three-year breaths

three years, then, since Jeff Buckley slipped into the Wolf River’s cool embrace, never to break the surface for another breath. a point of contact: in those fraught hours of his disappearance, people sought out contact on a couple of web sites, the guestbook messages a group embrace, grief and comfort and disbelief all wrapped into one. Like Kurt Cobain’s death, three years before, a sense of unbidden community rising out of one awful loss.

I seem to measure my time online in three-year breaths: 1994, a plaintext world, and seeking new discoveries, where you could go for days without a link in bright blue; 1997, a flourishing of voices. and now, in 2000, a hush betrays the white noise of this everything that the online world has

become.