(no subject)

 

Kaleb Horton died recently.  I didn’t know who he was until about a month ago.  He was a little younger than I am and even with my own absence from social media, the news of his death made its way to me.  He died during a seizure, just like how I could’ve and thankfully didn’t, when I was still having them.  I had time on my hands while in Chicago for my eleventh Mountain Goats show so I read his writing and my god what a talent and what a shame we lost him.  He articulated a lot of loves and frustrations I have just so well and so simply and wasn’t afraid to confront sadness directly in so many ways I’m always afraid to.  I’ve only been reading his work for a few weeks and it’s already made me feel less alone.  

I do not wish to find out about anything good via obituary, I wish for people to know they have made a positive impact on others, which is a feeling too many desperately need, but I’ll take what I can get.  

Kaleb was described, in the screenshots of BlueSky posts (my instinct is still to call them tweets, and calling them “skeets” is even worse) two separate colleagues sent to me, as “a born magazine writer if ever there were one.”  I’m paraphrasing.  Every person I meet who I immediately hit it off with has at least a little bit of “born magazine writer” to them.  Someone hire my friends to write newspaper columns!  Words require care and sometimes even conversation doesn’t suffice.  There are so many reasons I stopped participating in social media, but the disposability of words is a big one.  

I couldn’t quit it entirely and I still peek.  Quitting smoking was easier.  I was able to quit smoking because my wife Nicole quit at the same time.  I still only know two regular smokers and they should also both quit, although it’s pretty clear my dad never will.  The only people I know who have managed to get away from social media have plenty of children to keep them busy.  One of the requirements for my Master’s degree was to set up a Linkedin profile according to their rubric and I was made to feel like a grade-a poindexter for telling them I only kept my profile as a formality for people who needed references.  I asked if there could please be an alternative?  I was already employed as a librarian!  They resisted.  They had dozens of other students with needs way more important than my beef with the internet.  I caved, of course.  Not like I’ll look at it after I hit submit on the assignment.  

I still occasionally open the subreddit for South Bend and then immediately close it.  A lot of my quitting looks like that.  I peek, I think “this is fine-tuned to make people unnecessarily angry and it’s actively making life for me and everyone else worse,” and then I close the tab.  It’s always a browser tab, I will *never* install a new app.  I occasionally search for specific family members on facebook.  Mom isn’t around to tell me what they’re up to, but most of the smart ones don’t post there anymore either.  

I don’t feel bad for peeking.  Should I?  I wish I didn’t have to go to a loud, smoky bar to get a decent drink, as it were, but how else do I find out if good writers have written something new and good?  Every single cigarette during my 20 year career as a smoker was accompanied with the thought “I should quit,” except for my very last one.  Addiction is like that and we’re all doing the best we can.  Should I be honest with my friends that I no longer wish to ever receive an Instagram or TikTok link? That when anyone reacts to a message with an emoji instead of words it makes me feel like my own words are worth nothing?  Should I tell them to stop getting their perspective on people and politics from facebook meme pages designed from the ground up to keep them perpetually angry?  Oh probably.  It feels hypocritical and it probably is.  I can forgive myself for that crime, I suppose.  

Peeking is how I found more skilled writing that tells truths I struggle to tell, but needed to read, after all! Sounds like a net gain for me. 

The internet has made words beyond abundant.  We’re overflowing with them now, but it doesn’t mean we have to let them be cheap.  It’s a precious, glorious thing to use language to relate something specific in the most efficient, poetic way possible, and anyone who gives words the care that Kaleb did is worth their weight in platinum.  I feel very fortunate to work at an institution where, upon finding out about an essayist’s untimely passing, multiple people had the thought, “Alexander at the library probably read this guy and we should check in on him.”  

RIP Kaleb, what a damn loss. Please go find and enjoy his writing, it needs to live on.