Simon Seligman

I first came to know Nick by reputation; he worked with my wife Sophie and I’d hear about this remarkable man of so many parts. Our own friendship slowly developed over the years and then, fairly suddenly, it deepened enormously. I had a depressive episode about a decade ago, and as I fell down that rabbit hole, Nick - typically - asked Sophie what he could do to help. ‘Please find a way to talk to him’ she said. And so Nick proposed that he and I talk, each week, and brilliantly framed it around the simple idea of us checking in with what we each wanted to commit to in that week.

And so a rhythm of loving and unjudgmental mutual support was established. Again, typically, Nick made it pragmatic and useful, things that mattered so much to him – ‘What can we do in this world?’ being, I always felt, one of his mantras.

In that decade of check-ins, I now understand that I was being given a masterclass in consistent friendship, kindness and connection. To put it simply, Nick showed up. I still have 4th January marked in my diary for the check-in that would have started this year off, for which of course he could not show up. But the gift he unknowingly bequeathed me, is that I find that I’ve been checking in with Nick pretty much every day since he died.

The check-ins were often mundane; we’d talk about procrastination, making choices, will I write that article, spend that time in the studio, fulfil or let go of that obligation, and we’d hold each other accountable, laugh at our bad habits and failings and encourage each other to affirm and celebrate what had gone well.

But Nick had such a quality of truth to him that the mundane was always transcended in our exchanges; he couldn’t help having an eye on the facts of the matter, so that whatever was assailing either of us, in his case how to manage his desire to be true to art AND climate AND politics AND education AND connection AND love AND - of course – the unavoidable dance with illness and mortality, he had a way of seeing so clearly into the heart of things.

And what was so astonishing, but again typical, was that as his health became more and more conditional, Nick still insisted that we talk about our weeks as if they were comparable – he just happened to be having a massively invasive and painful medical intervention that might go either way, while I was worrying about meeting a deadline for some dull piece of paperwork. He never pulled rank, he never chastised me for having trivial anxieties, he never said he had nothing left to learn or reflect upon. Until he chose to end his treatments, Nick was in the business of living.

At the time that he was coming to terms with the reality of his myeloma, I introduced Nick to another dear friend, Jack Blackburn, a couple of decades older, who was also living with myeloma and its complications, and who Nick said he would value meeting. They talked intensively for 2 hours and at one point, Nick burst into tears from the sheer relief of being able to talk it all through with someone who knew what it was like at a cellular level. It was an incredible privilege to witness that first conversation.

They continued to talk, finding many things in common, and Jack asked Nick if he would provide some illustrations for a book, Spinning Men, which is on display today. The book quotes a letter from Nick about his art, which ends ‘Whereas Michelangelo’s Christ is rising out of the grave, I am perilously perched on top of it, wondering when I will fall into it.’

Well, we are here today because Nick has fallen, and he joins Jack wherever it is that the people we love gather after they die, somewhere both painful and lovely in our hearts. After Nick died, I shared with Jamie a recent poem by Sharon Olds, which has a last line that seems to me to say something so true about the way our beloved friend lived his life. The poem ends: ‘Maybe life is a kind of dying. Maybe this has been heaven.’

SS