Bye Chi; Like Tai Chi, But Tragic and Depressing

Damn...  Two posts in a week about metal bassists dying.  Sorry if this has been a pretty bummer week, dudes and dudettes, but this is something I feel I need to post about.  Hell, I wish I'd posted about it the day it happened.

Five years ago, Chi Cheng, Deftones' bassist, was in a car accident that left him in a coma.  Just last year, he'd woken up, on the Fourth of July.  I thought that was it.  I thought, "I've heard of people recovering from worse.  He seems like a strong dude, has a lot of support.  Few years, and I can see the original Deftones and it'll be the best damned thing that ever happened to me."  Maybe it was naive, maybe it was uninformed, but goddamn it did I hope.  Just a few short days ago, he passed away due to related complications.

When I'd first seen Deftones, it had already been three years since the accident.  I was familiar with their music, though I wasn't nearly as big a fan as I am these days.  Until that day, I hadn't immersed myself in it, explored every crevasse, spent hours just listening to it, tried like hell to emulate it.

Just as I tried to honor Peter Steele with humor to complement the black tidings, something he was good at, I don't feel like I should mourn Chi's passing the same way.  He was a deeply spiritual man, a thoughtful man, a poet.  That's something I'd like to emulate, if just for a bit.

Again, in the extraordinarily unlikely event that any of the members of Deftones should read this (Chino Moreno, Stephen Carpenter, Abe Cunningham, Frank Delgado, Sergio Vega): I sincerely hope I did justice to the passing of your friend and brother.  You have no idea what your music has done for me.

So much more I want to say, and I'm afraid of not saying it well enough.  I know you shouldn't let your fear rule you, but for once, I'm going to take a step back from myself.  Chi was a greater wordsmith than I can strive to be.  So to close this off, here's one of his poems from his spoken word album, "The Bamboo Parachute".  It's called Braces, and... I don't know why, but I feel it's strangely appropriate.

It's cooler to be in your shade, easier to predict the future of plastic than to be the mess that is you.  It doesn't mean you don't shine, it's just... time isn't taking care of your wounds.  Faithfully with you, a plain pocket caught in turbulence.  Nobody knows what they mean to you.  I have no right to wonder, but I'd miss all my beautiful friends.  Pre-Christ lives, imitating, living.