While I Was Out

[tamaranth]

I think I've discovered another definition of the verb 'to gafiate'. (Which is (for readers outside the sf community) getting away from it all.)

To gafiate: to lose touch with goings-on to the extent that one misses the announcement of a friend's death.

Dave Mooring's dead. He was one of the crowd I used to hang out with at conventions before the BSFA and I became closely acquainted. I spent whole afternoons -- especially at Novacons -- indulging in comfortable conversation with Dave and Sarah. Wicked sense of humour, generous, playful: I have a photograph somewhere of him sending some cuddly toy off to heaven at the '95 Eastercon, aided by a bunch of helium balloons. Naturally, I was also jealous of his hair. When I was writing, he managed to draw some of my characters without having more than a couple of slurred sentences to go on. I've missed him over the last few years, when he and Sarah had been absent from conventions -- as it turns out, due to illness.

Too many people I know have died recently. Wish they hadn't. Wish Dave wasn't one of them.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm with you all the way there...

Wish I wasn't, but...

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I know. I was aghast. I suppose it was the first person in fandom who's died whom I really knew as opposed to "had heard of and seen around" or "had read their fanzines": I'd been to their house a million times (they bought my then ex-es house in fact) , had dinner parties with them, hung out. Dave did the cover for TimeBytes back in 95; must find it for the Novacon tribute that's being planned. I was talking to Lesley ward and Brian Davies about it at the weekend: they were shocked too. All of us. I didn't know you knew Dave and Sarah so well; funny, we must have been on edges of some of the same groups, long before I knew you.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I was very upset. Partly because Dave was one of the small band of stalwarts who could be relied upon to stay up far too late at conventions; and so I have very many alcohol soused memories of those conversations.

But partly also because of the fickle bonds of fannish friendships, which can mean that when people stop doing fannish things, people like me are too idle to actively pursue the friendship. The point where you stop seeing people and they stop contributing to your fanzine may be exactly the point where you need to pay more attention to them rather than less.