I. Apparitions Though now a specter—I still see him— emerging from the raw crucible of the confining university halls, where we fought the hunger of our discontent. He was intellect and catharsis made flesh. His face—angled, fractured— a mimicry of Antonin Artaud’s, staring back, unbearable, inescapable.
II. The Department Within that savage asylum of The Department, time unraveled before us. We staged performance as protest, tearing into the structures we’d grown to despise, fueled, in part, by an absurd common enemy.
He moved toward liberation, always—toward a theatre that could transform, empower. I moved toward rupture—drawn to the fractures behind the mask. We both believed in the breaking. And … being young, we carried the weight of our own significance, as if our belief alone could will itself into truth.
The fight burned within us. But, man, did we laugh.
III. Dissonance His death strikes like a dissonant chord, a cacophony that does not fade— it shatters and returns, splintering the skull in an endless, merciless refrain.
Its nature does not linger; it devours. It carves itself into the air, into the walls, into life.
I don’t ask “why”— I know better than to claw at silence where no answer breathes. But in the abyss of his final farewell, that question festers— like a blackened weed choking my psyche.
IV. Inferno How did he slip into the world of shadows?
I know he did not “Go Gentle into that Good Night.” No, he wrenched himself from existence with the same fire that blazed within him forty years ago—
an inferno, a defiant eruption against the suffocating disorder of that atavistic reflex of humanity.
I imagine a sacred stillness— thick, suspended— a fragile exhale before his hands, at last, release.
Where are the broken pieces of his final moments?
V. What Remains There is no anger here— only raw, unrelenting, aching tenderness. A heart grieving the ultimate cathartic dissolution in the Theater of Cruelty. A heart grieving the enigmatic vanishing of a being who cried out, in his own decisive way:
Fuck. This. World.
I see the humor. Of course I do. And I hear him laughing—at me, at my writing this. That laughter searing through the rough edges. I’ll hold that light where no one can piss on it.
Fuck. This. World.
Even the brightest flames wane. Even the strongest grow weary. There is no surrender in the closing of heavy eyes, no defeat in the sovereignty of rest.
VI. Benediction Goodnight, Sweet Prince you magnificent troublemaker.
What dreams may come…
With mortal sorrow, your comrade in beautiful ruin, Penny
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell. —Antonin Artaud
ANTONIN ARTAUD
CRAIG HARSHAW 1965-2025
*Photos blatantly stolen from various internet sites
