“But of all my complaints, the most legitimate and depressing is that so many of my dearest friends are so spread out from Belgrade to Amsterdam to Paris to London to North Carolina to Toronto to Chicago to Santa Fe to San Francisco to Seattle to Fairbanks that I don’t get to see most of them once in two years. […] It’s the price many of us pay for picking our friends from among those we have most in common with professionally, rather than those who happen to live in the neighborhood…”

– From Kyle Gann’s PostClassic tribute to his friend, the recently deceased composer Art Jarvinen. This postscript on what it’s like to lose a dear but faraway friend reminded me, very much, of Ron Allen, and others.