So I know a lot of you will have seen this on instagram already, but Thes posted some images from the service and a really heartfelt message.
No doubt the books and floral tribute were incredibly appreciated, and seemed to touch Pat's family and friends a lot more than we could have imagined. So glad we could pull together and make this happen. I love you all. :
piecelock70 said:
I am not a man of organized religion, yet I respect all faiths and those who chose to follow a path - with flock or alone – as any journey justifies the means imo. After all, we know not what awaits us in the afterlife, only that we can attempt to do good in the meantime. Yet, I am often reminded that there may just be an order outside of our grasp; As if each life is a thread of fine silk blowing in the wind, no control over with whom and how we tangle, interact, tie knots and weave a lifetime with; some unseen purpose. How else to explain a chance meeting of young Mike and Chris in Martin’s Records on Pico Blvd – that we might go on to create music together, a newly braided tangle that would then blow into Patrick Leonard Taormina. Unbeknownst to the three of us now indelibly tied together at that moment, we desperately needed each other. He was our master curator – the one capable of taking the tangled mess of PUTS and advocating for it – he saw in our indecipherable chaos an order and worked effortlessly to extract it, organize it and present it to the world. It was as if we were suddenly looking in a better mirror of our own lives - Pat had magically made us more official than we actually were. He organized our Wiki pages, he transcribed our lyrics, he granted fans a nuanced glimpse into the mess we fashioned. And together, he took pride alongside Mike and I in our small, independent victories. However, the farther out our PUTS kite flew, unwinding as it went, Pat remained the strained tether keeping us from spiraling away. And on June 15th, 2016, that string finally broke. To be entirely honest, the combined weight of Mike and I – that vision from the ground of a tattered P that might not fly like it used to; an increasingly frayed and tangled knot that he was now intrinsically a part of - might have, in part, ultimately caused him to let go. I had, after all, confided in him that we couldn’t go much longer like we were with royalties drying up and that saddened him more than I knew. I asked him to do the art for Where The Piecelock Ends, I didn’t realize how much the mere suggestion of an END might have hurt him.
It wasn’t my intent of course, he was a part of this and I always spoke honestly to him, hell I looked up to him. I cooked him and Eimi dinner, scrambling to make sure the wine was just right and the food was perfect. Mike would buy Pico treats and we always knew, just knew, that no matter how out we got he would be there to organize and catalog our lives. And now, gone. We are left a tangled mess spiraling around an increasingly chaotic environ - the one person we took for granted missing. As I sat in church today amongst 350 devoted family and loved ones in attendance, I openly wept as his brother explained to the congregation, that all the while, the reclusive Pat they knew actually had a worldwide network of friends grieving his passing – he held up the booklet the P Army made for Pat and they audibly gasped. I wept because they may never understand how much he meant to all of us. I wept because I miss him and never got express that he was, actually an equal part in this. And without him, it will be very hard to keep this going. Rest in Peace Patrick Leonard Taormina June 8, 1982 - June 15, 2016
