For those of you who follow our blog, you will have undoubtedly noticed a lack of new posts, rants, and other general observations from the collective minds of my brother Mike and I. I will now make my attempt to explain why, and pay tribute to a man whom despite many talents and gifts spent his far too short time on earth with us in undeserved anonymity.
I am referring to my brother Mike who passed away in late February, thus the reason for our collective silence. Neither could be helped under the circumstances, though mine is certainly inexcusable.
Those of you who did not know my brother save through what he wrote on this and other blogs were not privileged to know the man behind the comments. His encyclopedic knowledge of music of all genres was amazing to say the least. He possessed an imagination and wit that was biting and on point. He had a way of seeing into issues and events that always made me think, and at times rethink my positions on the same issues. He was an elegant debater and a fabulous ally when hitched to the same idea.
If Mike was anything, he was consistent. You could count on a black t-shirt, blue jeans in various stages of serviceability, long brown hair, and eager smile, and a good laugh. With Mike you got what he brought, and he could care less if you didn’t like it. But, inevitably, if you gave him time, you would like him and want to have him around.
As an artist, he combined the fun of a graffiti tag artist with the technical style of a gothic woodcut printer. His major influences were Vaughn Bode, Egon Schiel, Frank Frazetta, and H.R. Geiger, and combined them in a unique blend that allowed him to tackle about any subject matter. His favorite medium was a black Sharpie marker and a heavy bond art pad. Nothing fancy. He did caricatures well and had a flair for depicting his daughter Eve as a fairy or Zombie Killer. To know him was to love him yet be at times very confused… His knack for instant humor with his ever-present markers was truly a gift.
His failing was an unexplainable inertia when it came to self promotion. People who saw his artwork or read his music anthologies liked what they saw, but Mike could never seem to summon the courage or energy to make his works become more in the public eye. Perhaps he was waiting to be discovered but remained away from those who may have been looking. It is a dichotomy that I will never understand.
Mike leaves us sad, and those who called him either friend and family miss him terribly. As his brother and partner in this blog, I will miss the arguments over the phone after we would post another item or read a response from a follower. We reconnected recently much to my joy and sadness since I now can no longer have drive time conversations with him as I commute home and laugh until the dark hours.
He will be memorialized this Saturday at our church in Savannah, Ga. Most of the attendees will not have known him, but it is my family’s wish that they feel as if they did after the service. For any of you who knew my brother, please say a prayer for comfort, yell at an arch-liberal or ultra-conservative (they are equally irritating), or pull out a good death metal album and give it a spin in his honor.
As for me, I will honor Mike by being as diligent about continuing this blog as long as I am able. It was he who set this project in motion, and for his sake and his memory, I will continue to cry for American change from the center where most of us, I firmly believe, reside.
Chip Grefski
