I don’t wish to write about Dilla’s life. (That’s already been done better than I ever could, several times over.) But I do wish talk about the utter genius of J DIlla and how one of his albums, in particular, affected my life. If I had to choose an all-time favorite album, it would be his swan song Donuts.

Notnitz brought a friend to see The Turin Horse at a microcinema. Afterwards, as they stopped by the ticket booth so that he could check whether the film would be showing again, he wondered aloud how such a slow bleak film could be so exhilarating. “And wasn’t the hot potato scene sort of hilarious, at least the first time?” It must not have been the right moment to introduce the friend to windswept Hungarian cinema, however. She reached into the pocket of her jeans, extracted a Chapstick, and stuck it in one of her nostrils.

His trip into the past could not be made without the ticket he bought in the present. That ticket they slid to him through the booth’s small window was full of memory and magic, and he cupped it in his hands like he held summer’s first lovesick lightning bug.

We had spent the afternoon out at the lake drinking beer and pretending to fish. Bubba caught a sickly looking bass, but me and Three-fingers Chad just sat on a granite outcrop, pounding back Lone Star’s and having a good time. And I don’t mean to say that Bubba was more serious than us, but goddamn that man loved to fish. Hell, me and Three-fingers really only came out because it made Bubba so happy.