Steve Fisher
First-person singular
At first I was aware of Jan only in passing, an interesting-looking fellow whose name I knew and whom I regularly saw at cultural events in Albany or at various cafes and bistros: Cathy's, Justin's, the Lark Tavern.
And then one day our paths crossed while walking in Washington Park, and he stopped to tell me how much he'd enjoyed a stand-up comedy show I'd recently done. Of course I was pleased, but what was even nicer was the way he expressed his appreciation, repeating a couple of my jokes and explaining why he found them not just funny but also interesting.
As I eventually learned, that was typical Jan. Throughout our friendship, he was a constant source of praise and encouragement, spurring me on to write more, to try to get published, to start my own blog, to write about my life in Prague, to read particular books he thought might appeal to or inspire me.
Jan was an Aries: positive, playful, enthusiastic. It’s the first sign of the Zodiac, age-symbolized by the baby, the most egocentric stage of life. Not egotistical. Egocentric. The expression of Aries is: “I am.”
We commemorate Jan’s life at 1:11 p.m. on 1/11, a time and date significant for the numbers he frequently saw in his dreams. But as the Romans and your digital watch could tell you: “One… one… one” is also “I… I… I.”
You can see it in Jan’s visual art: photos and collages in which he himself often appeared. In a way, they’re performance pieces. Stand-up comedy without words. A “Where’s Waldo?” for Dadaists. And he was a good subject for wry self-portraiture, with that untamed head of wavy hair, those nerdy, tortoise-shell glasses, and his default expression of stoic nonchalance.
I think of Jan in those pictures as the ultimate art afficionado, someone who loved art so much that he wanted to become it. They seemed like an inversion of the theater technique known as “breaking the fourth wall” – not the performer addressing the audience, but rather the artist/viewer entering the frame.
In her book Sun Signs, Linda Goodman writes:
The Aries male is a natural rebel. He loves to defy authority, and he thinks he was born smarter than anyone else. Perhaps he was, but most people don’t relish being told so. He’s both an idealist and an egotist. He can be the soul of generosity, giving his time, money, sympathy and possessions by the carload cheerfully to strangers. But he can also be exasperatingly intolerant, thoughtless, selfish and demanding, when his desires are delayed, or he’s forced to be around negative people.
I saw only the first part, the generous part, the part that regularly sent me large envelopes full of things he thought I might find interesting or amusing: clippings of articles about Prague from the San Juan newspapers (in Spanish, which I couldn’t understand, but that was the point), post cards, flyers, art exhibition programs, cocktail napkins, bar coasters, or silly cartoons. And each envelope included a handwritten letter commenting on the contents and always sending his love.
Those thoughtful envelopes of trinkets and ephemera kept on coming, long after the rest of the world had stopped taking the trouble to send things by mail, switching instead to easier electronic alternatives. Honestly, these days, it's rare even to get an e-mail. Most people just text. But to actually find a letter in my mailbox, like I did again this past summer from Jan, well, that was just fucking amazing.
Now I suspect that's the last handwritten letter I'm ever going to get, goddammit, and I'm mad about that and sad about that, and it's just the latest thing about getting old that makes me mad and sad, and I wish I could bitch about it to Jan because I know he would laugh and say, “Yeah, tell me about it!” but that's obviously not going to happen. Shit.
And I've been putting off writing this for weeks, because I've been in denial about Jan not existing anymore, and writing about it seemed like it was finally going to make it real. I still can't wrap my head around the idea of a world in which he isn't. I'm getting tired of missing people, and this is a big one. A kind and brilliant “I” that is no more.
- Steve Fisher