Your Source for 'Ff'lo

How can I explain that it wasn't rough? Not that he wasn't important. But that what he had done in recent years that was so important didn't die with him--it only has grown in the last eight months.

I don't want to spout stuff about community for synthetic hobby communities like filk, but damnit, the truth is that when I go to a convention, or visit a housefilk, the people there were Dave's secret world, and they all greet me the way--well, if you imagine the ideal, perfect rural small town where the neighbors come together when someone loses someone close to them--like that.

Dave made these fun little buttons--2 1/4"-diameter badges with a combination of musical symbols that suggest a dandelion going to seed, as a symbol of filk. And they were the prop he used to make social connections. So everyone he knew had one or more of those buttons. People accepted them with amusement, as tokens of friendship or just to humor another eccentric filker. Anyway, every time I attend a filk event, there's one of those buttons. And every time I see one, I see a little bit of Dave, and I know I have a connection with that person. I'm never sure if they are wearing it because they are at a convention, and it's cool to wear personalized buttons at conventions, or because they are thinking about their lost friend, or because they were expecting to see me. It doesn't matter, because they all say "I miss your brother, too" in a quiet, inconspicuous way. It just reminds me that Dave gave me a whole circle of living, breathing friends.