This is the final installment of Time To Go written by Chris Morris.I'm pleased to have introduced some new fans to his work. 
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Time to go
[SIZE=+1]`I am at best a Brian Wilson but a Brian Wilson before making Pet Sounds'[/SIZE]
Sunday July 4, 1999
The Editor writes: Last month, Richard Geefe guaranteed to end his life this November and report for The Observer on his heroic struggle with the consequences of that decision. This week, however, he sent only the following short submission:
NOT FOR PUBLICATION:
You have made me too depressed to write. Unlike the great melancholics - Baudelaire, Beethoven - I have no genius from which to draw consolation. I am at best a Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson who went to bed before making Pet Sounds.
Fuck you all.
I have faced much criticism already for my decision to print this - because of a possible reading of Richard's note that infers he did not in fact want it published. It is my sincere belief that his mind was not in any sort of professional balance when he wrote it. But in fact its publication is exactly what he would have wanted. We also hope that the following accounts from those who dined with Richard on his last night will illuminate for others the inherent dangers of planning one's own suicide in advance and being generally depressed.
Hosanna Bell, lifestyle tv producer: `I was flabbergasted by how attractive Richard was in the flesh. Yes, we all thought his photo was adorable, but actually to look into his eyes was to melt in the devastating chaos of his tortured soul. And despite everything, that soul was a handsome man weeping in a marble shower soaping a perfect member. `I believe he put us in touch with our inner sob. At table, the only voice of dissent came from Richard's commissioning editor, Jonathan Swude, who seemed to be tactically deprecating our praise so that we doubled it in protest.'
Myles Gedge, novelist: `From the moment Geefe arrived, his mouth crammed with lit cigarettes, one could tell that his syzygous mind was a condign prisoner of raging turmoil - a turmoil that carved his neurons and dendrites into afunctionate butter. He was pissed. Bleating. Zekkulous. But somehow, the charisma of his demons chop-charmed the women like bolassed rheas.'
Hosanna Bell: `Richard sat with me for over an hour while we talked about beauty and the warm arts. I told him how I'd been suicidal myself for six months after giving birth until I'd decided to sue my baby for what it had done to my figure. I showed him my wrist scars and he spoke to me like a poet-philosopher.'
Bridget Chandler, friend: `Hosanna was sitting on Richard's knee when he said "Only the very ugly is truly beautiful" and looked her straight in the eye. Then he smiled slyly at me over her shoulder. I knew he was tearing himself up on his own sharpness but people were hanging on his every word and he revelled in the attention. "If the printed word has any meaning," he said in guru tones, "then it must come from the very edge of fucky bum boo boo." Jaws dropped. Johnny Swude was furious. He said Time to Go was the finest copy he had ever commissioned and he wasn't going to have it ruined by his star writer going all fluzie didums on him.'
Sebastian Wront, documentary maker and director of Time to Go - a Chronicle of Courage, for BBC2: `Richard may have been particularly wound up that evening because of the great scene we'd shot that afternoon. We had contacted his estranged wife Helen [mother of their 12-year-old son Jake] and tipped her off about Richard's healthy finances on the condition that she turn up at his flat and go nuts. This was justified because he had been withholding alimony payments and there is no excuse for that because it's a form of financial genocide. Anyway, when Richard realised he'd been set up he lost it completely and we shot some great footage of him daubing his face with black floorpaint and muttering "I'm not here - this isn't happening" while Helen kicked 50 shades of shit out of him. When she left, he went ballistic and hurled me off a balcony, but such footage is well worth the pain of a chipped pelvis.'
Bridget Chandler: `Richard's conduct that evening proved to me that the man I had known and loved was effectively already dead even as he talked and drank. He told us that the best way to kill yourself was to buy 200 feet of nylon rope, tie one end round your neck, the other round a lamppost, get in your car and floor the accelerator. That's how his uncle had done it. Richard was just nine years old. And he'd been forced to ride in the car to stop it crashing when his uncle's head came off. The blood had made the pedals slippery. `At the end of the story the table fell silent. Even Jonathan Swude's lip trembled. He bowed his head and said: "Oh God, Richard, I'm so sorry."
