Peter Vlach

So it has taken me a few weeks to get it together, but I've finally been able to scan in the photos I had of Peter. I also have something I've written, but I had to do it freehand and will have to transcribe it when I have more time. It was really upsetting to hear the news about him and it took me quite some time to really get my head around why. I don't know that I have, but at least I'm not thinking about it all the time anymore.



Here is Peter the way many people seem to remember him. As best I can recall I took this picture in the Summer of 1995, after I had just bought my first SLR camera. Peter had already gone to school but had come back to Lewisville to visit. I was hanging out a lot with John, Syd, and Chris who all lived together in some apartments off of Main St. One night peter took John, Joel and I cruising in his awesome red car. I feel like it was earlier that year that John and Peter introduced me to the music of Tom Waits and we had all been listening to him pretty much non-stop for several months. Something about that car just screamed Tom Waits (or maybe Tom Jones and Tom Waits) and he might have gone for a ride with us had he been around that night. I don't think he would have joined John and Peter at the destination, however.

Here's the photo as it appeared in my photo album. I thought it was a good snapshot of a moment. The top is taken of John at his place. I don't know the provenance of the T-shirt, but I know that Peter eventually ended up with it for at least a time as he's wearing it in the photo his brother has of him on his website. The middle, is, of course, Peter and the bottom is Andy from our road trip from TX to OR later that summer. Andy was also hanging out at John and Syd's quite a bit that summer, as was Joel. Speaking of...


I don't know why there's a picture of Cliff on this page, but the other two are of John and Joel in the backseat of Peter's car on the way that night to the railroad trestle. I don't know what inspired the trip, but I know that Pete and John ended up jumping off the top and I got these two shots.

I know that by the end of that summer a lot had changed for everyone. And after I went to school, I lost touch with Peter and John and Syd moved into a new place (the apartments where my Brother lives now and Leah's brother used to live. ) I hung out with them quite a lot when I moved back to TX, but when I went to school in Georgetown, TX, I lost touch with them. I tried to remain in contact, but they were doing their own thing. I can't remember how that little clique parted, but I know that by the following year (maybe the fall of 1997) Syd had moved somewhere to work on acting and John had moved down to live with Peter in Austin. I think the last time I saw Peter was at their place around that time. Here are a few photo's from that night.




the book in the foreground is Umberto Eco's "A Theory of Semiotics." What I remember most about that evening was that we had just discussed Eco in one of my classes and in conversation with Peter I discovered that he was studying semiotics. Thinking that I could therefore hold my own in a conversation on this topic, I started asking some questions. Peter, of course, effortlessly and with no pretense, began speaking at a level way beyond my comprehension. I tried, briefly, to play along, but he was quick to realize that I had no idea what he was talking about. So he gently pulled back the throttle on his big brain and we chatted for a bit longer about something mundane.

I remembered him that way for several years. Hearing about his exploits second or third hand, I knew that this calm, humble, effortless genius, this singular, quirky spirit was traveling East Asia, meeting interesting new people and having adventures. Though I didn't keep in touch with him, there was something comforting in knowing that he was out there, that Peter existed.