Josh Taht
My whole family encouraged him to pursue music.
Josh Taht |
I wrote "Uncle Bill's Helicopter" for all the people I've known that work so hard to keep things working -
But I actually only had one person in mind the entire time I wrote it. Josh Taht. He's a really good musician. He'd only had one album that I knew of. Ska is happy and uplifting, and that album had a sense of innocence. He was 16 or 17. I liked that album a lot. It cratered, the lady singer got lured away and the band broke up. My whole family encouraged him to pursue music. |
NOTE: I haven't updated this page since December 25th. Much of january-feburary following finding josh Dec 19th - I wrote about on my blog at: http://the-edge.blogspot.com. To summarize - after getting Josh into rehab january 1, - and after he got through rehab, josh went back to using about mid-feburary. I moved him back to my house until I caught him at it, then put him through home detox in early march. He did well for a few weeks, then...
By late March things got too painful and too confusing for me to write about, even today (I'm writing in July) and in early April I had to kick josh out. I still love the kid, but I was well past my limit by then. I realized that only he could save himself, and I had to save myself while I still had time.
I'm told he's in a halfway house on the east coast now, and doing well.
I have a much better understanding of my own limitations, and of human nature now.
Someday I'll edit out what follows... it really was amazing to regain contact with the kid after 2 years of silence....
I would really like josh to hear the sound of Uncle Bill's helicopter, too. His grandfather, Bill Taht, died when he was five. I haven't heard from or seen Josh in nearly two years. Last I'd heard, he was in San Diego, and nobody knew where.
I've been in the same crater as he's in. I know how it feels. I missed him terribly. His father misses him too.
Here's the current UPDATE.
Here's what you can do: 1) Call some radio stations in San Diego. and get them to play his record. Tell them this story. Make them announce the url http://www.taht.net/josh.html 2) Same for record stores.
3) Post a link to a webpage, blog, chat site, or email mailing list using this method - I'm trying to convince google to help find more people that are willing to help.
If you are in San Diego, please email me. Maybe we can work together on finding josh. I'm going to be there by sunday.
I wrote the following on December 15th:
I can build a helicopter that can make a 350 million kilometer rescue mission but I don't know where to send one for Josh. I believe in the power of the internet. I believe in Uncle Bill's Helicopter. And I believe in christmas... But I need a miracle.
After emailing everyone I knew on the planet, with this story, nothing happened. For two days. Nobody read Uncle Bill's Helicopter. We'd had a major storm. And the power at my house went out on monday. Not a single traffic light, including the one I wrote about in that story, was working.
I'd cratered. The only thing that kept me going was the recording I'd made of the speech, and my faith in the power of the internet. I played the recording over and over again. It took 7 machines to finally find one that could make a cd and mp3 of the speech for me, so I could play it in the car, and not get in an accident. And I posted that. And I started emailing people I only vaguely knew.
Slashdot turned the story down. I was deeply depressed, but still convinced to go on somehow. I went to bed with a 30,000 pound pillow over my head last night. The heat was off. It was very cold. This morning, before I could get up, I played my speech over again, 3 times, and imagined the sound of Uncle Bill's Helicopter, and prepared to move heaven and earth today, to email every single damn newspaper and web page with a single plea. "Josh Taht - Come in please...".
Late on the night of December 16, someone I only vaguely know, had only met once, and deeply admire, Eric Raymond, posted the story. 41 people read it, overnight. One, Graham Innocent, in Littlemore, Oxford, England, did some smarter searching of google than I had, and traced Josh back through a couple more recent records. It turned out Josh's last name was misspelt, on all of them. He's actually done a few more albums, and as recently as last month, was a part of The Blood Group and had also done an album with a group called The Reformed.
I'm a little bit away from a happy christmas yet, I'm still waiting for a phone call, but I feel so good that I can barely type this. Spider Robinson once wrote: "Pain shared is halved, joy shared is doubled". I think that this is only a first derivation of something deeper.
Merry Christmas to all, and good will towards all men, but especially, Eric, and Graham. You guys have played the part of rescuing angel - thank you, from the bottom of my heart
Now I still feel, like a spacecraft, 3 minutes out. More news as it happens.
Michael
Josh:
I sure hope you're the right Josh.
You'd better go read this story. and listen to the speech. It's blanketing the planet. And it's about your grandfather.
I've got thousands of hits in the last hour. People are mailing the link to each other all over the flipping world.
http://www.taht.net/uncle_bills_helicopter.html
and the bit about you is:
and the blog where I'm writing about it every day is at:
You might need to access a mirror of the story: http://www.ackley.net/~mike/josh.html
And call me, you son of a bitch. I've missed you, a lot. wk: XXX-XXX-XXXX hm XXX-XXX-XXXX. The power's still out at my house, but hopefully telephone service is restored. I'm at work, til at least 6.
