Requiescat in Pace

For years I've tried to experience the moment of falling asleep, but its eluded me. One moment I'll be awake, waiting to fall asleep, and then the next, I'll be asleep.
I can never capture the transition.

Jeroen knew. Part of the allure of suicide. Fortokening the afterword,
the final entry to his final exit.

I would like to think he saw into a world beyond his experience, as all great poets do. I would like to think he could see all of his friends gathered here, in this dissolute place, the wake of a beautiful mind born to blush unseen.

I would like to think he knew how much he'd be missed.
.
.
.
<end>




From Arin Dutta, aka Mamba:


(from #philosophicus buffer: Thu Oct 17 17:50:52 2002)
<kitten_with_mittens> you called?
<Koop> yeah
<Koop> we're calling all the lonely people
<Koop> duchamp won't let himself be called
<kitten_with_mittens> well call me when i'm home, ok
<Koop> even though he's miserable
<Koop> ok
<kitten_with_mittens> ciao
* kitten_with_mittens has quit IRC (Quit:)
<Koop> "bye"
<FlyingSaussurean> i'm still not suffering enough!
(end)

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.

Jeroen (it is still strange for me to think of him by his name, even though he made no secret of it) - had been depressed for a while, and certainly some people online knew of it. I didn't, but I never chatted with him but in the IRC room. As some of you know, he lost his mother when he was 15, and the aunt with whom he lived since then died about one and a half years ago. He had a girlfriend, we hear that her name was Sonja. He was still a doctoral student (in poetics) at Leiden ( http://www.literatuurwetenschap.leidenuniv.nl/) and was an editor at the Flemish literary journal Yang ( http://www.yangtijdschrift.be/ ) and contributor at the journal Parmentier ( http://www.literairtijdschriftparmentier.nl/). Since 2005, Jeroen had come very infrequently to his old haunts on IRC, and like the real Marcel Duchamp (who chose chess over 'Art'), duchamp had become an occassional figure of online dadaism, but a real figure in Dutch literary circles, especially those involved in dutch poetics. He had also been more involved with his blog, and travels (to Korea, and to NY recently).

The suicide of anyone this young is always a waste, but why are we so exercised, who only knew him online, and that too fleetingly (ok, I did)? In the past years as #icus fractured and lost its regulars, the dissonance grew even more - with duchamp logging in during the afternoons (as per EST) and the rest of us logging in later. IRC must have seemed even more of the desert of the unreal than usual. Whenever I did see him, he would paste to me in the room the results of his explorations with female chatters in #israel and #israel20+, usually fragmentary chats, attempts at connections with the "Mythical Jewess". He preferred those random conversations rather than anything personal or structured with anyone in the room. Others said that looking at the topics on his blog (which grew concerned with Lebanon and Iraq at one point), he was mentally located outside the web, and had become more reflective.

These will remain speculations. What matters to me is more than the person Jeroen Mettes, or the chatter duchamp, this is the definitive end of an era (which has been long in dying). We all evolved - some more than others - with the so-called 'golden age' of IRC - 1998-2000. Jeroen was a part of this world since 1997 up to three weeks ago, when he last logged on to #icus. Those years, and the influence of duchamp within those experiences, within the community which formed on Dalnet will certainly be something I consider formative. So many hours, even days spent in that room? And what remains without duchamp's wit - which was never meant to hurt, demean or more than mildly ridicule, compared to some? It is difficult to believe that his voice will never be heard again.

And his pronouncements on the bases of fascism are certainly worth a more detailed examination. For example, 'being occupied', 'real people' (<KillWhitey> as Péguy clearly said), 'Sex and the City', 'social sciences', 'creative journals', 'oneself', 'jesuits', etc., are all valid origins of fascism. I will also miss his 12" of CARNAL XTC which I hope Sonja came to know and love; his colored ascii popups (circa 2004 - in concert with cubechip), his gentle predeliction for online jewesses (his word), his habit of saying 'wb' to himself when he rejoined on disconnection (to which the correct response is thx), his mindfucks with the jpegs of his 'sister' Amy (circa 1998 - I was a victim), his chatpoems (which always ended in syntax with the informative <end>), his understanding of the deeper significance of tubcat, his inclusive formulations (viz. 'didn't we all', 'haven't we all', 'don't we all' - for anything and anything), his wish to see us all dead (in a nice way), and so on.

How much of that I've imbibed without knowing and made a part of my own being, my own construction of wit and sarcasm - even outside the realm of the net! How he has influenced all of us who interacted with him. There will be never be a more influential Dalneter. Truly, he invented IRC, as it was, the 'art as anti-art' of chat (as crystal put it), as the us-despite-us, as our hidden sanctum, the source of lifelong hates and sometimes lifelong love.

We will keep his nickname alive when it finally deregisters so that there is never another Dalnet duchamp. His Dutch friends plan to keep his blog alive (he influenced so many, in realms where we knew him least). What remains of a man when he dies - email accounts (still sadly we see jmettes@yahoo.com in our lists and inboxes), his friendster profiles (mausoleums).. who manages it all when we die? So much detritus in one life.

We will also keep the channel going for all who may want to come and chat, once more a few words, some unfulfilled lurking, and open random query windows. The golden age of Dalnet is truly gone, and one hope of reviving it is now in ashes in the Hague.

mamba.
October 1, 2006.

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.

http://brakkehondblog.caster.be/2006/09/26/eresaluut-aan-mettes-in-de-morgen/ (Newspaper article about Jeroen, translation is available - email me)
http://reugebrink.skynetblogs.be/post/3714868/jeroen-mettes-19782006 (blog post from his Yang colleague)
http://callipyge.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycomments&dcid=763&entryid=763 (deusi's entry for duchamp)