Take Two Books and Call Me in the Morning

My oldest brother, Mike, was one of the most talented people I've ever known.  He also was gay, a fact that some would say doesn't really matter, although it does matter, because that fact was an important part of his story.  I say "was" because he has been dead for nearly 17 years.

On the off chance that there's an after life, it's entirely possible--probable, even--that Mike is still talented and still gay.  Just more cosmically so.  And, frankly, I like the idea of a more flamboyant night sky, one not afraid to accent itself with an occasional swash of bright colors or an athletic move typically reserved for a strobe-lit dance floor.

I think of him this morning as I consider the remaining unread pages  in my current bedside book--"Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore"--a strange, lifestyle-bridging tale that doesn't quite go where I think it will, thank goodness. 

Despite its intense focus on the bells and whistles of the digital age, the core of this book rests firmly in the belief that not everything can be Googled or solved with a series of mouse clicks.  I just proved that by Googling my brother and coming up with no results that satisfy me.

How can it be that a man with such immense artistic talent and a personality as big as the Sandhills has left such a thin digital trail of a life well lived?  While I understand the paltry search results for someone like myself--a person whose life has been neither large nor lived in the public realm--how do I explain the digital silence when I inquire about my big-life brother, someone whom even Andy Warhol counted as a close friend?

Maybe I explain it by downplaying the significance of the digital world.  Lest we forget, after all, there was a time--a rather long stretch of time--when vocal cords and papyrus were the mediums of choice for storytellers and historians.   It wasn't the Internet that saved the common man, but, rather, it was the pulp of a bible and the sturdy legs of a missionary seeking out the disconnected commoners, offering literacy as the added bonus of salvation.

Salvation, indeed.

I have a hankering for the retro this morning, a desire to lose myself in tactile, inky pages I can hold onto.   Today, I have a hunger for a life more real than anything the internet can conjure, however flashy and lifelike its conjurings may be.   I want to hear voices rather than mouse clicks, see sunlight rather than the glow of a back-lit screen.  Today, I want a taste of the unplugged, sensory-rich life my brother Mike lived, way back in the mid 90s. 

And I'm pretty sure it's going to be delicious.