Dead to Me

Patrick Burglawister grew up in the woods of Central Wisconsin. Since his birth in 1971 and into the early 1990's, he was silently preoccupied with various mystical and mundane dimensions that he discovered along the way. Patrick never spoke out loud of these fanciful distractions, and from a young age, baffled others over his apparent secret dialogue with an exclusive world.

When it was his turn for a most ordinary adolescent vanishing act into the backdrop of a collegiate town, Patrick was ultimately considered an outstanding weirdo and a popular nominee for a slap in the face. He had his own Near Death Experience to brag about, as well as the right to preach the metaphysically charming anecdote that came with it. He was unapologetically wide-eyed when he initially shopped around the city for an audience, he was even scared to take the bus when he first arrived in Milwaukee. Then Jonas and Cat found him and showed him how to ride around-maybe with too much style. That's when he turned into a total dick.

Celebrity deaths were the talk of the 1990's, as in any other era from the calendar of popular Americana. We had entered a time when conversation-provoking questions like "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" (which briefly turned to discussions of the Challenger disaster) had become grandiose and revisionist swan songs for the masses to swoon to. Before Diana's unsettling demise closed the decade and ushered in new opinions on both compassion and conspiracy the earnest sentiment amongst a sullen generation was, "Where were you when you found out Kurt Cobain died?" -and everyone had a story.