When I was 21, my friend Tony died. It was a tough, sad decline and his friends like me witnessed it up close. Or at least I thought we were up close, because what's clear to me now, is that none of us really understood what Tony was going through. And then, suddenly, he was gone. For me and some of his other friends, losing Tony at age 21 was a major, defining moment in our lives, and all these years later, he's still an important figure in what made us who we are.
We all have our own memories of Tony, and what I found working on this piece was: we remember some of the same things differently. And we all look back at our time with Tony *through the lens* of our *own* lives, so we all look back at *Tony* differently. I guess that's to be expected, but working on this put that into focus for me.
April 7, 2021 marks 25 years since all that happened. So I sat down with some of Tony's friends to talk about him again and to tell some Tony stories and to try and understand better what happened back in 1996 and why has Tony loomed large in our lives all these years.
👉🏾 Listen to Part 2 here: echokinesis.com
🙏🏽 Thank you to the participants, my friends: Thea Anderson, Brenda Baletti, David Goldberg, Brent Kanbayashi, Jonah Moran, and Rhasaan Orange.
🎹 Music by Tyler Cash. Thanks to Eric Freidenberg for editorial advice and Luz Fleming for expert additional editing, mixing, recording, and technical guidance. Cover photo by Max Osterweis.
⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes discussions of drug use, mental illness, and some language that may not be appropriate for kids. Listener discretion is advised.