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News Tue Dec 13 2011
Lee Groban, RIP
Poet and artist Lee Groban, a well-known fixture on the Chicago arts scene, passed away Dec. 9 after a long battle with congestive heart failure and emphysema. He was 64. There will be a memorial service at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake St., from 1pm to 4pm on Sunday, Dec. 18.
Groban's best known work is The Cure for Insomnia, an 87-hour-long film based on his epic poem by the similar name A Cure for Insomnia, which he co-produced with John Henry Timmis IV. It holds the Guinness world record for the longest film, and was first played in its entirety at The School of the Art Institute from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, 1987. The poem was a continual work in progress; Groban claimed it was well over 5,000 pages at the time of his death.
Here is Groban reading a portion of A Cure for Insomnia and sharing some philosophy with a group of people on the street in New York this summer.
View more video of Groban on YouTube user SENATURD210's channel.
Greg Mucci / December 13, 2011 2:57 PM
I'm a late deafened person who befriended Lee and his family early in my life. Lee and family were the first people to recognize my creeping deafness and take me under their wing. Over the years, right up to the end, Lee would spend whole days with me writing every word of conversations. I'm deeply grateful for Lee and his family. I'll miss him greatly.
Lee was a very "different" kind of person. The kind that makes the world a better, better place.