His Last Gig

(January 28, 2007)

I haven't been able to really write about this. It's been hard to even talk about.

Ten days ago on January 18th, the Noise-saavy Boston rock community met with devasating news. Scott Dakota had the unthinkable task of announcing on The Noise Board that his brother Jon Erik had died. Jon Erik was our first moderator on the Noise Board, and had devoted a million hours to helping run it and keep things under control. He was also a bass player in a Darkbuster offshoot band, Lenny & the Piss Poor Boys.

I think my fellow Boston rock people had similar reactions to mine: disbelief. One person cited their own first reaction as "There's another Jon Erik?" My first reaction was, for some reason, to check his last log-in on the Noise Board. I don't know why. He was always just so...present.

It took seeing "Last login: Yesterday 8:04am" and "Status: Offline" before my brain would accept this news as fact. Scott had written that Jon Erik didn't make it to work, so I saw the 8:04am and "offline," and I just lost it. I lost it. He was really gone. I called T Max and managed to tell him before I had to leave the office to gain some composure. It was Noise deadline day, and I wanted to make sure a memorial made it into the issue.

In the days that followed, words like "beautiful soul" and "wonderful guy" and "special person" couldn't seem to ring true enough or sound big enough to capture the boundless energy of Jon Erik, or the bottomless pit of grief we all felt.

It's a strange world, with Internet relationships replacing Real Life a lot. I know, logically, that I only knew Jon Erik online. It's not like I knew his touch or his voice or his smell, all those things that really just destroy you when you lose someone. If I lost Joe I would just climb into his closet and die in his pile of T-shirts.

But online-only or now, when I heard the news I was a wreck. I thought of Jon Erik no longer being on the Noise staff with me and I cried. I thought of never seeing another political thread posted by him and I sobbed. Then I thought of Scott Dakota and I bawled like a baby. Of all people, it's Scott who loses his brother this way, so suddenly? I consider Scott a true friend. I've cooked for him. He's counseled me in sensitive matters. He's an old soul. This is a gentle, sensitive man. This is a man who feels things so deeply. If I could absorb half of the pain Scott must be feeling right now, I would in a nano-second. His heart is so, so big and he loved his brother so much. If I, who only knew Jon Erik because of the Noise Messge Board, feel this bad, how are his close friends and bandmates and family even dealing at all?

On January 23rd I went to my first funeral, interrment and memorial. Yes, I'm in my 30s and haven't gone to one yet. My whole life I have decided against attending these events, and my family eventually learned not to expect me. It wasn't even me "deciding" not to go; in truth I always felt an urgent pull deep in my gut saying "Don't go, it'll change you." A strong inner warning to grieve in my own way.

But for Jon Erik, it was the opposite. An urgent pull to "Go." There was no way in the world I'd have missed the funeral, and finding a ride was really easy. Why? Because Jon Erik had surrounded himself with excellent, big-hearted and good people and at least three of them offered space in their car for the two-hour trip to Keene, NH.

The most poignant, beautiful part about the day was this: both Jon Erik and Scott Dakota live in such a way that they bring people together through music. There's a million examples of how, but at a minimum, I met several really awesome people through Scott. Well, during and after Jon Erik's funeral and memorial, the sense of shared emotion was an incredible bonding magic, and even through blurry tears I looked around and marveled at how Jon Erik, in death, is still bringing people together. And will continue to do so.

He's offline, he's offstage, but he will absolutely never, ever be forgotten.

Rock ON, Jon Erik. You rule.