Elegy for Rob Matson

Submitted by Peter on Sat, Sep 20, 2008

Elegy for Rob Matson

Time is not the guardian of what we give today. We give to those unborn and those passed by, to every Thought of God, and to the Mind in which these Thoughts were born, and where They rest. We remind them of their resting place each time we tell ourselves, "I rest in God."
– A Course In Miracles

The young man in the photo passed away in November, 2007. He was twenty-two years old.

Rob Matson in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans, holding my book of stories, Nascent Constellation.

"That was a UFO beaming back at ya. Me and Eric Eisen was down in Mexico two weeks ago. We seen 40 of 'em flying in formation. They've got places all over the world now, you know. They been coming here ever since 1946, when the scientists started bouncing radar beams off of the moon. And they have been living and working among us in vast quantities ever since. The government knows all about em. ...They are people just like us, from within our own solar system, except but their society is more highly evolved. They don't have no wars. They got no monetary system. They don't have any leaders. Because, I mean, each man is a leader. Because of their technology they are able to feed, clothe, and transport themselves equally and with no effort. ...Why haven't they contacted us? Because of the tremendous shock it would be to our antiquated system. The result of this has been that the Venusians have contacted people from all walks of life. All walks of life. It would be a devastating blow to our antiquated system. So now, Venusians are mating with people from all walks of life, in an advisory capacity. And for once, man will have a God-like control over his own destiny. He will have a chance to transcend and to evolve with some equality for all."
from Easy Rider, 1969

Rob Matson and I were volunteers with the same organization in the New Orleans area, at different times. In 2006 I was a volunteer with Emergency Communities in St. Bernard. I stayed with EC from January until June when the operation in St. Bernard closed. After the closing in St. Bernard, EC opened a facility in Plaquemines Parish. I never went to Plaquemines Parish, but Rob came to New Orleans that summer and heard about the operation there.

Rob volunteered with Emergency Communities that summer. He left later in the year and returned to New Orleans in January, 2007. By that time, EC had opened a facility in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As it happened, at that time, I was commuting between St. Bernard and New Orleans and passing the facility in the Ninth Ward almost every day. I stopped in often. That is when I met Rob.

The first time Rob saw me, he came over and sat with me. We talked and became friends. Rob was documenting his time in New Orleans. He carried around a composition notebook which he stuffed with notes and papers. I was writing and waiting to attend the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival.

In the spring, Rob left to go to Alaska to work. He asked me if I wanted to join him on the adventure. I had already had a lot of adventures on my life journey, so I stayed in New Orleans and attended a playwriting class.

In mid summer, I left New Orleans to work on a project in rural middle Tennessee. Rob kept in touch. He contacted me when he got back from Alaska and came to visit in Tennessee. He stayed about three weeks.

He and I spent a day helping to clean out a barn in preparation for the Idapalooza Fruit Jam festival at a neighboring commmunity. It was a music festival that attracted young people from all over the country. Rob would have loved this festival, but he left just before it happened. One day he asked a friend for a ride to the bus station and he was gone.

It seemed Rob didn't know what he wanted to do next. He didn't want to go back to school. He wanted me to come to Meadville, PA, to help him edit video. He had asked me this when we were in New Orleans and again in TN, but I never knew when or if he was going to go back to Meadville to stay.

Rob was bright. He was extremely intelligent, and a young man with many ideas and plans. He had a big smile and a laugh that brought cheer to whoever would hear it. He made friends everywhere he went.

He could quote lines, even whole scenes, from movies. One night, he and I and Sterling, in the kitchen of a pre-civil war cabin in Tennessee, I asked Rob about something he'd said or quoted earlier. Word for word he recited Jack Nicholson's speech at the campfire in Easy Rider. If I'd heard the lines before, I'd forgotten them.

Another time, at a party on Labor Day, we were talking with our friend Billy. I mentioned a scene from Pulp Fiction. Rob performed the lines from the scene.

This past winter, without thinking of anything in particular, I picked up Easy Rider on dvd at the public library. When I heard Jack Nicholson give the speech in the movie, I thought to myself, "That's Rob. That's Rob's speech." I watched the scene several times. They were headed to New Orleans. I had forgotten the ending.

Rob's mother found my Nascent Constellation chapbook among his things after he passed away. All of my stories are about the people, friends, "who form a nascent constellation and hold a place for me." Rob has joined them and I thank him for shining his light on me while we were here.

At his memorial service, held at his college in Meadville, Rob's friends raised $5,000.00 for the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief Services.

Also see this blog post about Rob and these pages about Rob (1).

Rob Matson in Tennessee, September, 2007