Letting Go Of Our Friend & Wordsmith Don LaCoss

Don LaCoss could write brusquely and bluntly, with an almost baffling bite.  With wordsmithing as revolutionary bile, his essays could burn power’s miserable bitterness.

Don LaCoss was a big man, with an even broader imagination. For a small man like me, the stunning size of his stature always struck me not as intimidating but as comforting. I felt him like a big brother or a mother bear; to me, his large presence reflected a larger vision.

My favorite Fifth Estate memory of Don LaCoss doesn’t involve typesetting one of his many articles in Quark Express or InDesign, even his excellent treatise on darkness that decorated our “Revisiting Primitivism” issue. It doesn’t involve discussing theory or action, surrealism or the sadness inherent to American politics.

On more than one occasion, I allowed my emotions to get-out-of-hand when dealing with an editorial dispute within our collective of hard-thinking anarchist intellectuals. This particular time, I have no idea what I was all riled up about. But as my former colleagues can attest, I could really stoke my publishing agenda with ideological fires that then fanned my personal and interpersonal passions.

In any case, Don decided to calm me down this particular day with an uncharacteristic use of  a folksy maxim, particularly uncharacteristic for an atheist-surrealist. This time, Don talked me down by reminding me to “let go and let God.” Yes, those were his exact words—they really stuck out coming from him.

I have my hunch why he chose these words, but in any case, they worked to help me unwind my mind and take tasks one at a time. It was a gesture of love and brotherhood and friendship that really tugs at me now that he’s gone from this world.

To me, someone like Don LaCoss was both spiritual and spirited about his atheist-surrealism, and even his most critical tones reserved for the most obnoxious among the world’s elite were tempered by a humor and warm-heartedness that reflected Don’s enormous character.

There’s just not enough of the kind of wit and wisdom that Don brought us in the world today, and for the last several weeks, from my home in Tennessee, I have grieved and celebrated with Susan and Benjamin and all of Don’s friends and comrades. It breaks my heart that he died on the eve of a workers’ struggle in Wisconsin in which he undoubtedly would have been a visionary and vocal ally. ~Andy Smith (Sunfrog)