Missing Actor (Spaulding) Gray Long Battled His Fears

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=499&ncid=716&e=4&u=/ap/20040117/ap_on_en_ot/spalding_gray

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NEW YORK - Before he disappeared last week, Spalding Gray had been performing early versions of a new work that had long bedeviled him — a monologue about a car wreck more than two years ago that left him physically and emotionally scarred.

The subject matter was harrowing even by the standards of a performer who, in 18 monologues since 1979, has touched on such sensitive topics as his mother's suicide, his struggles with writer's block and his search for spirituality.

But for Gray, publicizing his thoughts has never been about just performing. It's how he comes to terms with the events of his life.

"It's a way of framing his experience and coping with a series of loose ends," says his brother, Rockwell Gray, an English professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "The introspection was a big part of the strength that made these things so much more than sit-down comedy, as some people called them. There is a lot of mind to them."

.....lots more, so sad.