In December 2002, the city of Chicago
dedicated a statue called "The Flame of the
Millennium"-- a seven-ton, stainless-steel,
abstract rendering of a flame in high wind, standing
over the Kennedy Expressway, just west of the
downtown Loop. Last Friday, November 3, the statue
appeared to be on fire. When authorities got there,
they found a video camera, a canister of gasoline,
a sign reading "Thou Shalt Not Kill",
and a human body so badly charred that it was
impossible to determine its sex. Someone had self-immolated,
near a highway off-ramp, amid rush-hour traffic.
Over the next few days, members of Chicago's
avant-garde music community would be shocked to
learn that the person who'd done this was one
of their own-- someone many of them had been running
into, several nights a week, for more than a decade.
Tougher still would be dealing with the reasons
behind it. According to the statements left on
his website, 52-year-old Malachi Ritscher had
set himself on fire to protest the war in Iraq
and the politics that allowed it to happen. And
thus began the same debate, among his friends,
among the public, on blogs, and in comment boxes
across the internet-- an argument about which
of two pigeonholes we'd slot this into: Was it
an important act of political protest, or the
tragic end of a mentally ill person?
* * *
Most fans of underground music are probably aware
of Chicago's experimental music scene, or at least
its most prominent figures: People like jazz saxophonist
Ken Vandermark, who won a MacArthur Fellowship
in 1999, or the countless players-- Jeb Bishop,
Chad Taylor, Fred Lonberg-Holm-- whose names became
recognizable to indie fans during the 1990s, in
the heyday of Chicago post-rock. If you haven't
spent time in Chicago, though, it's easy to underestimate
how vibrant the scene is, and has been. Over the
past decade, every week in the city has offered
multiple opportunities to see avant-garde music,
improvised instrumental performances, and free
jazz performed by musicians from around the city
and around the world, all of it supported by a
large and complex circle of artists and fans.
Just tracking down who's playing with whom can
be a discographer's nightmare: This is a scene
that cooperates.
And those most involved in that scene knew Malachi
Ritscher. For years, he'd been a constant presence
in the community, and probably its most committed
documentarian: From the late 1980s onward, he
spent an incredible number of nights out at shows,
recording and photographing the musicians, and
spending time with other fans. "According
to his website, he recorded approximately 2,000
shows," says Dave Rempis, who plays saxophone
in the Vandermark Five. "That would be six
years of recording a show every single night.
And from being around this scene, I can tell you
that's not at all an overestimation. He was constantly
at concerts-- I'd see him five nights a week."
"The recording was a big deal," says
percussionist Michael Zerang, who's also played
in a Vandermark-led group. "A lot of us couldn't
afford recordings, and he would do it and virtually
give it to us for free." Dozens of those
recordings wound up becoming official releases,
either through the artist's labels, or through
Ritcher's own Savage Sound Syndicate. "Whenever
I saw him," says Rempis, "he'd have
a stack of 10 or 20 CD-Rs in his bag, so he could
say, 'Oh yeah, I have something for you.'"
For most people, Ritscher's support meant just
as much as his recording skills-- especially when
it came to music that was so lacking in any kind
of broad commercial appeal. "Just by being
present all the time," says Zerang, laughing
fondly, "well, there was always at least
one person there." Bruce Finkelman owns the
Empty Bottle-- a key venue for rock and experimental
music-- and became used to seeing Ritscher show
up for just about all of it: "Twenty below
zero temperatures, three people in the club, and
Malachi was one of them. Five feet of snow on
the ground, and no one showing up, and he was
there." It's a level of passion and enthusiasm
that should be unimaginable to most of us-- going
out, every other night, even in Chicago winters,
to see free jazz?
All of these people remember Ritscher warmly:
He was kind, intelligent, funny, outgoing, polite.
And yet there's not much doubt that Ritscher was
also, in a lot of ways, alone. He was born Mark
David Ritscher, in 1954, in North Dakota; according
to the obituary he posted to his own website,
he dropped out of high school and married at age
17. He had a son. Ten years later, when his marriage
dissolved, Ritscher moved to Chicago and immersed
himself in the music scene-- taking his son's
name, Malachi, for his own. Music wasn't the only
thing he immersed himself in, either: He was an
active anti-war activist, an avid photographer,
a collector, a reader, and a writer. He painted
watercolors, wrote poetry, dabbled with various
musical instruments, and grew peppers for his
own hot-sauce recipe.
