Virtuaalikuolema

valokuva: UMBILICAL CHORD DISSECTION
Joitakin vuosia sitten tutustuin eräällä IRC-kanavalla hollantilaiseen nuoreen mieheen, joka käytti osuvasti nick-nimeä duchamp. (Jos joku ei muista tai tiedä, Duchamp oli Dadan isiä. Jos joku nyt ei sitten tiedä mitä on Dada, en aio tässä sitä selittää; käyttäkää vaikka wikiä)
Jos joku luulee, ettei IRC voi olla älykkään, nokkelan, ironisen, sarkastisen, taiteellisen, runollisen, terävän, briljantin keskustelun kenttä, hänen olisi pitänyt tuntea duchamp.
Sittemmin elämänmuutokset tekivät minusta vähemmän nörtin, enkä enää irkannut kuin todella satunnaisesti. Kuitenkin kummallinen ystävyys duchampin kanssa säilyi; kun "näimme", keskustelumme olivat aina yhtä stimuloivia.

Eilen olin saanut sähköpostin. Tässä siitä pari otetta:

As some of you know already, duchamp (FlyingSaussurean, KillWhitey, DauphinDesIlesCaraibes, bigbusiness, HEAVYWITHWEEPING, etc etc etc) did have enough of suffering. Jeroen Mettes, whom we all knew as as duchamp, committed suicide sometime between September 21 and September 22 in the Hague, Netherlands. Sadly, as only distant satellites of his internet sun, we can't even confirm his exact time or mode of death (as morbid Dalneters, you would want to know). Here are the facts. On September 21, Jeroen posted an empty blog entry (on his page: http://n30.nl/poezienotities.html). Sometime after that, we speculate, he was dead. He was cremated by his friends and colleagues at the funeral center in Ockenburg, The Hague on Tuesday, September 26. I was the first to hear of this among his IRC 'friends' - if you can even extend this banality - on Friday, September 29. That is the gap between IRC and reality.
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PS some links follow. And below are some fragments, only, that I have in logs of duchamp's dalnet legacy. If only more had survived. Reading them again is savoring and understanding the complexity of his ironies (anti-ironies), his cultural and eclectic academic knowledge, and his immense humor. It is difficult to believe he could consider suicide. Perhaps it is all a dada experiment, and he will have mindfucked us all again.


3 kommenttia:

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

In english please, as well.

सारी kirjoitti...

Oh, usually I wouldn't, but in this case I'll translate the things I wrote in Finnish:
Some years ago I met on a certain IRC-channel a young Dutch, who appropriately used the nick duchamp.
(If someone doesn't remember or know who Duchamp is, he was one of the fathers of Dada. And if someone doesn't know what Dada is, I won't explain it here, go and use wiki or something)

If there's anyone who thinks that there's no space for intelligent, witty,ironic,sarcastic, artistic, poetic, brilliant discussion on IRC, he should have known duchamp.

Later on, my life changed and I got less nerdy, so I stayed on IRC only rarely and occasionally. Still the odd friendhip with duchamp continued, anytime we "met", the conversation was stimulating.

Yesterday I received an e-mail, here's a couple of parts of it...

The title "virtual death" describes my feelings.

Leonoora kirjoitti...

Perhaps he will make some kind of "comeback" in the future, or not.
Overhead - I`m sorry, you lost your smart virtualfriend.