If you like the movie Fight Club, there’s a line: “…On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” I found your piece interesting because since my youngest son passed away in 2020 I’ve felt that on my “long enough timeline” it has been inevitable that everyone around me also lose their parent / partner / someone devastatingly dear. My friend lost his mother, as did my business partner. I absorb their stories.

Then there’s David Bowie, Anthony Bourdain, Tyler (drummer for Foo Fighters) and Chandler (well, actor Matthew Perry), Princess Lea— you know— my childhood heroes passing away. I obsessed through everything I could find about their deaths and their lives.

I also did something similar to what you wrote about when the Barcelona terrorist killed children and adults indiscriminately— I found myself reading through every dead person’s life. I have friends that were at the scene of the recent Gaza attacks that included a psytrance event. I knew almost all the DJs. Didn’t know anyone who was kidnapped or killed. But I read through everyone’s story.

Death unites us all, it’s a strange definitive phenomena. I haven’t before now wondered why I obsess about reading about each and every single one of those stories to death (sorry, not sorry).

I think—although this may change over time—it’s because every thread in the timeline connects me to feeling happy that I am alive. The contrast is astounding. Maybe I like feeling astounded.