotonou. Any grammatical errors must be ignored and all hope for any intellectual scope abandoned.)

First, even though just about all of you who read this never met him, i want to talk about my friend Jonathan Pratt.

You probably know the kind of guy he was. Larger than life. A musical prodigy who flew airplanes and rode his motorcycle on cross country trips at a whim. He wrote exhaustive, meticulous poems in thin black ink. He had a smile that turned the head of everyone in the room and a voice that could break your heart. He didn't walk through the dorms, he strut and swayed, singing The Doors through the halls. He was always reinventing himself while remaining the guy everyone wanted to be friends with. To party with. To play music with. To talk with. He was the guy who when he focused on you, made you feel like you two were seated on top of the world.

When a loved one passes away you're supposed to list their generous, inspirational qualities. People use phrases like 'hero', 'angel', (and 'larger than life') and forget under the niceities, there was a real person. Someone who you loved not only for their gifts but also their faults. It always seemed incredibly disingenious to me, this praise of the dead. I bring it up because i want to try to convince you that i wouldn't exaggerate. If there ever was a Paul Bunyan in my life, it was Jon Pratt.
It was spring in 2005. I was walking from a stuffy lit theory class with my (ex)boyfriend Adam, revelling in the warmth and the sight of lilac blossoms. A wafting acoustic guitar played the most aggressive Dylan i've ever heard. I craned my neck at the sound of Jon's voice. There he was, all six foot three, fifteen feet in the air, perched comfortably on a huge industrial art monstrocity in the middle of the courtyard. Grinning, radiant, beautiful. Adam and i scrambled to the top, to be near him. We sat there for the better part of an hour. Students walked past, grinning outright or with bemused smiles on their faces. It was an afternoon that to this day reminds me of how beautiful it is to be young and in love.

Jon shone in my life for a short three years when he went off with his band to L.A. to record an album. When he came back home he was different, sick in someway we could not identify. He still rapped poetry with the best of us. His fingers still stretched over his keyboard with prolific intensity. But he joked less, his charasmatic smile seemed held back beneath increasingly desperate eyes. Jon killed himself one year ago last week. I haven't been able to listen to Subterrean Homesick blues since without thinking of how when Jon looked you in the eye and smiled, he eclipsed the sun.



A note about comments: apologies are nice, but unnecessary. I'm sorry too, especially for his family. If you knew jon, you would be sorry too. If you didn't, it's really ok. Let's leave it at that.



Chaleur is here. It's been over 100 for the past three days, and i'm sure the worst is yet to come. The humidity is low though, thank god. It still gets cool in the early hours of the morning until the sun rises without all that water in the air. Thank god i was placed in the North.

That's all for now. If i have any time at a real computer this week (doubtful), i'll try to write again.

À la prochain.