Jack

It bothers me that I can’t remember exactly when and where I met Jack. I’m usually pretty good about that. It was probably 2007-ish, probably at SXSW or An Event Apart. I was going to a lot of conferences back then, meeting all kinds of web people from all over the place, and Jack was a web person, though we didn’t talk about the web all that much once we found other things we had in common. We were a pair of affably cynical Gen Xers and lapsed Catholics who loved a lot of the same music and both lost our dads too soon.

And now we’ve lost Jack too soon. Fifty-fucking-one years old. Glioblastoma.

Jack was loudly in attendance both times I competed at the US Air Guitar National Finals in Chicago, and we’d hang out most other times I was in town, too. Same when he was in NYC. Every time, we’d try to make arrangements to go to concerts together, usually without success. My attempts to visit Jack after he entered hospice in late May were likewise unsuccessful, and it’ll be a while before I can forgive myself for that. But we texted a bit, just like we sometimes texted each other from concerts.

I looked for him in the crowd while watching the livestream of Low’s set at Pitchfork in 2022. “My earplugs are getting a workout,” he said. That was Mimi’s second-last performance before she succumbed to her own cancer a few months later. Jack added the show to his concert history on Setlist.fm. Can I tell you what a treasure that is? He was the only other person I’ve known who shared my unreasonable degree of Low fanaticism, and being able to retrace his steps with the band and compare them to my own is so special to me. Cult fandoms, religious resentments, paternal regrets—the similar paths we walked were ones of great significance to both of us.

Geography never gave us the chance to be as close friends as we might have been, and there’s still so much about Jack I don’t know, but I think we nevertheless shared an uncommon understanding, and I’m grateful for that. I don’t subscribe to any of the usual conceptions of an afterlife, but if there is one, I hope Jack’s hanging with Mimi and his dad, and giving the Holy Trinity many, many notes.

Rest well, Jack.