Celebrating Warren’s life

The time has come to stop procrastinating and to do this blog entry as part of the process of honouring Warren Mobey, December 20 1954 – January 11 2009.

The news of Warren’s death may only now be reaching some of you through this post, because while Nik announced the news as a comment on the day it happened, it wouldn’t have reached you if you rely on RSS feeds.

On Tuesday January 20, coincidentally exactly a month after his birthday and on the same date as the inauguration of the new American president, we celebrated Warren’s life through a series of recollections and tributes, some music, and a slide show. I hope that those who did not speak will post their own comment on this site, so we can put together a more comprehensive picture of the person that was Warren.

The celebration, at Macquarie Park Crematorium in Sydney, began at about 1.45pm with people arriving with a single flower to place on the coffin, accompanied by Brian Eno’s Discreet music. By the end, it was covered with an array of different varieties and colours, as diverse as the person it was commemorating. The formal part of the day then began like this:

Welcome everyone. I am Catherine and I am going to introduce the day and outline the proceedings. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting.

I also want to acknowledge Joan, Warren’s loving mother, and his brother Peter and sister Jenny, and I want to thank you all for coming to this celebration of the life of Warren.

I can’t believe we are here doing this, because I really thought we had a chance to beat it, but it wasn’t to be, so Alistair, Peter and I have put together something that we hope will do Warren proud, beginning with our choice of recycled paper coffin, decorated with the pictures we were able to rapidly put together in the time available. As you can see, there is a slide show which will be up on the screen throughout, and this features many of the same images. There are about 130 slides of Warren from his very early days and his early twenties and more recent times, as well as some of the things that meant a lot to him and with which he surrounded himself, including some of his artworks.

After the introduction, which also mentioned things like turning off mobile phones, the book available for people to record their tributes and information about the gathering afterwards at The Friends Meeting House, the first speaker was Warren’s brother Peter, whose life Warren re-entered over the last several weeks when Peter gave so much help and support when Warren was having more and more trouble doing everyday tasks and I wasn’t always able to be there. Peter spoke about their early years, and after he had finished we heard Frank Zappa singing Don’t eat the yellow snow. Peter was followed by Annie, who became part of Warren’s life when he was 17. Before the next speaker, Johnny, with whom Warren shared a flat in the early days, we heard Lou Reed and John Cale’s Style it takes and after, Philip Glass’ Knee Play 1. After Johnny came Alistair, who first met Warren in the 80s, worked with him and then became a friend. At that point it was time for some comedy and we heard Tom Lehrer’s The Elements, and then Roger spoke from the Inner Sydney Greens, of which Warren was an active member. After Roger had finished we heard the overture from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, something that Warren would listen to on every New Year’s Eve without fail, including this most recent one, and then it was my turn. Here is some of what I said.

When Warren died, a little over a week ago now, I started going on pilgrimages to many of the places we used to go together – our favourite cafes and restaurants and organic vegie shops and cinemas. I have found this to be an important part of dealing with what has happened. Invariably I show familiar staff the photo that Nik, who is unable to be here today but who was a great friend of Warren and responsible for the caricature on his blog page, took of us and which Warren had on his desk, and tell them what happened, usually bursting into tears or getting wet eyes at the very least. I can highly recommend it as a very cathartic way of trying to deal with losing him, or his physical presence at least.

I met Warren at a Greens meeting. It was September 23 2006, a date that struck Warren as being very significant. It was the Spring Equinox, and the following year he made me a beautiful little book signifying the first year and marking the equinox and the latitudes and times that we met. It was pretty much love at first sight, for me at least, and was the beginning of what was a wonderful time but also a very difficult time in many ways, not least because three months after we met, we received the terrible news about Warren’s lung cancer. Despite all that, we managed to fit a lot of things into a very short time.

When I met Warren I immediately recognised in him many wonderful qualities. Incredibly he found it hard to believe that people could find him at all interesting, so consequently I would make lists of all the great things about him which I would send him or tell him about as often as he needed to hear to or I wanted to tell him. He used to say he was vain, but he certainly didn’t have a huge ego, he was clearly very intelligent and sensitive, we were able to talk about anything and everything. We were both atheists and had common values. I loved his sense of humour, the way he thought so much about things, his willingness to confront issues, especially relationship issues, his flexibility, his openness to ideas and his enjoyment of food. I admired his knowledge and appreciation of music, a knowledge that was amazingly diverse, and he was a great dancer, though he would usually only do it in private, alone or with me. We loved comedy and we also loved going to films, and of course I didn’t need to persuade him to stay to the end of the credits. On top of all that, he was extremely lovely to look at, elegant like a ballet dancer, and I spent many hours observing his face and his hands and his movements, when he could still make them.

