I don’t remember where I was the first time I met Moshe Goldberg.

He would.

I’m also not sure how long it was between the time we became friends online and that first real life meeting.

He’d remember that too.

Moshe had an attention to detail and a memory that is extremely rare.

It was the sort of attention to detail that I suppose you might need if you’re going to earn a PhD in mathematics but is also fairly handy if you’d like to know who had the seventh highest number of possessions in the 1972 VFL grand final.

Moshe and I first crossed paths sometime back in late 2002 or 2003 as our beloved Carlton Football Club imploded and we sought out information and like minds online. Moshe had been living in Dallas, Texas and had recently returned to a Melbourne that had grown substantially and was culturally different to the one he left back in the 1980s. We quickly became friends online and when we finally did meet face to face, wherever that was, it was like catching up with an old mate.

Moshe was always excited by new ideas but also had an incredible respect for the accumulated wisdom of those who came before. In short, he was a fan of expertise and what those with specialised knowledge could tell us about where we’ve been and where we might be headed. It’s fair to say he wasn’t a fan of keyboard warriors who believe a fifteen second Google search is enough to arm themselves in a debate with someone with forty or fifty years of specialized research in a given field.

We bonded over this.

Moshe was very clear about what he knew but he also clearly understood what he didn’t know and would happily defer to those with greater knowledge of a given field.

And then he’d ask them questions.

And more questions.

Because he wanted to know more.

And more.

If I was to sum up our friendship of the last seventeen years I would describe it as one unending conversation encompassing everything from the genius of Father John Misty’s fourth album to the benefits of purple carrots with detours taking in literature, film, art, architecture and…

…and everything really.

There weren’t too many topics that didn’t make an appearance at one stage or another during our endless ramblings. If you can have a conversation with someone about the rhinoceros’s inability to use its capacity to turn its head to the full extent its physiology allows, then you can have a conversation with them about pretty much anything.

And then of course there was the football. Endless, endless conversations about football. We mostly agreed about where our club and our team were at but every now and then one of us would have a moment of doubt and we’d head down a new rabbit hole and end up in a new place. And there was the joy. In a conversation with Moshe you never quite knew where you were going to end up but you could be pretty certain it would be an interesting ride.

Most of all I’ll look back at my friendship with Moshe as being one of generosity. Moshe always gave himself to you in a conversation and I was never left wondering where he stood on an issue even if he had no idea.

“I have no idea! What would I know?”

Because of the world’s current craziness I hadn’t seen Moshe face to face for a while. We’d make plans and then something would come up with his treatment or something else would get in the way and due to his illness he’d been pretty much in his own personal lockdown for some time anyway. In a way it didn’t matter.

I don’t really like talking on the phone to people much these days. I’m not sure why. I used to love it. Maybe it’s the occasional gaps in conversation or the self-absorption of people in general these days or something else. Moshe was the exception and outside of being one of the most warm and excellent human beings I’ve met, that’s perhaps the greatest compliment I can give him. We would often start a conversation as a result of a post one of us had seen on Talking Carlton or some weird article one of us had read. There’d be a text, then another text and maybe a third and then one of us would call and it wouldn’t take long before the whole spectrum opened up and we were off for hours.

We had a long talk a few weeks ago and he said at one point…

“You know, when we first became friends we’d talk about footy, footy and more footy. But I can’t remember the last time we really talked about footy. Maybe that’s got something to do with our team being so shit but maybe it’s because there are so many more important things to talk about and we like talking to each other about them.”

Over the last few days, once it became apparent that our conversations were about to end, I thought a lot about talking with Moshe and one of the few things Moshe may have enjoyed almost as much as a good conversation was a good graph and that was another place we bonded.

If I was to graph the pleasure I got from talking to Moshe it would be an exponential graph. With every year that’s passed since we first met I’ve enjoyed talking with him and enjoyed him being a part of my life much more than the last.

And I know that if I were to mention that graph to Moshe he would probably suggest that in fact it’s more likely that that graph would be linear or perhaps logistic in nature rather than exponential.

I would then have had to disagree. It’s definitely exponential.

I’m really going to miss talking to you Moshe.

Love you mate.

Pat, Jamie and Charlie have summed up Moshe and our feelings for Moshe most eloquently, and it’s not laziness on my part but rather feelings of inadequacy that I can’t add to them.

Suffice to say that Moshe is the only Carlton friend I know of who was able to get me to change my ranking of the greatest Carlton Centre Half Forwards in history.

We’ll miss you Moshe, but I’m guessing not as much as your dear family will.


RIP mate.


PS. I’m really hoping I haven’t made a spelling mistake anywhere here or added an errant apostrophe or comma.