Michael Dahlquist (December 22, 1965 – July 14, 2005) was an American musician, film editor, and computer programmer best known for being the drummer of the Seattle-based Indie rock band Silkworm.
His childhood was filled with creative endeavors: writing (a lasting passion), juggling, puppetry, and tree-climbing, with a little skateboarding thrown in for good measure.
He engaged in all manner of performance-oriented endeavors, from stage design to participation in and study of Fluxus-style art events of the sort pioneered by John Cage and Joseph Beuys.
In late 1996, Silkworm began curtailing their tour schedule, and Dahlquist talked his way into a job as office grunt at local software company LizardTech.
By the time he left Lizardtech as a product manager in the summer of 2001, he had taught himself Perl, HTML, and XML, and had written the Silkworm website from scratch.
In Chicago, he was employed at Shure Incorporated as a technical writer, and he continued to spend a great deal of time on Silkworm and related pursuits.
While he was stopped at a traffic signal, a Mustang driven by ex-model Jeanette Sliwinski intentionally plowed into the car he was in (she was attempting to commit suicide).