Charles Rocket Redux

This blog thang hes been a mixed blessing. Mostly good. The internet tide certainly washes up interesting things every day.

Interesting people, too. I’ve made lots of friends on the web; friends I’ve never met, for the most part. But it’s also been a sort of wan beacon into that long dark wake I’ve left, and I’m leaving; and by shining it out, I’ve allowed people I used to know a bit find me. That’s been swell. No one I owe money to from 1979 has looked me up yet.

I wrote about Charles Claverie, or Charlie Rocket as he was known in the movies, about a year ago. He had committed suicide. He was an acquaintance of my brother and some of his friends, and his death shook them all up a bit.

I received a lot of mail about that one. Perhaps the most interesting thing was Dan Gosch, one of Charlie’s best friends, contacted me. I hadn’t seen Dan in 25 years. As a testament to how small this large world is, I’m pretty sure I painted the house Dan Gosch lives in twenty five years ago– decades before he moved there. I’m living proof that, as the saying goes: it’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.

Well, I received a message recently from someone named Yasmin in the UK about Charlie. She knows Charlie from his television roles. We all invest a little something in the persons we allow to suspend our disbelief for a moment in an entertainment. We feel as if they know us, or we know them, at least a little. Yasmin’s gathered some pictures of Charlie and put them together in a Flickr photo album you can view here.

I told you you’d recognize him, though you did not know him.

That’s the best description of human relations I’ve ever offered: You recognize him, but you did not know him.

Sleep well, Charlie. You are remembered fondly, apparently.