One thing he did not seem to do was forge close
friendships. He was estranged from his ex-wife,
son, and grandchildren. People in Chicago knew
him, saw him often, and found him outgoing and
friendly-- but that tended to be the extent of
it. "I always kind of got the impression
that Malachi chose to distance himself a little
bit from people," says Rempis. "I don't
think he had a regular group of friends who called
him up and said 'Do you want to go out on Friday
night?' He moved as an individual, mostly. He
was to some degree a loner, and I think he would
probably describe himself that way-- the ironic
part of it being that he knew hundreds of people
around town. For me, I don't even know if I had
his phone number, but I saw him maybe three nights
a week. He knew many, many people who without
a doubt would have described him as a friend."
Writing his own obituary, Ritscher says much the
same: "As a child, he was intensely afraid
of many things, especially heights; he spent the
rest of his life trying to face his fears, without
ever coming to terms with his fear of people....He
had many acquaintances, but few friends; and wrote
his own obituary, because no one else really knew
him."
* * *
Self-immolation is not a common act, mostly because
it's one of the slowest, most painful, and messiest
ways a person can kill himself. For most Americans,
consciousness of the act comes down to one man,
and one photograph: a 1963 shot of a Vietnamese
monk named Thích Qu?ng Ð?c, seated
in the Lotus position in the middle of a Saigon
street, consumed by flames, protesting the treatment
of Buddhists under a Catholic regime. The few
monks who did this didn't consider it suicide,
but rather a form of non-violent protest-- a way
for pacifists to speak louder than those who kill.
(Gandhi, when questioned on the limits of pacifism,
had suggested similar thinking.) There's no question
that self-immolation is agonizing, and that's
precisely why it's been used as a form of protest:
It's meant to show an intense commitment to one's
cause.
Malachi Ritscher is one of fewer than 10 people
in American history to have done this. And as
of 2006, it's hard to imagine how an American
could successfully use self-immolation as a form
of protest. You can't tell anyone about it: Most
people would try to dissuade you, or even have
you committed for your own protection. It's something
you'll inevitably do alone; it's something that
major media will not widely report; and it's something
most people will conclude was the work of a very
ill person.
Back, then, to the question everyone's asking,
the question you probably already have strong
opinions on: Was Malachi Ritscher a political
martyr or a mentally troubled suicide? Let me
tip my editorial hand and claim something: The
argument is a distraction, and it's the wrong
question to ask. It assumes too much. It assumes
that the two things are mutually exclusive, or
binaries, and that they can't be jumbled intractably
in someone's thinking. It assumes that there's
a clear, distinct line between rational politics
and personal emotions. And it assumes that a troubled
person can't legitimately mean what he says, even
if his way of expressing it is tragic.
But if there's anything we can learn from Malachi
Ritscher, it's that none of these things are that
simple. On the one hand-- whether or not he suffered
from mental illness, as his son has claimed in
the comments box beneath Peter Margasak's Chicago
Reader blog post, the first reporting done on
Ritscher's death-- it's easy to conclude that
he was an isolated person, with a life full of
hobbies and passions but not much else. (Forgive
me for saying it, but if any of you reading this
spend most of your time alone at computers, blogging
and posting to message boards but not always doing
the tough, tiring work of going out and forging
messy human relationships with the people around
you, this is something to remember: Try hard.)
At 52 years old, going to shows every night, estranged
from his son and grandchildren, and without anyone
incredibly close to him, how easy would it have
been for Ritscher to decide that there wasn't
much in the future he'd really miss if he weren't
around?
On the other hand, Ritscher was intensely politically
committed, and had been for years, and the texts
on his website explain this as a political act.
His acquaintances in the music world insist on
doing him the credit of taking that seriously.
"On the surface, that's what he said and
that's what he did," says Zerang. "I'll
take that at face value. It's a very potent message.
People raise the specter of mental illness, and,
well, okay-- but I don't see how that takes away
the power of his message.
"In all the years I've known him, I've never
perceived him as someone who was mentally ill.
That doesn't mean he wasn't, but I never saw it.
I look at his action, and these are his reasons,
so let's talk about it in those terms."
