A post on the Facebook page of NYC experimental outfit Excepter confirms that band member Clare Amory has died of cancer. According to the blog of band member Jon Nicholson, she was 35. As a member of Excepter, she contributed to the band's free-form musical explorations and noisy, improvisational live shows (as well as their prolific release of live recordings).
I saw Clare in one of her earlier bands, more mainstream.
But I really knew her through her family, who I've known for 25 years. Her mom and I have been good friends, and as I watched her struggle with the devastating illness her daughter faced, she did so with all the strength and grace and obvious suffering of a parent losing a child.
Clare was a beautiful young woman (you can see in the video that I'm not exaggerating at all): smart, talented, graceful (she spent many years as a dancer) and creative. She died partly because we sneer at people who want to make their own way creatively in our world: she had no health insurance when she was diagnosed. Her death is a tragedy, and it sits heavily on me (as it has all week, knowing it was imminent), and I send my warmest sympathies to her family.
