Memory is mutable. It fades. Grows fuzzy. Plays tricks. Disappears. Writing is one way to hold on to meaning. Sometimes for dear life. I wrote this remembrance of David Medaris in a red heat after learning of his death. I could close my eyes and see and hear David. As if he was there. I’m glad I got it down. The piece begins:
Isthmus has always been a collection of odd and compelling characters. None more so than David Medaris, who began writing for the paper as a West High student and who spent almost three decades as the listings editor and then a staff writer.
I was editor. David was David, which is to say he cut his own path. As the arbiter of listings, he functioned like a human algorithm. He precisely sorted and summarized hundreds of disparate and often recondite events that poured into the paper each week. No monk in a priory had a more exacting system of categorization.
David lived and breathed by his rules. Yet, paradoxically, he was also an exuberant, free-range thinker. He spied life’s complicated facets like a jeweler with a headlamp. Here was the reporter who would ponder endless questions for a story. David had to know. He had to understand. He was immensely curious about life and people. There was a sense of wonder and pleasure in comprehending both the mundane and the profound.
He also had a little sign on his desk: “Just tell the story.”
That was David: Painstakingly diligent, yet the faraway flutter of a butterfly in the Amazon might set him off on an intellectual ramble in the Isthmus lunchroom. He took delight in it.
His death Oct. 18 at age 57 after many years of beating back brain cancer was like a kick in the guts to his friends. His love affair with his wife, Michana Buchman, Isthmusassociate editor, was something any of us would want in this life. He always spoke of her with a tone of awe and respect. If only all of us could be so considerate of our partners. Now he’s gone.
To read more, please go here. The layout includes a marvelous portrait of David by the great photographic team J. Shimon & J. Lindemann.
Stories by Marc Eisen 