Spalding Gray has been missing for over a week. Press reports all note that he "has a history of depression" and at least one past suicide attempt.
He was sighted on the Staten Island Ferry the last evening his family saw him. Apparently he had tried to jump off the ferry before. It's been record-making cold here in NYC for two weeks now, the harbor is icing over. I have only a small sense (glad for that) of what kind of feeling would drive someone (someone with family, a children, friends, an artist's success and an artist's life) over the railing and into the unbelievable dark cold of that water.
I can't express how wretched I feel at the prospect of the world without more of his brilliant, intelligent, acutely-observed, angry story-performances.
John Perry Barlow writes about his friend Spalding Gray.
" Doubt is my bottom line. The only thing I don't doubt is my own doubt. "
-Spalding Gray