All About A Spoonful (Letter to P.S.H.)
Originally published here, the following is a beautiful piece written by a friend of a friend about our man:
Dear Philip Seymour Hoffman,
I yawn, sigh, saunter down the sandy steps and out the front door. I’m on my way downtown. I’ve got a gig tonight, the same gig I have every Wednesday night, for now at least, down in a little corner of this thawing northern city. I pass Longfellow sitting on his granite throne. I pass the digital clock tower shining its alternating time and temperature. At least its not so cold tonight. I pass a cross-eyed woman pushing a grocery cart full of empty cans and bottles. Trees and apartment buildings hang upside-down in the huge puddles that cover the weeping streets. The stop light changes and a column of green fire cascades down the wet pavement. Heaps of snow are melting, the water flowing down Munjoy Hill in little rivulets, dripping down the rocky ledge facing the Eastern Promenade, and out of pipes into the surrounding bay. The city is murmuring, gurgling with the sound of moving water. The windshield wipers sing a somber song, trading the lead back and forth.
Sighing… I’m sighing again. I just noticed it a few hours ago, not too long after hearing the bad news. And now my head feels heavy, shoulders tight, low back aching, a lingering pressure just behind the sternum. Probably another storm coming. I sense it subtly building inside me. Things are resisting me again, purpose eludes my immediate grasp, irritability is slowly gaining ground. A pessimistic conviction gradually takes hold: that it’s all just a struggle with objects. That’s all, just a battle to make objects bend to your will, to make the screw come loose, to pull the pencil out from under the car seat, to fit the instruments into the car, to move your body out of bed and somehow into the rhythm and flow of what we call life. I do my best to resist succumbing to such soul-sucking cynicism, cracking a fake smile and singing at the top of my lungs, “Everybody knows that he’s a, BUM BUM, plastic man!!” But it does little good. My mental defenses have been dealt a significant blow. Soon enough, I’m sighing again.
It was on the wall of a friend’s Facebook page. That’s how I found out. A link on a computer screen. I saw your picture, older, more worn than I remember, and next to it the words, “Philip Seymour Hoffman dead at 46: Actor found in his New York City apartment with needle in arm after using heroin, sources say.”
I blinked, refocused, reread. The headline entered my ears clumsily; its unfeeling, partial fragments of meaning blunt, eerily visceral, grotesque. A tragic image, pale and limp, emerged in my mind’s eye. I shuddered.
My first thought was that it was a joke. My second thought was that this couldn’t be a joke. No one would make that joke. For a few moments I sat in disbelief. Then I sighed. This isn’t supposed to happen to you; 46 years old, three children, an academy award, the respect of so many.
I don’t know you, I confess. I don’t know your history. Had I known you were in rehab last spring, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so shocked, so affected, so sad.
My roommate looked at me, concerned, and asked, “what’s wrong?”
I showed him the post. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows as if to say, “yeah, well, that’s how it goes.”
To be honest, I don’t know if it is your death exactly that makes me so sad. I think it’s the general kind of world this must be in order to have great and well loved actors overdosing on heroin alone in New York City apartments. I mean why do things like this happen? How must you have felt that day? Any different from any other day of your life? Disappointed? Anxious? Lonely? Just numb? Closing the door to a vacant room, the rumble of the city underfoot, heartbeat rising with anticipation…
Amidst the rumble of car engine I imagine for a moment that I hear Sisyphus groaning. I shake my head and turn on the heat. When was the last time I thought about him?
As I make my way across the hibernating city to sing to drinking ears, drinking eyes, and drinking hearts, your voice comes out of the car stereo like a low rumbling ghost. You explain to Terri Gross that while one glass of wine may be a pleasurable experience to many people, it isn’t to you, that in fact, it’s just annoying. I mean, why not have the whole bottle? That’s a much more pleasurable experience! I smile, because I know exactly what you mean.
And now I believe we’re moving closer to the source of my peculiar reaction to the news of your death. You see, I haven’t drank for nearly nine months, not a drop. Not since that night of Guinness and chasing smiles amidst the ruins of Inís Oirr. Why? Because I prefer the whole bottle too. A beer is frustrating, two beers even more so. In fact, any number of any kind of drink is not enough. I understand that all too well.
Yes, I think that’s it, Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think that’s what made me react this way. It’s the fact that you, after two decades of being sober, somehow fell off the wagon.
What does that mean for me?
I think it means that the battle never ends. Success and recognition don’t end it. Awards don’t end it. Not even love ends it. Only when life itself ends, only when the seemingly infinite opportunities to choose are taken away, only then does the battle end. And until then, continual resistance. No wonder I’m sighing.
‘Fresh Air’ ends and now the voice of Nick, a recovering user, fills the small space of my car. Here is the typical story, far more typical than yours at least. Everything lost to addiction, possession, prison, broken parole, but with a stroke of good luck, Catholic Charities, rehabilitation, recovery.
A series of new voices enter the conversation: an addiction specialist, a brother, a sheriff.
“Our nation’s drug laws are the cause. Making them illegal only leads to an unregulated criminal drug trade.”
“Heroin is on the rise in Maine. We don’t enjoy punishing an addict. We want to prosecute the predators bringing drugs into our state.”
“We have so many faulty moral assumptions surrounding addiction. Addiction is a disease, people just don’t understand that. ”
“Drugs are illegal and therefore drug users are criminals.”
“That’s the reason our prisons are overflowing and the government is going bankrupt trying to house who you call criminals. It’s unsustainable, we need to teach these people how to exercise their gift to choose, not take it away from them completely!!”
I’m sighing again, Philip Seymour Hoffman. I sense that pessimism continuing to grow and I know that by tomorrow I won’t be able to smile. It’s too late now to prevent my heart from plunging over the melancholic cliff towards which it inevitably speeds. I’ll wake up reeling in the cycle of resistant objects, flailing in the murky fog of time, overwhelmed with too many possible paths to choose from.
But the storm will pass, it always does, the grey days change to brighter ones. And even if I can’t force myself to smile amidst the continual bombardment of glum thoughts and raw feeling, I can still choose to act according to my better instincts.
And so tomorrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, I’ll sift through the muck and soot, wipe out the guilt smudges staining my perspective, look up the number to Catholic Charities, and ask Sister Eleanor if they need any volunteers.
Yours,
Kyle David Morgan
ps. Thank you for what you gave to this world, you made it richer and deeper by your care and dedication to great acting. Ironically, my respect for you as an artist has its source in your exquisite ability to make me detest your characters so thoroughly, to make me feel so uncomfortable, to make me squirm in my seat. Real drama requires a real enemy; not merely an unfeeling, inhuman villain, but someone who’s darkness is plausible and even relatable. You succeeded in that more than anyone I can think of.
Rest in peace.
(‘All About a Spoonful’ was written by my dear friend and mentor, Rotten Belly Michael, founder of the infamous and ever metamorphosing musical collective, Rotten Belly Blues.)
Kyle Morgan is a musician. You can listen to him here and learn more about him here.