Magical Mystery Tour
Exploring the life and art of the late Sean O'Donnell
"At our last lunch," Lange recalls, "he brought me his latest piece, and he said it was the best work of art that anyone had ever made." The photo montage depicts a multicolored wrestler's mask suspended against a black background and surrounded by five-pointed stars. Lange believes this piece is O'Donnell's depiction of his own suicide. Shortly after their lunch meeting on January 25, O'Donnell drove to a strip mall at 32nd Street and Indian School Road, parked, and shot himself in the head with a .44 Magnum revolver.
"My husband Tom used to say that Sean's was an artistic mind uncluttered by reality," Elaine Meyers says. "And what I admired most about him was that he didn't need our reality to create his."
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As Lange is preparing to leave O'Donnell's house, there's a knock on the door. It's a service man from Salt River Project, who says he's there to shut off the electricity.
"Who asked you to come?" Lange wants to know.
The SRP guy holds up his clipboard and points to the name on his work order. "Sean O'Donnell. He called us yesterday."
Lange glances over at the many color photocopies of O'Donnell's face stacked near the door. It does seem like something Seany would do, she seems to be thinking, call SRP from beyond the grave. Finally, for maybe the first time in the 18 years since they became friends, Lange chooses her own reality over Sean O'Donnell's.
"I'm sorry," she says. "You can't turn the power off. I need to get Sean's things in order. And he didn't call you. He's dead. He killed himself."
SRP looks around the room -- at the scattered clippings, the wrestlers' masks, the Jesuses -- and says something that Sean O'Donnell would have loved.
"Yeah," he says. "Sometimes that happens."
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