Malachi Ritscher suicide

[vanbeat]

If this has been covered, I apologize.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bil...parent-suicide/

Edited November 9, 2006 by vanbeat

[vanbeat]

Ken Vandermark has it on his site as well. Very sad.

http://www.kenvandermark.com/

[Jay]

Holy crap - I didn't even know about this - other than reading about it in the Sun Times (unidentified at the time).

His site is still up, though: http://www.savagesound.com/

What a loss for our community. Speechless

If this has been covered, I apologize.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bil...parent-suicide/

[Jay]

Note that Dave Rempis wrote this.

Ken Vandermark has it on his site as well. Very sad.

http://www.kenvandermark.com/

[rostasi]

I can't help thinking that this may not have happened

if he were around on Tuesday - better yet - Wednesday?

Or maybe it was bound to happen regardless?

Possibly on tenterhooks about the upcoming results

and just couldn't deal?

Sad really...and to burden Bruno with this...

Rod

[Randy Twizzle]

I can't help thinking that this may not have happened

if he were around on Tuesday - better yet - Wednesday?

Or maybe it was bound to happen regardless?

Possibly on tenterhooks about the upcoming results

and just couldn't deal?

Rod

Do you really think that someone so obsessed with an issue that he's willing to kill himself in such a gruesome manner is going to sit around and wait until the final results in the Virginia senate race are available before he decides whether to set himself on fire.

[rostasi]

Do you really think that someone so obsessed with an issue that he's willing to kill himself in such a gruesome manner is going to sit around and wait until the final results in the Virginia senate race are available before he decides whether to set himself on fire.

Lots of loaded words there to perk it up.

Hell Randy I don't know what was in his mind do I? But what we do know is that he said that he was sorry that he didn't murder Rumsfeld when he had the chance.

Obsession? Sounds like he was extremely distraught to me! I don't think that it's too far off to think what I said earlier.

Gruesome? Yeah, to nearly everyone, but maybe not to him? Favorite smell: turpentine?

I didn't even listen or watch the whole day of the elections because I was ready for a replay of the '04 shenanigans.

Who knows what his reactions to that debacle was. So, I don't think it's that far off to think that maybe a glimmer of hope may have saved his life.

[Big Al]

But what we do know is that he said that he was sorry that he didn't murder Rumsfeld when he had the chance.

[rostasi]

Well, that's the way that I read this statement of his:

"I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way - at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past..."

[sheldonm]

I've run into the guys several times in Chicago; didn't really know the guy but seemed like a good guy !

m~

[blake]

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feat...tscher_19542006

[sheldonm]

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feat...tscher_19542006

Thanks for posting Greg.....too damn strange!

m~

[Chuck Nessa]

Thank you.

[Claude]

Here's the tribute website that is mentionned in the Al-Jazeera report:

http://iheardyoumalachi.org

[Larry Kart]

Contrary to what Jennifer Diaz says toward the end of that Al Jazeera report, there was a great deal of intense discussion about this on the Chicago Reader website (and elsewhere too, IIRC) right after Malachai's identity was discovered:

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bil...parent-suicide/

Now it's possible that the story wasn't prominently featured throughout the media for primarily political reasons (remember how that woman who protested the war at or near Bush's ranch was trashed as a self-serving eccentric?), but as some of the posts on the above discussion suggest, there is some reason to think that Malachai's motives were somewhat mixed and that members of his immediate family would have been hurt if those actual or apparent mixed motives were hashed over in the press, as they almost certainly would have been.

[clifford_thornton]

There is a YouTube video about this [from Al-Jazeera, of all places] featuring interviews with Dave Rempis, Bruno Johnson of Okka Disk, and Michael Zerang:

Thanks for posting.

I remember when this went down but had left Chicago by that point.

[paul secor]

Thanks for posting the video link - moving/disturbing. As far as I know, there was little reporting/discussion of Malachi Ritscher's self immolation in the national media. I only read about it here.

[Claude]

As I´m listening to The Vandermark 5 "Free Jazz Classics Vol.3 - Six for Rollins" CD, I read in the notes that it was recorded by Malachi Ritscher (at the Empty Bottle in spring 2003).

The sound engineering is perfect, almost audiophile.

http://www.atavistic.com/albums.php?id=141

Edited March 2, 2008 by Claude

[Mark Stryker]

From Holland Cotter's review in the Times of the newly opened Whitney Biennial:

"An installation by Public Collectors, a Chicago group founded by Marc Fischer in 2007, is also about preserving sounds: hundreds of live experimental music performances taped over many years by Malachi Ritscher, a Chicago jazz fanatic and political activist who publicly immolated himself in 2006 as a protest against the war in Iraq. Thanks to Public Collectors, which functions as a custodian of cultural materials that no one, including museums, wants, Ritscher’s life’s work survives, including the briefcases in which he carried equipment, which are here."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/arts/design/2014-whitney-biennial-has-new-faces-and-interesting-choices.html?hp

Edited March 7, 2014 by Mark Stryker

[johnblitweiler]

Mark, thanks mightily for that Public Collectors link. It's true, Malachi was certainly one of the non-musician MVPs here in Chicago. And reading this reminds me of the despair we felt during the long, long Bush-Iraq War years.

[clifford_thornton]

Will try to pop over there on Sunday. Would also like to see what the Battcock component is all about.