Sean and i like to make things....

Sean and i like to make things. I was so happy to hear that Sean was going to attend Art Center of Pasadena while i lived in LA. Quite a wonderful reputation this amazing school has. I was excited to live vicariously through him on his path to creative higher education, hoping to attend a few lectures with him and maybe concoct a few ridiculous ideas together. Sean has this part of his brain that comes up with ideas and images and concepts that make you say, “wow, where did that come from...who could of thought of that.” his perspective is an anomaly.

Sean made me something that is one of my most precious belongings. a birthday wish, not a card, but a technically measured, fitted and laser designed, battery operated small wooden box with a red button on it. He was still exploring sculpture at this point before his switch to animation. When you pressed the red button, Sean’s voice - recorded internally - spoke in an austere confirming manner:

“happy birthday kotch! you have grown into a fine, young woman”

In Sean’s winning effort to express comically, aesthetically and uniquely - he had no idea the profound impact this object would have on me through the years. I received the small wooden box at a time when i was vulnerable, frustrated, lonely, doubtful, easily saddened, a bit confused and needed a pat on the back - daily really.

well Sean gave me that. i pressed that red button within my first 15 minutes of waking during those months, sometimes a few times a day. just hearing Sean’s voice tell me i had ‘grown into a fine young woman’ really gave me the affirmation i needed then - not so much in the words—but mostly the tone of his obviously rehearsed, regal, masculine voice. Sean and this box continue to father, coach and support me in immeasurable ways.

Sean is my Stuart Smalley.

I have been more introspective regarding death in last few years as my husband lost his first wife to breast cancer. Todd has shared with me one of his most meaningful passages from a book alluding to the concept that one’s body is a mere dry dock for your soul - a travelling ship. I appreciated this idea so much because it is very understandable and viable to me. This is how i feel about loved ones that have passed and our dear friend Sean. He is still with us, perhaps onto the next dock. You will notice that i have not used the past tense but rather the present tense when referring to Sean as a testament to this theory. I believe he still “does” what he “did” somewhere out there.

And of course, i will always have my wooden box when i want to hear his voice.

love kotch xoxoxoxox

Sean - Wrestling - Pink Toe Nails

I was letting my girlfriend's four year old paint my toe nails the other day and it reminded me of a story that Sean once told me. In high school he was on the wrestling team which requires all the team members to gather around a scale in the locker room before every meet and strip down to their underwear and get on the scale in front of each other to see if they have "made weight". Well, as it turns out, it wasn't until Sean was in the middle of this testosterone fueled scenario that he realized that he had forgotten that the day before he had let his girlfriend paint his toenails pink. Now there have been times when toe nail polish on a guy is something to flaunt but I assure you such was not the case in Alubquerque NM in the late 1980's in a locker room full of sweaty jocks. But that was Sean. Standing on a scale in his tighty whities with pink toe nails.

megan buchanan said...

i moved out to northern arizona with my daughter, grainne, last october and had not kept in close touch with sean, although a bell had been ringing in my head to call him for the past month or so.

like everyone else who knew him, i, too, have a handful of great sean stories, some heartbreakers and some sidesplitters. a few things: everytime i saw him, he asked when i was going to sell him my truck, a babyblue 1987 ford f150 with ridiculously low mileage. before i left, he and i completed a project i had dreamed about for years, something everyone else thought was silly, except for sean: mahogany rails on the truck. working in his backyard, sweating and cooling off with the hose in late summer pasadena heat, there was a hilarious 4th-grade underwear moment, both of us standing in the bed of the truck under a tree: i'll show you mine if you show me yours, he said. except sean wasn't wearing any. classic.

living out here in flagstaff now, there are gazillions of pickups but none have mahogany rails made by sean sullivan.

he and my daughter had a special connection. he made her a baton for her 9th birthday called the flying gwendolyn, a name they each called the other. when he was sick of pasadena meetings we would drive around and tell each other our secrets. i trusted him.