Merry Christmas
I hope to see you soon.
--
Three minutes out from landing... and the radio is still silent.
The rumor I'm chasing down today, is he is in a rehab center, somewhere in southern california. I've been in a hospital like that too. They don't usually have internet access, as much as it would help.
The news that I have to share today, is both very sad, and hopeful.
As of two days ago (this is the hopeful part - when I started this crazy countdown I hadn't seen him for two years, on tuesday, I had got within two months, and today we're two days out, with a wonderful contribution of a song written for josh called Lie to me written by one by his ex-band members and a letter from his father) He'd checked out of a rehab center in San Diego, and was supposed to have checked into a free center called "Crash" or something like that.
He was in rehab in the Spencer Recovery Center for about two weeks. He smuggled in some drugs. Was caught with them. The center sent him to another center for more hardcore users. A couple more weeks went by. He managed to smuggle in more dope, they threw him out... He got busted a month or so ago for possession - 3 years probation and a recovery program. He was busted for the same thing in New York, a year or so ago. 3 years probation again.
He's asked for help, multiple times, but has never managed to stick to it. He's been lying to everyone, especially to himself. The only other rumor that I have is that he has a girlfriend (Joanna) with a habit, too, and they sometimes lived with her mother.
Josh contacted me a few days ago. He was in the middle of profound withdrawal, and his IQ was up at at least the 170 range. He, like me, and Billy Joel (a mutual idol - who josh once shared a center with), suffer from bouts of manic-depression. All three of us have used drugs to slow down and dull the pain of fitting in with "normal" people.
Friday night, I mainlined Josh himself, spending 3 1/2 hours on the phone with him. I recorded some of our conversation and took notes. He tossed off references to major philosophers, books we'd shared, drugs, and issues of the day.
He compulsively told the truth as he saw it, holding nothing back. It was a real rush to talk to Josh this way. It was probably the most profound, funny, depressing, intellectually stimulating conversation I've had with anyone in a decade. If I'd managed to tape it, I'd be hyperlinking every third word, and puzzling over the depth of the references for years. I was so shaky and dizzy afterwards I forgot to hit save on my notes...
It was a healing thing to talk to him for so long. The next day, I remembered a painful memory - the subject of a hard SF book I spent 3 years writing. The computer it was on, and all my backup tapes, were stolen in late 1993. The story took place on a real, and really neat, asteroid called Toutatis. I liked that rock in part, because it contained two common misspellings of my own name. I also liked it because it was the one place where a dealer could never reach me again. The premise for the story is here. I'm sure Josh, in his brilliance and his pain, has healed many other people in this way.
I sent him some money. He used it for drugs. The honesty and the IQ faded away, but he seemed more at peace. I'd restored some of his self respect, at least for a few days. I think that he has some comfort now that there can be an end to the long dark road he's been on. All the same, I liked the jonesing Josh a lot, and I wish I could surround him with sober people of equal intelligence. I think that would ease his pain far more than drugs have. The things we could accomplish with such a team of brilliant people! The comfort we could find in each other!
Josh and I spent christmas day together. It was wonderful to see him. We drove through the mountains, talking. He picked up a bass in my studio, and taught himself a wonderful bass line to "Nobody knows you when you're down and out" while I played piano to it. I've been practicing this song for 5 years - he had it down in 5 minutes. Amazing. But it was also a deeply disturbing day, as it became obvious he wasn't going to quit any time soon, and was suffering from some physical problems.
He says he'll try rehab again in a few weeks. I hope to find a center for him that would let him focus on his music while he withdraws. The sterile environs of a typical rehab center are too painful for a musician with an empathy knob permanently set on high to bear. I'm willing to donate, and maintain a complete set of equipment for a music studio to any rehab center in the bay area that wants one, and will treat josh. Please contact me at mike@ackley.net.
Josh is a high functioning addict who has only rarely had someone of equal intelligence to talk to. He's non-violent - in fact, he compulsively helps people whenever he can, rather than take care of himself. If you'd like to write him, think you can keep up with him, and have courage, send email to nineangels@hotmail.com. He's 22, speaks french (has read cervantes and satre in the original), and of course, english. He has a huge musical vocabulary, is haunted by his namesake and obsessed with the mythology of dope (Burroughs, the naked lunch, etc). He's read every major science fiction book ever published, much liturature, and is interested in architecture. He's a wicked chess player, too. I'm not about to put him up on match.com... but I know that there are people out there on the net as smart as he is, that might want to smash a few glasses in callahan's bar with him.
I'm encouraging him to start a blog. He's going through a lot. He's given me permission to reprint our conversations on the web.