The quality of our lives has an interesting rhythm. We strive to make our lives better, lighter, and then at certain times we feel haunted and pulled down by darkness.

Certainly the horribly untimely death of Philip Seymour Hoffman this weekend had—and still has—the feeling of a bad dream. He’d talked explicitly about his addiction problems, but was always seen as someone who had beaten them LONG ago. But no, it couldn’t be as simple as that. I think of his films and then I think of what his last weeks or his last day must have been like, and it all barely makes sense. On film he’s in control, a master of his art. The consummate professional. To think of him lying in a bathroom with a needle in his arm, in an apartment littered with bags of heroin, just has the quality of … a bad dream.

But…