A cool guy the Loser met once

After working overseas for four years, the Complete and Total Loser decided to travel for awhile before returning to America and taking up the rest of his loser life. He'd been working in Asia (China, Japan) so seeing more of it and places in that part of the world seemed like the logical thing to do.
The Loser went to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, and India over the thirteen months he traveled, which were from February of 1989 to April of 1990. The only part of Indonesia he visited was the island of Sumatra. 
It's an interesting place, Sumatra. Orangutans, mysterious tribes, risky trips on fraying ferries and tightly packed Mercedes buses. During his stay there he visited a place called Lake Toba, which is an inactive volcano the crater of which has filled with water over the course of about 70,000 years. (The lake is now about 60 miles long, 19 miles wide and up to 1,657 feet deep.) The guest house the Loser stayed in while there was run by a German woman and her Indonesian husband. The people who stayed there were mostly Europeans, with a few Canadians and Americans. The guest house had two major attractions. One was its pier, which was better than those at the other guest houses. Another was the food. The German woman was a good cook, giving her Western spin to native dishes. 
The Loser was a younger man then, duh, of thirty-one. He swam when he could while traveling to keep fit, and the swimming in Lake Toba was good. Although the sanitation being what it was in Indonesia at the time meant that whatever waste most had went straight into the lake, the lake was large enough and the population small enough that the water remained pure, though you wouldn't dip a glass in it and swig it down. The Loser liked long distance swimming in open water, which he didn't know was a trend until years later. He'd swim out from the pier for nearly a mile, float and bob in the water for some time, then swim back and lie in the sun on the pier with the others. Once after he returned one of his pier mates told the Loser that he was so far out no one could see him and they wondered if he'd gone under.
The food and room were inexpensive, the Loser had lots of money at the time, and the European women took their tops off while sunbathing on the pier. They were young and pretty and had lovely accents. The Loser could have stayed there forever.
After he'd been there for several days another American came. Americans, having the short vacation times they do, don't travel as much as others, nor do they travel the same way. This man had time and money and interest so he traveled like a European, or like the Loser, who was putting off real life.
The man's name was Tim Carr. 

Tim Carr.

The Loser and Tim met soon—there were never more than ten to fifteen people at the guest house—and found they had some things in common. Tim was about two years older than the Loser and from Minneapolis, where the Loser, who is from the Philadelphia suburbs, had lived in the early 1980s, before leaving to work overseas. He was warm, funny and bright but not in an intimidating way. He saw life as a simple gift meant to be enjoyed and not taken too seriously.
For work, he was in the music business and had worked with top names in the industry as a recording engineer for Capital Records since leaving Minneapolis for New York. David Bryne, Laurie Anderson, The Beastie Boys, Paul Shaffer. Near the beginning of his career in music, he told the Loser, he had worked as a music critic for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the dominant newspaper at that time, reviewing classic music performances. He had no schooling in classical music, he told the Loser, and did the reviews by attending the concerts and looking up previous reviews from over the years by experienced critics and cribbing from them extensively. In other words, he wrote his reviews the way many of his and the Loser's generation wrote most papers while in high school, which was by rewording entries they found in

Guest houses on Lake Toba.

Encyclopedia Britannica. Ethical? No, but who cares? It wasn't vital investigative reporting, they were review of concerts. Tim had done this well enough that he got much praise for his reviews, but he hungered to do more in the music world, hence his move to New York. He also told the Loser that he disappeared for awhile, went underground. He didn't offer the whole story and the Loser didn't ask, but he guessed that it had something to do with drugs.
Every few years since meeting Tim, the Loser has looked up his name online to see what he was up to. He hadn't done so for years until early today, which is December 16, 2017.
What he found was this, from an April, 2013, edition of the paper in Minneapolis he'd worked for:

Timothy Joseph Carr
Carr, Timothy Joseph, 57, died unexpectedly last week in his home in Thailand. Preceded in death by father, Tom Carr and survived by mother, Joan Carr, his brothers and sisters: Bridget (Pirsch), Tom Jr., Terry (Amy), Chris (Aimee), Michael (Ann), Dan (Kathy Glover), Molly, and Colleen (Tim Evon) and 20 loving nieces and nephews, who loved their Uncle Tim and his amazing stories and wonderful gifts.
Tim was whip smart, refreshingly funny and engaging, and his passing brings memories of incredible adventures to all who knew him across the globe. At various times, Tim lived in Bangkok, London, New York City, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Tim grew up in Hopkins, attended the University of Minnesota, worked as the music critic for the Star Tribune, and was a freelance writer for Rolling Stone and other publications. He also served as Performing Arts Curator at the Walker Art Center (where he orchestrated the punk music festival Marathon-80).
Tim moved to New York in his early 20’s where he was Performing Arts Director at the Walker-like Kitchen Center of Performing Arts and was responsible for the first two seasons of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. He also worked in artist management with Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Arto Lindsay and more before embarking on 15 years working in Artists & Repertoire (A&R) for Capitol Records, Warner Brothers Records and Dreamworks Records where he worked with artists such as David Byrne, The Beastie Boys, Squeeze, Ash, Megadeth, Lush, Joan Jett, Paul Shaffer and more.
Tim moved to his beloved Thailand in 2002 where he became a writer, a promoter, an A&R guy for Asian bands, and even a TV and motion picture executive of sorts. Tim had unique perspectives, incomparable wit, a great smile and a joi de vivre that led to a robust career and life most of us had trouble even imagining. He’ll be missed. Memorials and a memorial service in Minneapolis will be announced as details are finalized.

Some sources described his death as being of a stab would to his chest and said he was found in his apartment alone with drugs, both prescription and otherwise, around him. Friends of Tim's said this wasn't true and pointed out that tabloids in Thailand were known for bad reporting and making things up, especially when writing about foreigners.
The Loser knew Tim Carr for just a few days but they got along well enough that Carr gave him his phone number and told him to give him a call if he were in New York.