I swept all of the Theresa Duncan photos off of my desktop today after reading Kate Coe’s insightful, well-reported piece on Duncan and Jeremy Blake. Whatever is most fascinating about Duncan is probably long since buried in her family history and will never be uncovered. What kind of life would she have had in order to really fly off the rails like that. Only after reading Coe’s story does suicide fit. Before that, it was a mystery. Now we know just how messed up the poor girl was. Now the focus must be on Blake – how could he have been so wrapped up in her that he threw away everything else in his life.

For Theresa Duncan, in her style, gone too soon.

VANISHED
Emily Dickinson

She died, — this was the way she died;
And when her breath was done,
Took up her simple wardrobe
And started for the sun.

Her little figure at the gate
The angels must have spied,
Since I could never find her
Upon the mortal side.

What Happens when a Blogger Disappears?

In looking for further info on Theresa Duncan, I came upon this post, courtesy of LA Observed, that is indeed uncharacteristic and could be a clue as to what was going on in her mind in the months leading up to her death.

One more thing on the Wit of the Staircase, you can see by this traffic graph that things were slow on the blog but took a great forwards after news of her death.

The recent double suicide of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake has probably given them more fame on the web and in print than they otherwise would have had. I have no patience for suicide, I must say. Life is too short to begin with. Nonetheless, there is an urge, a tug inside that says if only I’d known sooner. I didn’t even know them, of course, but many did. This LA Times story tells the whole ugly tale. There was supposedly a paranoia about Scientology (which, on its face, smacks either of paranoid schizophrenia or drugs or both). There was a bond of love between them. He was more successful than she. But still, she killed herself and he walked into the water and never came back out.

Why? WHY?

So I went to her blog, which still exists as it did on the day she departed. The last post will become as famous as her death will become. The trouble is, you can’t comment on it. I would have but it says that comments are moderated. So who is going to go and approve those comments? Who will have access to her blog? Will they just sink it? It was quite a piece of web literature on its own and to have it disappear by deleting it seems a waste. So here we are, at a cultural crossroads. What to do with a writer’s lit blog when the writer kills themselves? I think I will contact Typepad and see what they say about it. Her last entry was this:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens–second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day’s events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.”

–Reynolds Price

I’m guessing this means that she was afraid of the Scientologists. I’m posting her quite revealing interview with LAist after the jump. She has an obscure mind but a unique wit. It isn’t that surprising, though, after reading it that she would kill herself.

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