I’ve had a busy couple of days… yesterday was hectic, today almost equally so. So this is a post that’s a little late.
Yesterday afternoon was a memorial service for an old friend, Ray Hrynkow. A group of us attended art school together, majoring in graphic design—for three years of that 4-year program we were were all pretty much joined at the hip in one of the most intense and exciting times of our lives, studying together, working together, socializing together.
For a few years after we graduated, we continued to socialize, but then gradually drifted off in varying directions, building lives with other people in them, doing different things. But we still keep in touch, and for the most part we all know where the others are, or at least how to track them down. One of those bonds that lasts on some level even when you don’t see someone for years. And then, sadly, see them at a memorial service.
So I’ve been reflecting on that time over the past week and a half. One of the things that I remember (apart from joining Casey and Ray every Friday for a year to watch late-late-night re-runs of The Avengers) is Ray’s love of music. Ray had truly wide-ranging and eclectic musical tastes—I remember that he introduced me to the British group Pentangle. If I recall correctly, he’s also the person who introduced me to Steeleye Span, and that led me to the folk music scene and another intense, abiding interest and community. And that led to other places, and that to others, and here I am today, somewhere I could never have imagined all those years ago. A very good somewhere. And Ray had something to do with it.
It’s not an original thought, but… it’s amazing how the ripples from a dropped pebble spread, and intersect, and then go to stillness again. But the changes remain.
