The Wednesday before last was the final screening of Independent View in the KQED studio.

When I arrived for that last screening, the front door was locked, and a security guard let me in after I told him I was coming to see Michael. A very nice girl came down to walk me to the studio. Brightly lush, rather beautiful, brilliantly colored hair, shoulder length, worn straight and loose and cut unevenly so it seemed torn at the edges. She asked if I’d eaten and when I said I hadn’t, she took me to the Green Room where there were some snacks. I munched on cheese and crackers and drank some port and tried to make conversation with a lean brown woman in her twenties or thirties, a documentary film-maker.

I watched the show from the controlroom, sitting in a chair pushed against the back. Very dark, two rows of people at consoles with their backs to me, facing several TV monitors showing shots of the set and a nature show involving lizards, seals, segulls and other fauna that seemed to be on a permanent loop. After the show, Michael, as the host, made a brief, very nice speech to the cast and crew about what a pleasure it had been to work with them. We left quickly after that. He said he couldn’t bear to see them dismantling the set.

Everyone walked to a nearby bar, where we sat at a long table and ate and drank. I spent a while talking to the hostess of that party we attended in Bernal Heights. She was among the people who, in the drunken farewells on the sidewalk outside the place after it closed, threw her arms around Michael and swore eternal friendship.