Kevin O'Meara, who played drums for Baltimore's VideoHippos (part of the Wham City collective) and collaborated with Dan Deacon and others, has died. O'Meara had been declared a missing person earlier this month and the very sad news was confirmed by a website that had been built to help find him: "It is with deep sadness and profound gratitude that we share this update on Kevin O'Meara. Kevin was found on Monday October 19th in the beautiful hills of Bath County, Virginia. Though he is no longer with us physically, his kind and wild spirit remains strong in the hearts of all who knew him."
Dan Deacon wrote a long, touching tribute to Kevin today:
Kevin was one of the most intense people I knew. He was intense about his passions, his drumming was intense, his kindness and gentle nature were intense kindness and extreme softness, his stoicism was intense and his mysterious nature was intense. His hatred for modern technology was intense. His love of puns was in tents. He was someone who was both of the past and the future, always at odds with the now. I could only know him the way I knew him as others would know him in their own unique way. I love the person he was when he shared time with me.
As a person he was a most beautiful tree: powerful and peaceful, a great listener that was at all times growing and always giving. And almost always covered in dirt. He was extremely special. The passion he put into the things that inspired him inspired all around him. I feel so intensely lucky to have know him, played so much music with him, traveled around the word with him countless times and to most of all count him as a friend. I love him and I’m sad he’s gone.
Grief is easily the most intense and complex beast of them all, always changing and shifting. Grief has deep, wide asymthetrical tides with waves of intensity that range from waves we can can ride out that don’t overwhelm but still feel their weight, waves we barely notice as grief but still move through us leaving their reverberance, and some waves that crash down on us leaving us wrecked and tumbled on the beach of our most raw emotions.
Grief is on going. It’s changes as we change. As time moves the grief comes with us in its new form as we are in our new forms. It mixes and mingles with old grief and becomes a new thing entirely. Grief isn’t bad. Grief is there to help us deal with the most sad things we can never truly understand or come to terms with. Grief is a warm blanket saying it’s ok to feel the feelings in the full spectrum of intensities the they come in , it’s good to remember and acknowledge the loss in all the ways you never thought possible.
I miss Kevin and I’ll miss Kevin in new ways throughout the rest of life. I’ve never met another person even close to being like him. The world was a better place with him in it.
