New Orleans, in particular, hit hard for me. It's always been a mystical, strange, halfway-real place in my mind, a city like something out of a Neil Gaiman book, where what you think you see is only about a third of what's really going on under the surface. I've spent many nights roaming its streets, and the sight of it flooded and barren leaves me stunned and horrified. And then, of course, there's our own fun Rita insanity here in Houston -- we wanted to believe so badly that something just as horrible could happen to us, and in assuming the worst, we inadvertently created our very own unique tragedy.

The weirdest thing of all, though, is that it's not the "big" tragedies that have hit me the hardest recently. Heck, it hasn't even been the most recent of those tragedies that left the most lasting mark. Instead, it was me belatedly stumbling over the news that Michael Dahlquist, longtime drummer of Chicago-by-way-of-Seattle indie-rockers Silkworm, died on July 14th of this year. He and two coworkers, also technical writers like Michael and fellow musicians in other Chicago-area bands, were on their lunch break when a woman blew through two red lights in her Mustang and plowed right into the Honda Civic in which they were sitting, waiting at a red light. Michael, John Glick, and Douglas Meis all died in the crash. The woman, Jeanette Sliwinski, had apparently been trying to kill herself; she survived.

I read about this on the homepage of My Pal God Records, of all places -- I had just happened to pop by to see what the MPG folks had going on these days. And then I saw the note, and I literally couldn't stop staring at the words; I felt numb. Silkworm were once one of my favorite bands, way back when I was a young'un just starting college and trying to somehow cajole my way into a DJ shift at the college radio station. They were one of the first "indie" bands I ever heard. I couldn't ever find a copy of their debut album, L'ajre (it's since been re-released, on the Even a Blind Chicken Finds a Kernel of Corn Now and Then comp), so I taped it from a friend, and I listened to it over, and over, and over, and over again. "St. Patrick's Day" blew me away, "Slow Burn" rocked my world, and "Three Beatings" left me lying on the floor in awe. I'd never heard anything that powerful, so crazed, and so impassioned. I'd just missed the band, unfortunately, by the time I listened to the album, but I was able to see them twice afterwards -- once at the college and once at some teeny-tiny pit of a bar that didn't survive very long after the show. Both shows, naturally, were incredible. Silkworm made me want to start a band, to be in a band, so I could maybe-someday-hopefully make music like what they played.

Time went on, as it does, and I kinda lost track of the band. I got their next three albums, up through 1996's Firewater, but after that I didn't get any more, for some reason (although I heard most of 1998's Blueblood). I missed their trio of records on Touch & Go -- Lifestyle, Italian Platinum, and the band's most recent, 2004's It'll Be Cool -- completely. They faded to the background of my mind, as I got into other bands and other kinds of music. Even still, though, they were never gone completely, and I'd sometimes find the "Honest, I do, honest, I do" line from "Three Beatings" caroming off the insides of my skull from time to time.

And then this. Michael played drums on every single Silkworm release (as far as I know, anyway), and now he's gone. With him, apparently, has died the band -- their Website now says "Welcome to the web site for Silkworm (1987-2005)." I still can't entirely believe it.

And I know, I know -- in the grand scheme of things, this is just three guys in a very unfortunate accident. Wrong place, wrong time; it happens to thousands of people every year. I know that this can in no way compare to the uncounted numbers of poor souls who died in the tsunami that rocked Asia last winter, or the thousands who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the people killed or displaced from their homes by the flooding from Katrina. It shouldn't even rate, on that scale, right? But somehow, it does. When I read about Michael's death, I cried. Literally, right there at my computer at work, I wept.

Why? Because after all those years, it feels like a part of my youth, my musical life, has died. One of my heroes, a guy I wanted to emulate -- even if he never was a big-time rock star or anything close to those grand heights -- is gone. And that, to me, is just as valid a tragedy as any of the godawful calamities that have struck in recent days. Maybe a tragedy doesn't have to be "big," after all, to mean something. I don't really know.

Either way, Michael, you will be missed.