On Hilde
I met Hilde Lynn sometime around 2008 or 2009, when I was around 24.
She was bartending at Parkteatret in Oslo. This was sometime during my first year of living there. I remember recognizing her accent immediately.
She introduced herself as Hilde, though she pronounced it “Hildy.” I was lit up. Here was another American. I was at once less alone.
She was studying at Kunsthøgskolen—Oslo’s academy of the arts—at the time. Wry. Sharp-witted. Irreverent. Easy to talk to. We connected immediately and became, for a time, somewhat inseparable.
Beyond that, my memory becomes unreliable. What remains now is mostly atmosphere: parties, long nights, too much drinking—the particular blur of wayward youth and expatriate life.
And then as these things go, we went our separate ways and lost touch. I have no recollection of how, or when, or why. I often wondered over the years what became of her, but what we had in the way of contact information became lost in the shuffle of lost phone numbers, changing country codes, and deleted Facebook accounts.
And so life went on, and my mind, as it tends to do, became occupied with other things.
And then last night as I’m arriving home from Atlanta, I open Instagram to the news that a reknowned art world influencer, the woman behind the popular internet persona Jerry Gogosian, has been found dead in Brazil.
I read the headline.
I saw the name, then I saw the photo.
Holy shit. It’s Hilde.
For nearly twenty years, I carried around a half-forgotten version of her. A fellow American artist in Oslo. A friend and running buddy from a chapter of my life that now feels impossibly distant. Meanwhile the art world knew someone entirely different: a sharp observer, a shrewd satirist, a personality whose influence had permeated many of the same circles I have inhabited for years. I knew that person existed.
I simply didn’t know it was her.
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We tend to think of people from our past as fixed. They remain the age they were when we knew them, frozen inside the story we tell ourselves about our own lives. But while we are remembering them, they are continuing on. They move. They fall in and out of love. They fail. They succeed. They reinvent themselves. They become people we would scarcely recognize.
As it turns out, all of the people from our past are living entire lives beyond the horizon of our awareness. Most of the time, we never get to see who they became. And then, sometimes, you find out who they are only through their death.
—
We somewhat expect people from our past to disappear over the horizon. We expect them to move to another city, start another life, become something like strangers. We do not expect to discover that they have been standing just beyond our field of vision. It’s perhaps most jarring to me that while I thought I had long since lost track of her, Hilde and I occupied worlds that are directly adjacent to one another. She had been in the next room the entire time.
I fight with the idea that “I should have known.” Why? Would knowing have changed anything? If the two of us had met at Art Basel last year, there’s no guarantee either of us would have immediately recognized the other. We knew each other at different times, very different versions.
If I had recognized her earlier, maybe I would’ve sent a message. Maybe not.
Maybe she would have responded, or maybe not.
Maybe we’d have run into each other in Miami—the most likely of places—and laughed about the people we once were.
Maybe we’d have remained distant acquaintances.
Maybe we wouldn’t like each other at all.
I won’t know now. Reconciliation later in life is never guaranteed, but somehow you take for granted that the opportunity is always available. Death forces shut a door you never even realized you were keeping open.
I didn’t know an “Art World Icon.” I knew someone who was bright, sharp, funny, somewhat troubled, and full of potential. Then—a little too late—I discover that she went on to build something significant. In retrospect, I’m not surprised.
What surprises me is how long she remained present in my world without my knowing it. For nearly twenty years I wondered what became of her. Now I know.
I only wish I had learned it from her.