`I asked Richard why he hadn't told us before. "Because it's not true, you fucking morons!" he brayed, and went on to explain that we were all idiots; he could say anything and we'd lap it up - just because we thought his pain meant something. He said that we wouldn't be giving him a second thought if he wasn't going to kill himself - except that actually he wasn't anyway because the whole thing was a hoax and he was going to say so in his column next week.
`There was a stunned silence, after which Swude koshed him in the teeth with an oyster bowl. And through his blood Richard was still sneering with the defiant joyless grin of a stranded dictator.'
Hosanna Bell: `I tended to Richard as he lay recovering among the pouffes. In that broken state, he radiated the sex appeal of a warrior fresh from battle.
`I could see he had just treated us to his most savage and moving cry for help yet. I was choked up at the time but I know if I could read about it in Richard's column, I'd be crying for the rest of the year.'
Myles Gedge: `Richard re- entered the room, heamic strands of buccal mucilage dancing from his lip. But his mollusc-spiculed physiognomy ecdysed into a grim sconce of triumph as he levitated a handful of car keys and said: "I don't care whose it is, I'm going to drive round pissed until I crash."'
Hosanna Bell: `When we heard the front door slam, we all felt awful.'
The Editor writes: At three o'clock that morning, Richard Geefe's remains were found dripping through the steering wheel of a Land-Rover Discovery. Our deepest sympathy to his family and friends. Some of his guts got cooked on the exhaust pipe.'
Sebastian Wront: `Looking back on the tragic events of Thursday night, I reflect on our excellent month filming with Richard and I think the public do have something to answer for here. I hope from now on the viewers of television programmes will realise just how much pressure they place on programme makers and their subjects. I should also point out with regret that we are taking legal action over Geefe's breach of the new BBC honesty contract. He was being filmed on the understanding that he would kill himself in November. His death this week seriously contravenes that agreement.' The Editor writes: We are currently negotiating terms with Richard's son Jake to take over Richard's column. Depression is all too often an inheritable trait and there is a tragic likelihood that Jake will feel suicidal himself at some point. We sincerely hope this will not be the case. In the meantime, I will be writing here about the guilt-like feelings I may encounter if I conclude that I did have a role in Richard's death after all, albeit in a way that I simply could not have foreseen when I first persuaded him to kill himself.
----------------------------------------------------
Richard Geefe: The Complete Works
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Time to go
[SIZE=+1]`I am at best a Brian Wilson but a Brian Wilson before making Pet Sounds'[/SIZE]
Sunday July 4, 1999
The Editor writes: Last month, Richard Geefe guaranteed to end his life this November and report for The Observer on his heroic struggle with the consequences of that decision. This week, however, he sent only the following short submission:
NOT FOR PUBLICATION:
You have made me too depressed to write. Unlike the great melancholics - Baudelaire, Beethoven - I have no genius from which to draw consolation. I am at best a Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson who went to bed before making Pet Sounds.
Fuck you all.
I have faced much criticism already for my decision to print this - because of a possible reading of Richard's note that infers he did not in fact want it published. It is my sincere belief that his mind was not in any sort of professional balance when he wrote it. But in fact its publication is exactly what he would have wanted. We also hope that the following accounts from those who dined with Richard on his last night will illuminate for others the inherent dangers of planning one's own suicide in advance and being generally depressed.
Hosanna Bell, lifestyle tv producer: `I was flabbergasted by how attractive Richard was in the flesh. Yes, we all thought his photo was adorable, but actually to look into his eyes was to melt in the devastating chaos of his tortured soul. And despite everything, that soul was a handsome man weeping in a marble shower soaping a perfect member. `I believe he put us in touch with our inner sob. At table, the only voice of dissent came from Richard's commissioning editor, Jonathan Swude, who seemed to be tactically deprecating our praise so that we doubled it in protest.'
Myles Gedge, novelist: `From the moment Geefe arrived, his mouth crammed with lit cigarettes, one could tell that his syzygous mind was a condign prisoner of raging turmoil - a turmoil that carved his neurons and dendrites into afunctionate butter. He was pissed. Bleating. Zekkulous. But somehow, the charisma of his demons chop-charmed the women like bolassed rheas.'
Hosanna Bell: `Richard sat with me for over an hour while we talked about beauty and the warm arts. I told him how I'd been suicidal myself for six months after giving birth until I'd decided to sue my baby for what it had done to my figure. I showed him my wrist scars and he spoke to me like a poet-philosopher.'
