Today is the Feast of All Souls in Western Christianity and the Day of the Dead in Mexico, a good day for a ghost story…
On July 10, 2007, Theresa Duncan, blogger, game designer, and stalled movie producer, committed suicide with a cocktail of bourbon and Benadryl. She was 40 years old. A week later, her brilliant, rising-art-star boyfriend, Jeremy Blake, joined her by stripping down and walking into the surf at Rockaway Beach in Queens, NY. He was 35. I, like many others, became obsessed with the story and followed it closely, first by dissecting Theresa's own blog, The Wit of the Staircase, then through the numerous newspaper articles, and finally, by tracking the Duncanologists, bloggers who sprung up to sift through the conspiracy theories, clues, and questions about Duncan and Blake's deaths.
Eventually, like most Web phenomena, interest in Duncan and Blake cooled. The Duncanologists stopped posting. The story went mainstream with a Nancy Jo Sale's article, "The Golden Suicides," in Vanity Fair, and it lost its occult allure. And my obsession with the couple evaporated like most everyone's.
Then, last summer, I was feeling arty. I wanted to create something. And when I feel this way, I usually reach for something that inspires me; a book, an image, a website. This time I pulled my favorite piece of art that I own off the bookshelf. It's called The Fourty Year Old Beatnik, and it's a copy of the one most enthralling exhibits I have ever experienced, the kind of show that changes you, that moves you, that astounds you in its depth of humor, beguiling simplicity and layered complexity. I saw the show at Works on Paper in 2001 and I knew the artist who created it was the real thing in a way I have never felt about any artist before or since. The gallery had a printed version of the show on sale so I bought it. I wanted to look at this work to push my brain to think anew. I wanted to remind myself that originality still exists. And mostly, I wanted to keep track of this artist. But, I had forgotten, until I reached for the book again this summer, that this artist's name was Jeremy Blake.
When I realized I had been a fan, obsessed with his work before I was obsessed with his death, I got a chill. And the tragedy of his suicide became magnified by the loss of the talent. I had read this in many articles, but now understood more concretely. Then, I wondered what had happened to the couple's reputation posthumously. I knew Blake had been scheduled to have a retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. I wondered how that went.
Googling "Theresa Duncan Jeremy Blake" got me to this Gawker post I thought I had misread: The Late Theresa Duncan is Still Blogging. What the hell does that mean? I clicked and discovered that two new posts had appeared on Theresa's blog since her death. I got another chill. "That's a little creepy," I thought. I had no idea how creepy. The post that appeared on October 29, 2007, over three months after her death was this:
Basil Rathbone's Ghosts
Basil Rathbone was entertaining a friend one night at his home in the Hollywood Hills. Both men were keenly interested in dogs and their breeding. His friend had brought with him two handsome specimens. As it got late, the two friends had a parting drink and called it a night. The friend and the canines got into the car and drove away. But, sadly, not very far.
As Rathbone turned to go back inside, he heard the screech of brakes and the sickening sounds of a ghastly car crash. His friend and the dogs were killed instantly.
In deep shock, and with the thought, “He was just standing here,” pounding in his aching head, Rathbone heard the damned phone begin ringing. Mechanically he picked it up and heard the voice of the MGM studio’s night switchboard operator. “Sorry, Mr. Rathbone but I have a woman on the line who simply must talk to you. She says it’s desperately, desperately important.” Probably some smitten fan, he thought as the operator said, “Sir, I’ve never heard anyone be so urgent. She hopes you’ll know what a certain message means.”
Rathbone, impatient and in a daze, snapped, “For Christ’s sake, put her on and be done with it!” The woman was calling from her home, located way to hell and gone on the far side of Los Angeles. She had a low and cultivated speaking voice and identified herself as a trance medium and clairvoyant. At that time the movie colony was going through one of its periodic infatuations with psychics, astrologers, table-tipping séances, Ouija boards and such. Rathbone scorned all such claptrap, but, he said, “The woman’s voice was so compelling.”
“I have for you, sir, what we term ‘a calling of urgency,’” she said. “It came to me with such impact that, although not knowing its meaning, I simply had to find you. The message is brief. Here it is in its entirety: ‘Traveling very fast. No time to say good-bye.’ And then, ‘There are no dogs here.’ ”
The next time I saw Rathbone (F.Y.I., he lived at 135 Central Park West), more years had gone by, and he was in the act of receiving a summons for letting his dog Ginger off the leash in Central Park. I thought he might have decided, looking back, that it had all been some sort of bizarre coincidence, or maybe a highly original prank. He said, “At the time, of course, I was quite shaken by it.” And now? “I am still shaken by it.”
Link: Ghosts – Dick Cavett – Opinion – Times Select – New York Times Blog.
Editor's Note: Theresa had left this post to appear automatically on this date (another will appear on New Year's Eve).
Theresa Duncan in her East Village apartment with Frank Morales, posted on her blog May 31, 2007. Note her Yorkie named Tuesday (for Tuesday Weld) at her feet. I always wondered how a person with a dog and a blog could end her life…and who ended up with Tuesday.
The next, and final, entry on Theresa's blog did appear on New Year's Eve of 2007. It is entitled "New Beginning" and it's comprised of the fifth stanza of T.S. Elliot's poem "East Cocker." It, too, is chilling in that it reflects on one's inability to communicate, of finding oneself in the middle of life and looking back at "twenty wasted years," and trying again and again to regain what is lost. Gawker notes that the final line of the poem is not included: "Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."
And that may be the most disturbing aspect of this entire ghost story, because for Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake the end is their beginning. Last week, it was announced that Gus van Sant is set to make a movie based on their golden suicides to be written by Brett Easton Ellis based on the Vanity Fair article.
My obsession continues…
