Proto-Conspiracy Theory; The Strange Lives and Deaths of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy B.

[rikzilla]

I had thought to add this to the current thread about how and why conspiracy theories begin, but
I really think it's interesting enough for it's own thread topic. I've searched, but I don't see where
anyone has yet posted anything about the strange lives and tragic deaths of Theresa Duncan
and Jeremy Blake.

So here goes:

Theresa was an exceptionally talented and beautiful woman. She was also a haunted and paranoid
conspiracy theorist. For the last 12 years of her life she lived with a man she called her soul-mate.
He was Jeremy Blake, a successful artist who just recently scored his dream, his own show at
the Corcoran gallery in Washington, DC. The very place where he took his first lessons in art. They
were both talented, beautiful, accomplished people.

Last month, July 10th, Theresa Duncan tooki her own life with booze and sleeping pills. She left a note.
Jeremy found her body. One week later he went to rockaway beach, took off his clothes, folded them
and carefully placed a suicide note on top of them. He walked naked into the sea, his body was
found by fishermen some 50 miles offshore 5 days later.

Theresa's blog is named: The Wit of the Staircase
It is the work of a very intelligent and talented person. Also, it offers a direct insight into the workings of
the paranoid brain. Here is how she explains the title of the blog:

"From the French phrase 'esprit d'escalier,' literally, it means 'the wit of the staircase', and usually refers to the perfect witty response you think up after the conversation or argument is ended. "Esprit d'escalier," she replied. "Esprit d'escalier. The answer you cannot make, the pattern you cannot complete till aterwards it suddenly comes to you when it is too late".

Think about that for a moment. "...the pattern you cannot complete til afterwards...." Is of course a
trait that all CTers share. They "connect the dots" and call the rest of us dirisive names when we will
not follow their lead.
Here are a few examples of her paranoid rantings....

How could such a talented person fall for the most inept 9/11 lies?? A: She wants it to be true. Even a clearly
intelligent person can be self-deluded.


Theresa thought that the CIA and the Scientologists were after her. She believed that 9/11 was MIHOP,
and yet she was capable of beauty such as this:

SUMMER SOMNAMBULISM

Wit loves to look into the licorice black blankness between stars on a summer night, gaps of one quarter inch or thirty two million miles that far after midnight scintillate with something.
But the spaces between words are where the witty ones find the Truth truly roaring, for there is never really any lack there neither, not after Lacan went spelunking in these spaces. For language also abhors a vacuum, like nature, which itself was supposedly spoken into being.
Up sleepwalking I kept talking to you though the taillights of your car had disappeared far far down at the end of our dusty dirt road many hours before.
So through transparent bowers of Turkish rose evoked by very real powers of futuristic farm girl mediumship (in civilized places I would have learned already, like they did and we still never have, that these powers do not exist) I wandered in the antique white nightgown my grandmother had given me and found you again where you slept. And on the edge of your bed in the dark you swore too that you saw and felt and spoke until...
"Who are you talking to?" she asked me as I wandered around our farmhouse. "Oh, him." I said. "You're sleepwalking, go back to bed."
It was near dawn. I realized I was and I did.
When I awoke it was like Opone, with its scent beguiling a real Bulgarian blossom though the flower it spoke of had died so many months before. A hint of masculinity there reminds me that is was really real, I was there with you, talking and touching across the vast interstellar space between your loser farm town and mine.
"They don't burn witches anymore, right?" you used to ask as a joke.
I still don't know the answer to that one.

I never thought I'd ever lament the passing of a CT nut, but the world will clearly be a duller place without her.

But getting back to the reason for this thread, yes, her and Jeremy's tragic passing has already become fodder for a proto-CT
being built around her paranoia by other, less talented, paranoids.

I haven't posted here in quite some time, so I searched to see if any of my fellow JREFers had copped to this story. It appears
not, so here it is. Please tell me what you think,...to me this stuff is just plain fascinating...and an insight into how these people's
brains are wired.

-z