when i heard the news, i wailed and wrote a little song for him. my daughter and i have been mourning him by ourselves out here and would have been out for the memorial but it was her birthday and her party was on saturday.

his light was very bright. i was thinking how he never got to be an old man, but instead will be remembered always as the vital, radiant young man that we all love so so much. so here's the little song--

all of this is true:
i danced with you
in the lumberyard
last summer
my friend

swallowed by a river
on saturday
i'm full of sand
my friend

your hugs were like the sun
i wasn't done with you
your voice contained the sun
i wasn't done with you
dancing through the lumberyard
my friend

4:32 PM

TREE DEDICATION

OK, the tree dedication in Denver is shaping up. There is one minor change: please send donations for the tree fund to the new address....

Michel Allen
200 East 16th street
New York, NY  10003

Otherwise all other details remain the same (see previous posting). Should you have any further questions feel free to post them under this heading.

Thank you all so much, and we look forward to seeing you on October 1st.

CHE

I was watching the Motorcycle Diaries a couple of nights ago, marveling at the scene near the end where Che decides to swim the river that seperates the patients and the doctor's. It was such a beautiful metaphor of Guevara's life and struggles to bridge the gap between the have's and the have not's. But when he started to really struggle at the end I sudden broke into tears as I imagined the way in which Sean died. It overwhelmed me. My tears could not be held back.

I don't believe in fate, I don't believe that things happen for a reason. I believe we live in a world that must interact with forces beyond our control. But what I believe is less certain than what I know. And that is that I will always long to see my friend Sean just one more time.

I miss you Sean.

An excerpt from the latest newsletter...

...a memorial.

Our good friend Sean Michael Sullivan, man-about-town and sunshine spirit, creator of Ben the Canary (www.benthecanary.com) and other amazing spectacles, was taken from this earth by a couple of really beautiful angels on August 20th 2005, while playing with friends on the Kern River in Kern County, California.

Before he left us, we wrote a song for him. You may have heard it if you were at the last Derby show. It's called "The Sun is Shining in My Eyes" and it goes:

I can't tell left from right
I can't find the same place twice
I don't hear what they say
But I know it doesn't matter anyway

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

I don't know what's in front of me
I open up my eyes but all that I can see
Everything is light
And anything that happens, baby, it's alright

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

Sean will be greatly missed, many more songs shall surely be inspired by his smile and singular gait, and The Evangenitals have decided to release an EP of all of the songs we were writing for Sean's Ben the Canary project, that we had the honor of playing for him before he was sublimated into 100% pure golden soul.

Thank you, Sean.

We
Fall
Down

Juli, Lisa, Brett, Jones, and Salad
The Evangenitals

Please see the Tree Dedication and Scholarship below...

Sean in 2000.
Love, Julie

Tree Dedication and Scholarship

Michel Allen sent this in....


Please jon us to dedicate a tree to Sean.

On Saturday, October 1st at the University of Denver, we will
celebrate Sean by dedicating a tree in his honor.

We'll meet on the steps to the library at 3:30, and walk over to the site by 4PM.
 
At 6PM, we'll be eating at the Blue Bonnet.
The address is 457 S. Broadway, Denver, CO.
 
Dress is very casual.  If you are not staying with friends
the Lowes Denver is close to DU and is offering us special
DU rates.

Donations for the tree should be made out to:
"The Sean Sullivan Tree Fund."
We need to raise $1,500.
 
Please mail the tree donation to my work address below,
and I will take care of everything:
Michel Allen
11 East 36th street
New York, NY 10016
 
*** *** *** *** *** ***

On another note, there will be a scholarship in Sean's
name given to a student in the Mass Comm department. 
To give money to the scholarship fund:
Please write checks to University of Denver
and mail the checks to:
Richard Holtz
University of Denver
2190 S. High Street
Denver, CO  80208
 
With every donation a note will go to Sean's mother
with your name but not an amount. 
 
Thank you all for your support.
I look forward to seeing everyone and toasting Sean!