Rempis' understanding is similar. "I think
there was a pretty clear debate happening about
whether this was an act of depression or whether
it was a political act, and either way it's a
pretty difficult thing for his friends and family
to deal with. It's really tragic. I saw him in
the weeks leading up to this, and I talked to
two musicians today in New York who he'd sent
correspondence to in the past few weeks-- with
CDs of shows they'd recently done out here, and
friendly, upbeat letters. I think this is something
he'd been considering for a very long time, and
more of a political act than an act of depression.
He was really trying to express something here,
and I think it's spelled out pretty clearly on
his website."
It's the reception of the "Mission Statement"
on that website that offers some of the strangest
cues. One of the few major-media voices that's
addressed it is Richard Roeper, in his column
for the Chicago Sun-Times: Quoting heavily from
Ritscher's note, he describes the text as intelligent
but "bitter" and "disturbed."
And in at least one spot, it genuinely is: Ritscher
talks about having walked past Donald Rumsfeld
one day, with "a knife clenched in my hand,"
and regrets not having assassinated the Secretary
of Defense. Leave alone the sad irony of Rumsfeld's
resignation a few days after Ritscher's death,
or the question of how Rumsfeld's absence would
have changed much about the war: This is frightening
and morally confused, the same logic that animates
people to gun down reproductive health workers.
What's interesting, though, is the rest of it.
It's no Unabomber-like rant, or conspiracy tract:
For the most part it's thoughtful and relaxed.
More importantly, no matter what you think of
the views expressed, they're not particularly
different from the ones you'll find on any number
of leftist, anti-war, third-party, or independent-media
websites, blogs, papers, or message boards. Ritscher's
feelings about this country and about the war,
extreme or not, are ones no small number of people
share.
And that's important, because there's no reason
to believe that politics and mental health don't
have anything to do with each other. A person's
depression or hopelessness can be exacerbated
by any number of events in his personal life:
rejection, loneliness, failure. At the same time,
that hopelessness can be exacerbated by his experience
of politics: The feeling of being alienated, ignored,
or powerless to stop injustice. Whether the source
is the people around you or the news on the television,
the result is the same: You wind up feeling thwarted,
frustrated, and weak. And if enough people feel
this way, it makes sense that one of them-- possibly
one of them with plenty of other issues in his
life-- might take the kind of action Ritscher
did. It doesn't make him right, or a martyr. It
just makes him a piece of very shocking evidence
that some of the people around us feel very hurt
and marginalized. Most of them, thankfully, have
found-- and will find-- much better ways to deal
with it.
"A lot of us feel like he sort of took a
karmic hit for us," says Zerang. "Because
so many of us were upset with the way these wars
are happening and people are dying-- we do what
we can in our own ways, but truly there's a lot
of frustration about that. And then he did this
and it's almost like he took the hit for us. It's
been very interesting to see the responses and
how the dialogue has emerged around town. In the
last week there've been concerts, a lot of good
concerts, so the community has been out in force,
and just talking. It's just remarkable how many
diverging opinions there are about this."
* * *
Interpretation of the act might be up in the air,
but the one thing just about everyone agrees on
is the wish that he hadn't done it. His siblings
and parents, proud as they can be of how much
he meant to the Chicago music world, or even his
final actions, are obviously grieving; his son
Malachi, faced with this final estrangement, is
obviously hurt. And the musicians around him will
certainly feel the loss of someone who'd been
a constant presence in their world. The most they
can do is try to find something positive in it.
"There's nothing I can argue with, apart
from the final action he took," says Zerang.
"Roeper's last line was something like, 'It's
going to be a futile act,' but the jury's out
on that, right? Something can come of it, it can
resonate with people. And if that happens, it's
not a futile act. And the people in the community
here in Chicago are talking and looking at things
differently-- so right there, it's not a futile
act. For better or worse, he changed something."
Just as important, there's everything else he
left behind. A few days after his death, a package
arrived for Bruno Johnson, owner of the free-jazz
label Okka Disk: It contained, as reported by
the Reader, "[Ritscher's] will, keys to his
home, and instructions about what should be done
with his belongings." Among his possessions
is one legacy: An archive of the Chicago experimental
scene stretching back for two decades. And for
the musicians, there's another: The memory and
invaluable support of at least one enthusiast
who, no matter when they were playing, and no
matter how few people showed up, was always there
to cheer them on.
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