Warren was clearly very creative, but had not had the confidence or belief that he could to pursue creativity, so it was very satisfying for him when he was able to develop an interest in it. There is evidence of some of his earlier creative ventures still in existence, in the form of a calendar that he made for his friends and family in the early seventies, part of which appears in the slides – labelled “me at a rock concert”. As well as taking photographs he loved to make films and one of the projects he was keen to do was film Barbro telling her story. She is here today, and is one of the people he met through his participation in cancer support groups, which he found very encouraging and life-affirming. A couple of the slides you may have seen are the apple – his first drawing, in pastel, and the lemon, both of which he did after his first drawing lesson. He picked it up very quickly, and started drawing all sorts of objects. He started going to life drawing, which he enjoyed immensely, but had to stop when the pain increased and he had trouble sitting or standing comfortably.

Many of you will have seen Warren’s blog entries, which diminished as the disease took more and more of his time to manage. He was very interested in Samuel Pepys, and this seemed to be one of the inspirations for his blog writing. You can also see some of his photographs on You tube. The Winter in Melbourne series, complete with music from Creative Commons, we had hoped to show today, but unfortunately technology wouldn’t allow it. I hope you’ll have a look if you can.

Warren made many trips down south to my place, which he loved, but October last year was his last visit. There he revelled in the tranquillity, the clean air and water and had some wonderful moments communing with wildlife, notably a wombat, and an echidna and often with wallabies and kangaroos. Unfortunately though the cold was not one of the things he relished about the place. Despite his fondness for the bush, Warren was of course a city boy and he loved to get back here to his contacts and activities and meetings and of course his computer.

There were so many things he still had to do. He was a brilliant computer programmer, and so many of his projects centred around web-based activities. He had contributed much to Wikipedia, especially the David Hicks page, and was very involved with promoting the use of open source software. He set up a Linux system for me not long before he died which we were very excited about (I had been wanting to do this since the late 90’s, long before I knew of Warren’s existence, but didn’t know anyone who could help). He had some fantastic ideas for many projects to come and it is hard to believe that they will remain in his notebooks as ideas, unless of course someone else with similar capabilities can take them up.

Warren was overjoyed to be around to witness two major political events – the end of the Howard Government and that of George Bush – and it is fitting that this celebration is taking place on the date that the new American president will be inaugurated.

As I said at the beginning, I can’t believe it actually has happened. I feel like I should have been able to stop it. I really thought that we could do it, and I maintained that hope till almost the very end. When I met Warren I couldn’t imagine finding anyone I was more suited to and as I used to tell him regularly, we were made for each other. But despite the fact that I have lost him – we have all lost him – I am so glad I have had the opportunity to be part of Warren’s life. He will always be part of mine. I love you Warren.

After I had finished my bit, Laurie Anderson’s O superman came on, at which point we were supposed to file out, but despite two urgings from Official People we all just sat there listening to it until it had finished.

We milled around outside for quite a while, then eventually many of us made our way to Surry Hills, where we had afternoon tea and nibbles, including a number of delicacies especially brought in from Iku, one of our regular eating places once Warren became ill. Peter introduced the afternoon at the Meeting House and invited those who wished to adjourn upstairs at 5 for meditation and reflection. During this time a number of people offered some thoughts and memories of Warren, and we later reconvened downstairs for more nibbles and refreshments.

People went in different directions from the Meeting House, and I joined some friends at a pub on Broadway, next door to the one where Warren and I had gone on the night that we met (next door because there was a quiz night taking place in the actual pub, rendering it unsuitable for talking and debriefing and unwinding). Then we walked along Harris St to our favourite Japanese restaurant, just around the corner from the flat, where we enjoyed a variety of vegetarian fare, just like we would have had Warren been with us.

There’s so much more to say about Warren which I forgot to mention when I was doing my draft at 2am on the morning of the event, including his talent at being a DJ and his ability to write – but you know about that a little, from reading his blogs.

I am so glad that Warren made his video blog entry so all the people who had read his blog but never met him could do so. If I can manage it, I’ll include a photo. I have taken hundreds and hundreds since we met. And I have added another category for this post – love.

Warren has already done this in his blog but I also want to thank everyone who was or became involved in helping when things got tough. There’s no point in making a list because people invariably get forgotten but you know who you are.

One day I will have to make links, Warren-style, to many of the pieces of music and places etc mentioned in this entry. It is fitting that it is posted on the evening of a film on the ABC about Philip Glass (Glass: A portrait of Philip in twelve parts), one of Warren’s all-time favourite composers.

Warren lives on.