Updated 3 months ago
April 26, 1978 – October 25, 2019
Stefan’s Facebook
DeKompression was his music and art Facebook page. This was his last posted music:
And his last posted quote, which is obviously eerily prophetic, and possibly reminiscent of his past:
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
– Charles Bukowski
Stefan was a man about town, a vital force in the trance music scene in NYC who went straight and got into real estate.
This will be different from a normal obituary, which are normally written objectively as if they are resumes for getting into Heaven. I apologize in advance for injecting my diseased self into this but Stefan and I were connected at the hip for years. So I will employ metaphor and have taken great pains to write this for everyone, including his surviving family.
Half Jewish and half Catholic, Stefan had his foot in two worlds of guilt. He grew up without a father, attending high school in an affluent part of Queens.
After we met in 2000 within a socially active scene of several hundred music enthusiasts, he asked me, “Will you be my guru?”
I was hesitant – would I be able to bear that mantle, and would he embrace wisdom, even when I did not?
I was just a guy who gave up a promising career in advertising to wear funny costumes, become addicted to partying, running email lists, and throwing events.
It was too heavy a burden for me, I was already a kid, how could I take on more kids?
So I said no, but we became friends and partners in what we would euphemistically call the “spiritual journey.” He became my best friend.
We had a very intense few years of, shall we say, out of body neuronautic experiences. Wonderful events with hundreds of people we all knew each other.
Here is someone’s random recollection from that period, and to give you an idea of just how Stefan comported himself:
“I thought I would share one of my favorite memories of Stefan with y’all. Early 2000’s. We threw a psy-party in Queens; free party with Double Dragon and I forget the other act. Security was lax and the police showed up. Right into the club. Adam took the mic and said “Hey everyone the police are here, so keep the party favors on the DL,” They turned the music down, but we all kept dancing. Then they stayed for a bit, the police, just kind of hovering around the club.
Then they noticed a kid in a big hole in one of the string pyramids we had made. They were headed to him, intending to search? Bother? Arrest? I saw it happening but didn’t know what to do. Stefan ran over and pulled out his Palm Pilot. He starts telling the cops that the guy was a special needs patient and that he was in charge of taking care of him. He was scrolling through a calendar on his device and saying that “these are activities we have planned” and that, “we bring them out to these events so they have the opportunity to experience nightlife” “Don’t worry, I am here to take care of him all night”
Convinced the cops he was the caretaker and saved the dude from being harassed/arrested. Very impressive. After that the cops left and he and I watched the door together for a few hours…”
Stefan did something similar for me outside the popular club Twilo; I was facing a wall and trying to hail a cab. Someone came up and tried to help me, thinking I was mentally retarded or something. He laughed about that for months.
Years of stories like this.
As things progressed, I was increasingly worried about him, as he went off the deep end just like I did, but did it without all the artsy and philosophical trappings, not to mention a stable family and a career to occasionally fall back on.
He went in unprotected and raw, and became unmoored.
It was getting very bad. If you go out too far, too often, you start getting near an insidiously subtle slippery slope that disappears down into smoky nothingness. The Abyss was gazing back, and it was hungry.
I am purposely relying on metaphors here to describe unspeakable situations with no redeeming qualities whatsoever than to just scream “Don’t Ever Do This. Run Away as Fast as You Can.”
I finally confronted him. “Dude, what is going on with you? You’re freaking me out.”
He simply replied with a delirious smile, “I was just trying to be like you.”
He did not have to add “…Dad” onto the end of that sentence for it to hit me like a ton of bricks.
After the inevitable ramifications of repeatedly leaving this mortal coil so often, what began as subtle knocks became increasingly door-flattening and life-obliterating, the used plates and mail were both piling up into Towers of Babel, and we both stopped, crawled out from the wreckage and went straight. It was either that or death.
His godfather got involved and saved him.
We both chose life. There was no reason to look back. We had had enough wine, women, and song for a hundred men, and both began the long march back to being “normal.”
Stefan finally met his father, a successful Persian Jewish merchant. They reconnected. Stefan was so happy. He got a stable place to live. We met his brother, Danny, a responsible, friendly, earnest guy.
He finally had all the pieces of what most of us take for granted.
Stefan began in real estate and lived an ascetic, responsible life for well over a decade.
We stayed friends, but somewhat distantly. I saw little of him, sadly, as I had left New York to recoup my sanity. But everyone who saw him described a well balanced and sober person.
But over a decade later, In 2019, after confiding to friends that he was deathly depressed and consumed in the struggle of the brutal realities of everyday living, at age 41, Stefan suddenly left us.
Words cannot describe our sadness for your loss, so I will keep it simple.
We will miss you Stefan, and we love you.
There is a Catskill eagle in some souls
that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges,
and soar out of them again
and become invisible in the sunny spaces.
And even if he for ever flies within the gorge,
that gorge is in the mountains;
so that even in his lowest swoop
the mountain eagle is still higher
than other birds upon the plain,
even though they soar.
-Herman Melville, The Try Works, Moby Dick
