I can’t recall the first time we meet. I remember your laugh at those parties at my parents house; going to see some play you had directed and you asking me (only a child at the time) what i thought and you being genuinely interested in the response. I remember you speaking to me when i was in high school, acting in some grad student’s play, telling me I would have a life in theater. My response was there was absolutely no way that would happen. The time you called my house looking for my father
and asked me if I could drive your wife to a doctor’s appointment, which i did. Then to have her introduce me to everyone we meet as her new boyfriend. There was your Brecht Seminar I took as an undergraduate that made me fall in love with the mechanisms of story telling. As a grad student, hours spent in your office, and the thousands of stories between us.
The last time you saw me act, when you couldn’t really talk to me,
just grabbing my arm, pull me in and say it was like watching the ghost of my father. Then there were the last few years and my inability to generate the emotional bandwidth after experiencing too much loss to be there for you on a consistent basis. Only infrequent phone calls and once a year dinners.
Carl Weber, or Charlie as the old guard called you, in my past, present and future you are important, you are in every project I do.