MOBY’S SOUL

Paul and Moby in an early collaboration, before 2000.

Filmmaker Paul Yates met Moby - the successful electronic music producer - in their high school AV club. Moby was Paul’s closest friend as Paul dealt with parental abuse and was houseless in his teens. In their 20s, Paul was the keyboardist in Moby’s band, and they played Woodstock and Letterman. Their friendship was tight.

“I mean, I talked Moby off a ledge once,” Paul said.

In 2000, Moby helped to fund what Paul hoped would be his indie breakout film, Alien Sex Party. Moby is featured in the comedy with two dildos stuck to his head. That same year, Moby released his album Play and it was a smash hit. Every song on the album was licensed for use in a commercial - which Paul felt was a sign his formerly-punk best friend was selling out. Now a celebrity with an image to protect, Moby wanted to stop the release of Alien Sex Party.

Moby’s managers sent Paul a contract to sign that would not only kept Alien Sex Party out of theaters, but enjoined all the work that Paul had ever made with Moby - everything from their high school surrealist films to documentary footage from the Lollapalooza tour bus.

“No one says no to me anymore” Moby said to Paul in their last phone call.

Paul was stunned that his friend had turned on him.

“It was the darkest moment of my life,” Paul said “and I’ve even unplugged my mother from life support and been homeless.”

Despondent at Moby’s betrayal, Paul went to a craft store and bought a piece of parchment paper and a glitter pen. He wrote 'The Eternal Soul of Moby' on it, stained it with coffee and put it up for auction on eBay.

It sold for $41.

The story was written up by Time Magazine in October 2000. Moby saw the write up while on tour in Europe. Paul and Moby’s friendship was done for good.

This story follows where Moby’s Soul went, the rifts and grief in friendship that it created, and how it returns full circle to Paul.

Mark Seiler, a college student and DJ in Orono Maine, bought Moby’s Soul. It was a source of pride for him, as Moby was his favorite musician. Mark ran the most extensive Moby fan site, mobymusic.com. In a post titled ‘What I Own’ on mobymusic.com, Mark listed Moby’s Soul at the very end.

Mark’s best friend Tim McEwen ran the server that hosted the site. Mark and Tim were friends since meeting in high school at a Quaker youth group in upstate New York. Tim looked up to Mark like an older brother, and Mark helped to expand Tim’s taste in music. A lot of their relationship happened in online chats, and they were always logged on.

In their 20s, they had planned to make their website hosting hobby into a business. Mark had planned to move back home after graduation to stay with Tim and work on their business.

But on the way home, his truck broke down in Worcester, MA with all of his worldly possessions. Alone in a motel that night, Mark inexplicably took his own life.

Tim felt guilty - like he should have done more, or should have seen the signs. He wasn’t able to fully process his feelings about Mark’s death.

Mark’s memory was ever present. His shoes were by the front door, and his jacket was in the closet, as if he was still somewhere in the house. Tim had inherited almost everything in the back of Mark’s truck and not know what to do with it, he packed it away. Moby's Soul languished in an LA storage unit for over a decade. Mark’s white Stratocaster was stored in the garage until Eamon started playing it. Tim made sure his kids heard stories of Mark and knew his name, but he never talked about the emotional toll of Mark’s death.

Then, Tim’s son Eamon began struggling with depression while away at boarding school and came home. The family had the resources, so Tim, his wife Andrea and Eamon all went to group family counseling.

“Tim saw kids in the program talk about suicide ideation” Andrea said, “And I think that really scared him.”

Andrea thought that watching Eamon work through depression was bringing Tim’s grief of losing Mark back up to the surface. By supporting his son through his mental health struggles, and talking about Mark with Eamon, Tim was able to reconcile with his old fear that he didn’t do enough to help Mark.

In the years after buying Moby’s Soul, Mark had kept in touch with Paul. Tim had seen Mark’s photos from Paul’s raucous Dec 27th birthday parties, called Yatesmas. When Tim found out that Paul lived in LA, they met up for vegan ice cream and Tim decided to return Moby’s Soul to its maker.

“After Mark, Paul was really the one with the strongest connection to Moby’s Soul,” Tim said. “It didn’t make sense for me to keep it.”

Moby’s Soul was just a piece of paper. But it had the power to end a friendship and serve as a painful reminder to another friendship gone; traveling from one person to the next, adding layers to grief. At what point does an object of pain become an object of healing?

Paul had never stopped thinking about Moby. He processed his loss through his film work. One project, a TV pilot reliving his youth with Moby, and another, a sci-fi TV pilot about a man who loses his soul. There were times when the former friends had brief interactions. Paul wrote to Moby after Mark passed away, and Moby posted about his biggest fan on his blog. Moby remixed a song of Paul’s, fittingly called ‘Hey, Moby!” which Paul had made to express his anger at Moby after their fallout. Moby showed up at a surrealist film festival that Paul organized.

Recently, Paul and his family ran into Moby in Griffiths Park and it reignited their friendship again. Paul and Moby are on a group text where they send memes and jokes - like a meme of the Golden Girls with Gollum heads. But they’ve never spoken about the soul selling incident. In the Spring, Moby will attend Yatesmas for the first time since 2000 and Paul intends to show Moby his soul and burn it over a fire.