#foriver

Thinking of you on your 55th today. Precious angel. 🕊️💫🕊️

“If Generation X had a hero, it was River Phoenix. In his every vulnerable performance, he seemed to embody the thoughts and concerns of an entire generation.”

In 1991, I went to see My Own Private Idaho at the New York Film Festival. I remember the campfire scene stunning the audience, people turning to each other and gasping. I went to see it in the theaters four more times, at NYC prices, on a poor student’s meager wages. My dorm walls were covered with the Interview magazine photos by Bruce Weber, but I also remember getting the Sept. 1991 Movieline with him on the cover and flipping through the photos (Michael Tighe, I think) and understanding, deep within my bones, that something had gone horribly wrong with River.

In 1993, my college roommate called me to tell me he died. I remember watching all the news reports about it and being furious that all these media outlets and their viewers who didn’t care about his life were now feasting upon his death. Such a violation against a young man who would have never done the same. My right-wing cousin called and actually laughed about it to me. For years, I kept a cut-out of the Gus Van Sant photo (from his book) by my desk, wherever I lived, and the MOPI movie poster is hung for most of that time.

In May 1995, I met my partner at a party in NYC that I didn’t want to go to in the first place. We ended up in a fantastic two hour conversation, much of which was about how much we both loved MOPI and preferred it to Drugstore Cowboy, an unpopular opinion among our fellow NYU film students. I knew I’d met The One - and he happened to be from the Portland area.

In August 1995, I visit my guy in Portland and we go to all the major MOPI locations and actually see Michael Parker playing hacky sack in Pioneer Courthouse Square. It’s like a religious experience for me. We watch the movie before we visit the locations - it’s the first time I’ve seen it since his death, and I sob and sob and sob and sob.

In 1997, I move to Portland, where I remain, 20 years later. (My willingness to move to Portland is due in no small part to MOPI.) I start work at the local alternative weekly, where I work alongside the cleaning woman for the MOPI house. (You can see her in some of the YouTube videos.) I like her, but we’re not close, so I don’t feel comfortable asking her too much about the experience. Portland is a small town, and over the years, I find myself in  proximity to many people involved in the shooting, but never close enough to feel like it’s okay to ask the kinds of questions I want to ask.

In the 2000s, I watch MOPI sparingly because it’s still too raw, River’s death still hurts too much. Around this time, I also meet Gus Van Sant briefly at a Q&A and signing he does at a restaurant called Il Fornaio. I could be wrong, but I *think* this is the occasion in which he says that in his version of MOPI, he himself picks River up at the end. This is a novel thought, and maybe the first time I thought that Mike Waters ended up in safe and loving arms after all.

In 2003, I visited The Viper Room for the first and only time. I stood outside for a while, just looking around, and I felt ... blank. He died ... here? Outside this seedy bar across from a check cashing place? Everything about it felt so unlike River Phoenix that I don’t think I even cried - it felt entirely unrelated to him as a human being. 

In 2011, I see James Franco and Gus Van Sant present My Own Private River at the Hollywood Theatre. It is magnificent, a gift, but also a reminder of all that we’ve lost with River. It’s a punch in the gut that I never want to end.

In 2017, I suddenly spend a lot more time thinking about River and MOPI. Perhaps it’s because of what happened on Election Day - I feel like River’s spirit acts as an invocation to not give up, to keep fighting for what’s right, even when I’m tired and depressed and overwhelmed by it all. But I also think it has something to do with his spirit reminding me of who I once was, before the difficulties of the world - the breast cancer I had in 2012, the death of my father (also in 2012), the daily grind of corporate America, and now Trump’s America - staked their claim on me.

River’s performance in MOPI is, I think, the closest thing to ‘truth’ I’ve ever seen in art. In some way that’s still hard for me to explain, even after all these years, his Mike Waters has become a pipeline to my soul, giving me direct access to all that is real and true within me.

I decide to listen to this call and to follow it, wherever it may lead. On my way to work every morning, my bus passes by the statue where Keanu held River, pieta-like, in his arms. I now take that time, every single morning, to dedicate my day to something authentic, something higher than myself, that I can refer back to when work demands too much of me.

I finally found the exact location of the road in MOPI and in June, my partner - the same guy I met at the party 22 years ago - takes me to visit to celebrate my birthday and my 5 years cancer free. I play Eddy Arnold’s Cattle Call on my phone and watch the opening scene on YouTube and I cry, because 27 years after I first saw it in the theater, it feels like I have finally found home.

I scooped up some of the rock and plant life by the side of the road and have it in a Mason jar on my desk. Whenever life gets to be too much, I hold it in my hands and am immediately returned to the person I really am and the things that really matter. That’s what River’s done for me, even after all these years.

In my version of My Own Private Idaho, I’m the one who picks up Mike Waters. I am the adult he’s always needed, whose sole interest in him is to ensure his peace and well-being, and I bring him safely home. 

There will never be another like you.

Thinking of you on your heavenly birthday. 🫶🏻

♾ River Jude Phoenix ♾

You were born eternal.

• 31 years ago today • [1970-1993] 💫

Always in my heart River Jude.

There will never be another like you.

River Phoenix • 31st October 1993 💫

30 years without you 🕊️ (can’t believe it!)

Merry Christmas to everyone. ✌🏼💫✨❤️

✨Happy New Year ✨