If You Meet Chandler On The Road, Kill Him

We must grieve Chandler Bing as we grieve Matthew Perry

- Jugal Mody

WATCHING people mourn Chandler Bing when Matthew Perry died hurt me a little, if not more. And I was already unable to mourn the news of his death in the middle of the ongoing genocides and watching large portions of humanity becoming less and less human. I even made a dark joke about Yahweh asking Azrael to bring him a watermelon sundae with a Perry on top this last weekend, and sent different versions to friends. You probably don't know this about me, but dark jokes are not my thing.

I checked out of all the ongoing tragedies in the world for a little while. I returned to them in bits and bobs On Perry, the first bit that I ran into that moved me was a musician friend writing about how the Chandler brand of dry wit and sarcasm was warmer and kinder than its predecessors in (white people) sitcoms, which is to say it wasn't really that dry. I had to send that friend my favourite quote about writing comedy; it comes from Aaron Sorkin and is spoken about Perry's autobiographical-ish character Matt Albie in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

"Hey, why does Matt write (comedy)?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You said the others were writing (comedy) to be mean so why does Matt write?"

"Matt writes (comedy) to get people to like him."

This, about writing, is one of the few things that I relate to deeply as well as aspire to constantly as a writer, as an artist.

Being anxious about social media mores, I posted a promotional picture of Perry from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the above four lines of dialogue as a story on my Instagram. That was it. That was going to be my RIP Matthew Perry post. I was still upset. And the Chandler fans did not deserve to see my grief for they wouldn't get it for they hadn't known enough.