Bridget Chandler, friend: `Hosanna was sitting on Richard's knee when he said "Only the very ugly is truly beautiful" and looked her straight in the eye. Then he smiled slyly at me over her shoulder. I knew he was tearing himself up on his own sharpness but people were hanging on his every word and he revelled in the attention. "If the printed word has any meaning," he said in guru tones, "then it must come from the very edge of fucky bum boo boo." Jaws dropped. Johnny Swude was furious. He said Time to Go was the finest copy he had ever commissioned and he wasn't going to have it ruined by his star writer going all fluzie didums on him.'
Sebastian Wront, documentary maker and director of Time to Go - a Chronicle of Courage, for BBC2: `Richard may have been particularly wound up that evening because of the great scene we'd shot that afternoon. We had contacted his estranged wife Helen [mother of their 12-year-old son Jake] and tipped her off about Richard's healthy finances on the condition that she turn up at his flat and go nuts. This was justified because he had been withholding alimony payments and there is no excuse for that because it's a form of financial genocide. Anyway, when Richard realised he'd been set up he lost it completely and we shot some great footage of him daubing his face with black floorpaint and muttering "I'm not here - this isn't happening" while Helen kicked 50 shades of shit out of him. When she left, he went ballistic and hurled me off a balcony, but such footage is well worth the pain of a chipped pelvis.'
Bridget Chandler: `Richard's conduct that evening proved to me that the man I had known and loved was effectively already dead even as he talked and drank. He told us that the best way to kill yourself was to buy 200 feet of nylon rope, tie one end round your neck, the other round a lamppost, get in your car and floor the accelerator. That's how his uncle had done it. Richard was just nine years old. And he'd been forced to ride in the car to stop it crashing when his uncle's head came off. The blood had made the pedals slippery. `At the end of the story the table fell silent. Even Jonathan Swude's lip trembled. He bowed his head and said: "Oh God, Richard, I'm so sorry."
`I asked Richard why he hadn't told us before. "Because it's not true, you fucking morons!" he brayed, and went on to explain that we were all idiots; he could say anything and we'd lap it up - just because we thought his pain meant something. He said that we wouldn't be giving him a second thought if he wasn't going to kill himself - except that actually he wasn't anyway because the whole thing was a hoax and he was going to say so in his column next week.
`There was a stunned silence, after which Swude koshed him in the teeth with an oyster bowl. And through his blood Richard was still sneering with the defiant joyless grin of a stranded dictator.'
Hosanna Bell: `I tended to Richard as he lay recovering among the pouffes. In that broken state, he radiated the sex appeal of a warrior fresh from battle.
`I could see he had just treated us to his most savage and moving cry for help yet. I was choked up at the time but I know if I could read about it in Richard's column, I'd be crying for the rest of the year.'
Myles Gedge: `Richard re- entered the room, heamic strands of buccal mucilage dancing from his lip. But his mollusc-spiculed physiognomy ecdysed into a grim sconce of triumph as he levitated a handful of car keys and said: "I don't care whose it is, I'm going to drive round pissed until I crash."'
Hosanna Bell: `When we heard the front door slam, we all felt awful.'
The Editor writes: At three o'clock that morning, Richard Geefe's remains were found dripping through the steering wheel of a Land-Rover Discovery. Our deepest sympathy to his family and friends. Some of his guts got cooked on the exhaust pipe.'
Sebastian Wront: `Looking back on the tragic events of Thursday night, I reflect on our excellent month filming with Richard and I think the public do have something to answer for here. I hope from now on the viewers of television programmes will realise just how much pressure they place on programme makers and their subjects. I should also point out with regret that we are taking legal action over Geefe's breach of the new BBC honesty contract. He was being filmed on the understanding that he would kill himself in November. His death this week seriously contravenes that agreement.' The Editor writes: We are currently negotiating terms with Richard's son Jake to take over Richard's column. Depression is all too often an inheritable trait and there is a tragic likelihood that Jake will feel suicidal himself at some point. We sincerely hope this will not be the case. In the meantime, I will be writing here about the guilt-like feelings I may encounter if I conclude that I did have a role in Richard's death after all, albeit in a way that I simply could not have foreseen when I first persuaded him to kill himself.
----------------------------------------------------
Richard Geefe: The Complete Works
