The Lovely Theresa

#64. So this is my version of the story. Please keep it in mind when the others come out.

A poem she gave me on Valentine’s day, 1995

#63. Theresa Duncan was the smartest person I’ve ever met. She was too beautiful for words. And she was fucking hysterically funny. Her closest match in both of those categories was her life partner Jeremy. Together, Theresa and Jeremy were a living example for me how to have a creative existence. They made me want to lead a life less ordinary.

Valentine’s Day, 1995

#62. One last story: I went back to the church a few days after everything had happened. It was raining and I wandered around looking for something, I wasn’t sure what. Father Frank happened to be there so I sat down with him and we talked for an hour. He told me a story about how Theresa had recently bought a gift for his son, and we both nearly started crying. We didn’t need to explain what we felt like that meant.

The last email I got from Theresa, July 2 2007:

“I feel wonderful, sorry to be unobtainable there for a bit.

#61. Seven years ago Theresa and I sat in the audience and watched Jeremy discuss his art at the SF MOMA. I could have just made these new songs and put them out with some hope that they’d stand on their own, and perhaps they would. But I just felt like some details were missing, and maybe that the back story was important enough to take the extra time to set up. Again, Jeremy’s example was an inspiration: it’s okay to explain yourself a little. It doesn’t “break” the art.

So I’ve written this blog, and these songs, to do my best to humanize Theresa and Jeremy. And maybe to include myself in the story, too, because I was a part of it. Or maybe they were a part of mine.

And more importantly because someone needs to say she was not insane, or an ice queen, or paranoid. And that he was not a slave to her whims, cast under her evil siren spell. Sorry, Mr. Easton Ellis. Perhaps Mr. Noe or Mr. Van Sant will direct your fictitious made-for-TV-movie some day. But I can’t complete the equation for you, or for myself. I just have these memories.

 Jeremy at the MOMA, 2005.

#60. The elephant in the room here is that I, myself, am not above trying to shape the story, or to be a part of it. I understand the appeal of two beautiful talented people who, alive, inspired envy as much as anything else. For them to take their own lives is a conclusion nobody expected, and we all want to understand why. And so I keep returning to what I have left to make sense of it. 

T + Marcel in Paris, 1995

#59. I was contacted to be in a documentary about them recently. I was skeptical, but the filmmaker’s focus seemed to be on their being artists, not on the drama. So I sat for a few hours, a talking head. I kept my composure until he asked me what art meant and I realized that I wasn’t sure anymore. Theresa and Jeremy, alive, had shown me that living a creative life is valid, and has meaning; but then they seemed to contradict their own point. So now what am I supposed to do? 

Paris 1995

#58. Maybe you are reading this a few months or years from now, and the inevitable movie is out, and Angelina Jolie and Ryan Gosling are Theresa and Jeremy. And surely it will be a fantasy, a beautiful lie even. But as absurd and outrageous as it might be, I actually think they would be pleased. Amused, certainly; and who wouldn’t want to live forever in celluloid?

The iconographers have already begun: painting by J Kearns

#57. I arrived at Beck’s house in Hancock Park and was introduced to his daughter, an adorable blonde three year old named Tuesday. The only other Tuesday I’d met was Theresa’s dog. I think Beck misses Theresa and Jeremy. They were friends.

Sitting in Beck’s kitchen, waiting. He was really sweet and fun to talk to. We talked about sampling, his upcoming projects, and how hard it can be to keep good musicians in your band. It was so cool to hear a living legend with the same problems as other mortals. 

#56. In a strange twist, a friend recommended me for a project with Beck last year, and I was scheduled to meet with him in his home. I talked to Theresa’s mom and she said Theresa and Jeremy would want me to meet with him. But I was scared. Does he know I knew them? Does he care? Will the higher ups in Sea Org be watching? 

Another photo Theresa sent me from the beach blanket Scientology series.

#55. Beck told reporters he’d never met her. I, off the record, told US Weekly it was untrue. And I sent them the photos to prove it.

Facts are facts.

#54. I wish it had been an elaborate hoax. There were hundreds of overactive imaginations connecting things not meant to be connected: The CIA, Anna Gaskell’s dad, Chateau Marmont. Theresa would have LOVED it.

Notes for Jeremy’s Memorial, October 2007.

#53. A title card here would read “Scene Missing”: a lost week during which I went about my life while Jeremy mourned his Lovely Theresa and then followed her path. I wasn’t there. I didn’t know. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him either.

Thanksgiving 2006.