When I heard the news, my first thought was that surely it had to be bad intel. I got the phone call right after I woke. Hearing the words didn't make me anxious – no acrid pang in my gut, no cottony mouth. In all honesty, it was almost as if I had to will myself to be appropriately astounded. Brian David Braun couldn't be dead, I told myself. He's a force of nature. Hell, he's been half dead so long that surely by now he would have grown immune to a fully-lethal dose.

Could it be an elaborate hoax? Had he faked his own passing in order to shake the creditors, cash in on some long-forgotten life insurance policy and set his daughter up for her college years? He was always a sucker for a good conspiracy theory. I'd heard several well-articulated, manically-spoken, 3 a.m. addresses on everything from questionable aspects of the moon landing to Bohemian Grove and the origins of the FED.

He'd cursed me for turning him on to Dave McGowen's site and the Laurel Canyon stories about how the CIA used mid-level rock stars to undermine the anti-war movement in the late '60s. “Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole,” he texted one morning around 6 a.m. “I've been up all night reading this brilliant bastard!”

photo by Malcolm Alcala

The idea that maybe he was creating his own D.B. Cooper story seemed plausible. An artist's work tends to increase in value postmortem, and while Brian was almost tragically generous with the fruits of his talent (he once scribbled on a cocktail napkin that I could use any photo he'd ever shot in anything I ever wrote), he damned sure wouldn't like the idea of missing the big payoff from beyond.

Sadly, despite my best efforts to imagine alternate realities, none could hold. Brian David Braun – father, friend and photographer extraordinaire – had passed away in his sleep early Saturday morning. He'd been diagnosed with congenital heart disease a few years back and had only recently been discharged from the hospital after a bout of persistent pneumonia, though his prognosis seemed good, at least in his own estimation. Our last conversation had been about old Volvos. We shared a penchant for the P1800.

Anyone who knew that crazy German son of a bitch would have been well aware that he had a tendency to burn the candle at both ends. Standing a good 6'3 and usually tipping the scales somewhere north of 260, he didn't merely shoot events, he plowed through them with bowed elbows like some sort of cartoon-configured, Adderall-fueled rhinoceros; this giant, manic, sweaty photo-savant in a blue blazer, calling to mind a young Jackie Gleason as he rapidly snapped thousands upon thousands of shots. His camera sounded like a machine gun. It was twice as lethal.

It was only much later that the real work began. Hours upon hours of tediously pouring over frame after frame, before deciding which ones were worthy of being subjected to his wicked editing skills. “I am a seventh-degree Photo Shop Ninja to the 9th power!” he once told me, drunk and half naked at his computer when I showed up unexpectedly to shake him down for some work he owed me. For all of his skill at seeing the shot, his real art was in the edit and being able to spot the mediocre still that had the potential to be turned into a masterpiece, as opposed to ending up on the cutting room floor.

photo by Brian David Braun

A friend asked me today what my favorite memory of him was. Who can say? The time we covered Forks and Corks and got eighty-sixed from the place for taking a once and a lifetime opportunity to get a perfect shot, which happened to require yours truly mounting a priceless statuary because we both agreed it should be the back dustcover of my first novel?

“They invite you and me – YOU and ME – to an event that requires four hours of drinking wine in the hot sun, and they go eight kinds of crazy when we get out of hand?” he indignantly screamed. “I think we were supposed to spit the wine in those buckets,” I told him. “I didn't see that written anywhere,” he deadpanned.

We worked many gigs and for every one that he showed up to steal the show there were two that he no-showed for, often offering nothing more than a text 10 minutes after it began, saying something like Sorry – I messed up. He was an artist in the purest sense of the word and often acted as if being difficult to deal with was a job requirement. “Brian, I don't want a flash drive with 1,326 raw photos on it!” I'd scream. “We're half an hour to deadline; I want your favorite five, sprinkled with your magic pixie dust and ready to go to print. Then I'll pick three for the cut. You pick five, I pick three – go!”

Once, I dropped in on him at his old place near Sarasota Bay at about midnight on a Sunday. “No call or text?” he asked. “I'm bringing back the drop-in,” I told him as our respective girlfriends exchanged apologies. Many Yuenglings later he insisted that I take home a giant canvas print I had always been fond of. It was a brilliant shot he took of the actual “Crossroads” where legend has it Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in order to play the world's best guitar (taken at 55 mph as the car tore through the dirt road intersection).

A few months later, we were at my bungalow working on a bottle of 15-year Barbancourt rum and playing with a new high-end strobe that one of his benefactors had bestowed upon him. I could tell he was struggling to recall giving me the print. “Please bro, I know you were drunk when you insisted I take it,” I plead. “It's still yours. It's merely on loan here. I insist you take it back.” He wouldn't hear of it. Eventually we agreed that he'd take as a trade my Season 1 Greatest American Hero DVD set that I'd found on a rack at the Dollar Tree that afternoon and had bought as a gag.

photo by Virginia Hoffman

To Brian, such a story was worth more than any item – even his beautiful art. The print? It's hanging on my wall as I write this. I had the pleasure of working often with Brian, and I enjoyed the privilege of his skills, which always added an extra dimension to my stories. We had a mutual appreciation for each others' talent. We believed that words and pictures – when properly arranged – could say much more than either on their own.

We even thought they could change the world every once in a while. I guess we both believed in a lot of things and every now and then, we proved each other right. That's likely what I'll miss most. He was the Ralph Steadman to my Hunter S. Thompson and together we made sweet Gonzo music that I will always be proud of. When people say, we worked together, it's simply not the same as what Brian David Braun and I did. We didn't trade stories at the water cooler. We made stories all over.

Brian was far from perfect, and he'd be the first person to tell you that. He lived life hard and fast, as if he knew the hourglass had been turned over long ago and was maybe even a little short on sand. From time to time, he made apologies but more often than not, they would have fallen in the too little too late category. But if you were down on your luck he'd give you his last smoke and let you take the final pull on his can of Four-Loko.

He was the kind of guy who you could call at any hour, give him an address and tell him to pick you up no questions asked. He'd show up with a new girl – she'd be driving – and he'd explain that he was in love and wanted you to be in the wedding. Your 4 a.m. intrusion wouldn't even rate a mention in the conversation.

42 years aren't that many, but not all people live life at the same pace. Most sit around at even the most advanced ages, telling you what they wish they had done. Give them a millennium and they'd find a way to end in regret of that which they'd failed to do or see. Brian David Braun went through life with the same hell-bent fury that marked his shoots. Burning through hundreds of frames every minute, his eyes saw much more than any of ours ever could. He bought the ticket and he took the ride. He was my friend and I will miss him. Godspeed ole' buddy. Travel well.

related:

Brian David Braun: A Retrospective

Dennis Maley's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The Bradenton Times. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. Click here to visit his column archive. Click here to go to his bio page. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook.