You’re not going to want to read all of this. It’s messy. The thought process alone will drive you crazy, because it jumps from topic to topic… emotion to emotion… frequently. But we all grieve differently, and I am trying this very different thing of being present for my emotions rather than pushing it down and pretending everything is perfect all the time.
I haven’t publicly posted anything in years. I want to say its because I was too busy with my film work (which I have been) but truthfully I just didn’t think I had anything worthwhile to say on my behalf, nor did I care about my perspective being shared anymore. For years, I had been led to believe that my feelings were irrelevant, and that it would be a disservice to every thing and person I care about to express them wholeheartedly, because it would bring them down, or push them away. But, in light of a recent tragedy, it would be a disservice to my well-being if I didn’t clear my throat and speak on how I feel about these things. I can’t say it will be relatable, or even agreeable to most, but this isn’t meant to be empathetic. I need to talk about this. I need to make sense of this in the only way I can, by putting it out there to become a story that bends a flat and unsettling reality into a sound and logical arc. After all, those who stay silent, are doomed to only sing the songs of others. And I have been humming a tune that’s not my own for a while and it was destroying me. Early this March, a friend of mine died and I am not processing it well. Not because we were super close, since I hadn’t seen him since undergrad. I just have been feeling that I could have done more to help him. I know, way to read the room… someone dies, and I have to make this all about me. We all have our coping mechanisms, and the only way I can get these unresolved thoughts and feelings to stop haunting me is to talk about it enough times to make a tangible narrative with some kind of epiphanic journey to bring some resolution to this endless tension.
This isn’t the first time a friend of mine has passed away. Shit… its not even the tenth time. And it is certainly not the first time a friend of mine died by the consequences of their own choices in the midst of some unseen pain. But, it is the first time a bandmate has passed, and that is a big deal. You see, I have been in bands since I was a teenager. And 99.5% of those bands, I dominantly wrote for. I wrote music long before the bands, mostly by myself, unsupported, and pretty much under the radar of most people. I don’t know what possessed me to try… if it was my Inherent need to connect with people, the hit of dopamine I’d get when someone would give me a crumb of attention, or the fact that learning how to write music helped me understand and articulate feelings that I would push down, ignore, or unfairly project unto others. I just knew that this skill was my answer to everything in life and the first time I ever wrote songs for a band, meant everything to me, and I had my bandmates to thank.
Writing music is the most intimate connection I can have with another person. Whether it is writing a song about them, or designing a soundtrack to their stories, or even writing parts that are challenging and intended to bring out the best version of themselves through their musicianship. Often times, I will put their stories into first person. It is my love language. It allows me to really research and understand a person’s strengths, weaknesses, how they react to certain tones and rhythms, and in this vulnerable sort of osmosis of personality, it helps me understand myself better. I was a blank canvas before this, almost robotic, capable of going through the motions of being human, but not actually internalizing the complexities until I put notes to them. I know this, because when I stopped writing new songs for/with people about seven years ago, I had been carrying an intense sense of loneliness and disconnection ever since. I barely dated. I started to see some friendships as transactional. I lost my passion for life. As I started writing music for other people’s films… I found a different kind of emotional connection to made-up characters, story arcs… mostly fabrications, but it helped release the pressure a bit. When the pandemic hit, my purpose was deemed inessential, and my depression physically manifested itself in dramatic weight gain accompanied by a whole host of health problems that I am only recently getting past. But the worst part about it was I no longer saw a future in anything.
Pause a sec… let’s go back in time.
When I moved to Boston in my twenties, I tried to start another band. We didn’t play any shows, but it was a nice sort of club where a handful of misfit Berklee kids could get together regularly and play freely without the oppressive desire to be evaluated. I wrote some ambitious stuff, and these folks from all walks of life, with different skill levels wanted to play it. They wanted to work with me. And in turn, I wanted to make the kind of music that gave us a break from our college experience and have something to be proud of. My friend really pushed for this, even when I was often exhausted by all the classes I was taking.
When I called each of those former members to tell them our drummer died, it was bitter-sweet. We hadn’t really talked to each other in years. They all moved on from their music careers to do amazing things. That’s the sort of the thing that gets me about being in bands… or writing for people… eventually they all leave this world we created, and I am stuck alone with a bad case of… abandonment…no…survivor’s guilt. You spend so much time with others, sharing success… failure… being ignored… being praised… telling war stories in a way, and then they are gone. But, thats a part of life… the fact that one day everyone eventually quits the band. Everyone leaves you. Everyone dies. And there is nothing more painful to someone like me than knowing you put so much into these connections, and eventually they just go away. They all get married, have kids, have addictions, travel around the world, or even die…while you… you get to be haunted by what was, what could, and what should be… forever.
Told you this was not gonna be agreeable.
But here’s the kicker… even though these are not new feelings at all, this is the first time I have been able to articulate it all. Perhaps I found new skills while blanketed with an air of avoidant attachment, or maybe talk therapy is working. I am writing something personal again after all. Even after a lot of time and space, there is still an unshakable bond between us, that allows us to have these warm fuzzy nostalgic moments of reminiscing if not for a few minutes. The thing is, when you write for someone… you hold all the archives of those connections indefinitely.
People who think they know me, will probably say I am the type of person to always have a story, and that I remember such unique details that everyone either forgets or represses. But, its only like that because I meticulously study my subjects and milestones so much… our reactions… our atmosphere to have enough data to make sense of these things now or later. I have been journaling since I was eight years old. I saved every AOL instant messenger conversation where I didn’t understand why someone was angry, disappointed, or infatuated with me. Kind of like cryogenically freezing your sickly body so you can wake up in the future that has a cure. I knew I wasn’t mature, sympathetic, or (quite frankly) smart enough to understand these things at the moment, but I knew my relentless desire for wisdom would lead me to the answers one day. The byproduct of these shitty time-travel endeavors left me guilty of never really being present for anything in my life. Anything but the music. Sure, the lyrics were rhyming journal entries but the music… that was real time. The practicing… the performances… the recording sessions… that was something you had to be there to get.
Call it denial, but even as I enter my forties, there is still a lingering thought that it could happen again. That in our old age, we’d all meet on a rooftop and play the story of our lives. That we’d see ourselves the way we saw each other in the heat of the moment, beyond the the stretch marks and grey hairs, before life got in the way. But that’s the thing, it all becomes a dream defaulted, when one of you dies. The details become skewed because you don’t have that secondary or tertiary account to validate them, and the story relies on one imperfect account. My imperfect account. My recollection of all the things I got out of these moments, my treasure. People always say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But some times… one man’s treasure is another man’s trash. And I can never really know what parts of these moments mattered the most to the other person, when I have only accounted my reception of it.
The month before he passed, he had called me. He sounded drunk, and It was not unusual for him to casually call me at random moments to talk about his problems. Actually over the years, he had been known to do that with everyone in our former circle. Only most folks never picked up the phone call or avoided it completely. It wasn’t easy to talk to someone who only wanted to talk about themselves. Much like it isn’t easy to read this entry. The bandmates had all moved on and had their own lives to deal with, and the last thing they needed was someone bringing them to scenarios that they had grown out and away from. It is understandable. But pain is selfish, and even the most empathetic person can’t possibly fathom the pain of others unless they had something of their own to compare to. It can’t be THAT bad.
I don’t know what possessed me to not do the same. Maybe I just had reverted back to my blank canvas state, and I could tolerate the endless barrage of other people’s issues because I could feel something… anything vicariously. Maybe I still felt connected to the person he was, with limitless possibilities. Maybe it just felt better to know that I could shrug off my own issues, because at least I wasn’t going through his shit. Maybe it is all of that… or none of it. I still listened to every phone call and tried my best to relate or draw scenarios that would help him be the best version of themself, and try to feel… enough.
I initially wrote my exact account of our conversations in the months prior to his death, but I have decided to redact it, because this isn’t about the dirty laundry, and the more I talk to other grieving people, the more I discover how differently they saw him. Some saw his pain first-hand, and either tried everything they could to help, others walked away from it… others avoided it completely. I… didn’t know the extent of things… it wasn’t our relationship to bare the proverbial open throat to each other… at least that is how I saw it. But I question my perspective all the time. Did I always know he was hurting in some kind of way, and I just ignored it because it didn’t fit my expectations of him? I pride myself on having an impeccable memory… but can I really trust it when our memories are inherently self-serving? This isn’t new. My track record only proves that I only understand other people’s love when I fail them in some way. If they stick around after I have been my most ignorant, irrational, or selfish version of myself, a switch flips, and my soul cries. Then, it becomes my life’s work to always be there; unconditionally, openly, and loyally. The thing is, not many people think this way, and sometimes when you fuck up, that ends up being your final impression. After my last conversation with my friend, I was worried I wasn’t getting through to him, because I started writing a message to someone close to him to check on him, because I thought he was going to hurt himself. I then deleted it, because what if I was wrong? What if he was full of bullshit, because we exchanged bullshit for fun regularly? If I did send that message, and it was bullshit… then I would have screwed things up even more for him. That’s where I failed him. It might not have changed the result… but that’s when it switched on in my head how much I really cared. Only this time he didn’t stick around for me to make it right.
Mid march, I was at my local Starbucks working on film music, like any other normal day. My phone vibrates and it’s his mom, she sent me a message saying that he passed away on March 8th. It knocked the wind out of me. I started to hyperventilate. I noticed I was getting light headed and kept my hands over my mouth to slow down the amount of air I was sucking in. My eyes were open but I couldn’t see anything in front of me. It was the first panic attack I had in years. I try to call my best friend, but then hung up because he was on vacation and I didn’t want to mess with his moment. I almost called my dad, but it was his birthday weekend, and I didn’t want to say anything. I just sat in a blind sort of silence and the only thing I could see was this memory of me helping him write an arrangement of a Final Fantasy tune in my apartment in Boston. Then I could only see when we recorded a shitty ballad I wrote in one of the main studios at Berklee. Then I could only see his shit-eating grin he would get when we practiced the tunes I wrote in the jam rooms. Then I saw every moment I shared with a bandmate… good, bad, and sometimes very ugly. I wanted to throw up. I didn’t. I smoked three cigarettes back to back. Then I sat in my car, and didn’t turn it on. I didn’t want to go back home. I then called the number his mom left on her message.
After a very somber and revealing conversation, I drove home in silence. I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a few hours. I went into my hard drive and looked at the hundreds of photos I took at that time, and I didn’t cry. I got angry, then I got sad, then I got angry that I got sad, then I got sad that I got angry. Then I fell into a dreamless sleep and decided to spin a few more plates for work to not have to process this stuff anymore. I didn’t call my therapist. I didn’t want to relate to anyone. I didn’t want to see this story. I just wanted to focus on someone else’s story. But periodically I kept getting these pangs of intense emotion. I’d be washing the dishes and then see that shit-eating grin and shut down. Bear in mind, I didn’t think we were that close since Boston. Even the face I kept seeing wasn’t the 35 year old guy that passed away, it was the 20 year old kid that I knew. I’ve never been more angry at someone in my life. I’ve never felt so much guilt in my life. He quit the band, and he was never coming back. I didn’t write new shit anymore because what was the point? They always fucking leave and who am I, if I have no one to write for? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does really make a sound?
I won’t apologize for how I listened, but I am sorry I didn’t have the courage to do something with what I heard. You know, when I was a kid, one of my girlfriends used to accuse me of not listening. They said I was a story-topper. I never understood what she meant, because I remember every word she said to me like it was the voice of God. I pride myself on my abilities to listen. Whenever she would talk about how she felt, I always tried to relate to her by sharing my own experiences. I loved her and I wanted to collaborate with her emotionally in a non-musical way. But, I don’t think I was ever really good at that at a personal level. And I only really understood what she meant, and what she was trying to share with me, after I failed her.
With music there are rules… play these notes this particular way… slow down… speed up… convince me you understand my words… convince yourself you understand. Ok, now let’s break the rules, play a fill that you feel should be in this moment. Change a word to make it yours. Argue about our interpretations. Try again. Give this pile of potential some kind of life. We are so fucking human, it’s beautiful. Now show the world what we made, and who we became out of this. Show them you know how to give as much as you know how to take. I have seen nothing more pure in my life. Something so perfect to happen between such flawed human beings. But… my expectations were wrong when my actions were misinterpreted. How do you even walk away from this? Easy, if you don't think the other person is listening to you.
I can’t say that I am ready to move past these unresolved feelings. I can’t say that I can easily compartmentalize this moment, and forget my friend. I can’t say that I will be a better person or more connected to anything after this. But… I can say something now. And if you have read this whole damn messy account, you know that this virtually unreadable piece of junk is the start of me finding my validation in something. Because if it didn’t matter… if he didn’t matter, I’d never have said anything at all. Interpret that any way you want, it makes all the difference to me.