On that time I met David Carr

Like most of the people I follow on Twitter, I was a regular reader of David Carr’s and was really saddened to learn Thursday evening he had passed away. There have been some wonderful tributes to him that I encourage everyone to read (like here, here, and here). I don’t have much to add about his (though I think he’s the best example of someone being able to make the most of their life in the second act).

I met Carr once, and thought I’d share the story because it shows his almost unique capacity for empathy, and because it’s a memory that I hope I’ll always keep with me.

It was 2008 and Carr was on his book tour to promote his memoir, The Night of the Gun. He was reading and talking at the Douglas-Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library, in the Central District. In the book, Carr uses his skills as a writer and reporter to investigate his own past, tracking down people that he’s wronged, or that he bought or used drugs with. They talked to him on the record and he wrote openly about coming to grips with that past and compared their recollections and copies of arrest reports to his own memory. It really was a brave book to write, and it’s one that you ponder long after you’ve finished reading it.

When he came to the library, the crowd seem to be made up of two crowds: writers and recovering alcoholics, with some overlap, I’m sure. A lot of people in the crowd who asked questions, did so asking questions relating to their own recoveries or experiences. What I most remember was the signing line, because it wasn’t like any other’s that I’ve been in. I have a large signed book collection from the book readings I’ve been to, but the time you spend with a writer is usually so brief. It’s usually enough small talk to state your name and maybe shake hands while the author scribbles their signature on the title page and thanks you for coming out. It wasn’t so with David Carr.

When he greeted people in line to sign copies of The Night of the Gun, he spent a few minutes with each person. I remember him talking to everyone and asking questions about their lives and why they came out to see him. One older man talked about his own struggles with sobriety and Carr told him that he understood and said that if he took just a sip of wine, he could almost guarantee that he’d be waking up in jail the next morning crying and with no recollection of what happened.

I was 29 at the time and still having a hard time calling myself a writer, certainly not for being mentioned in the same sentence or category as the media critic for the New York Times — and that’s something I’ll never feel comfortable with. But when I went to my first SXSW the year before, I decided that I wanted to take writing about music more seriously than I had before and going to as many shows as I possibly could.

But when it was my time at the front of the line, he asked me if I was a writer too and then what I wrote about. I said something about just being a music blogger and he told me that he was too. He told me about how he just went to Bonnaroo to cover it for a blog on the Times’ website. I asked him if he waited up to see Kanye West, who infamously began his Glow in the Dark tour set that year somewhere around sunrise (at 4:40am). He said no, but that his favorite band he saw was My Morning Jacket and that his wife is such a huge fan (of that, he wrote, “Mrs. Carr… puts the band’s musical achievements on par with the discovery of gravity”).

When you read David Carr, particularly The Night of the Gun, you read someone who doesn’t take where he’s gotten for granted. In the book, he says, “Here is what I deserved: hepatitis C, federal prison time, H.I.V., a cold park bench, an early, addled death. Here is what I got: the smart, pretty wife, the three lovely children, the job that impresses.” He understands as better than anyone that it would be so easy to give up on him.

That evening in Seattle, and I’m sure every other night on that tour and almost every other circumstance where he met someone for the first time, he made an effort to make a personal, meaningful connection with each person.

When I found out last night, when I should have been asleep, of Mr. Carr’s passing. I went to my bookshelf to find my copy of The Night of the Gun to see what he inscribed in it. He wrote: “Chris- Thank you for the read & for showing up at (sic) reading. Keep on rocking in the free world. Bless you for coming, David Carr, 8/21/08.”

It’s the least I could do.

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