But this is different

Before dozing off last night, I was reading poet Billy Collins’s latest collection Water, Water. One of the poems, The Monet Conundrum, as his work often does, expressed something I’d been ruminating about but hadn’t put into words in any clear way:

Is every one of these poems
different from the others
he asked himself,
as the rain quieted down,

or are they all the same poem,
haystack after haystack
at different times of day,
different shadows and shades of hay?

I had already written what you’ll find below the break, wondering if I was being repetitive in my work—same old themes (grief, mortality, Pat Campbell, the band Low, their singer/drummer Mimi Parker, disease). I loved Collins’s way of expressing how artists (in this case, Collins himself and Claude Monet) often turn the same thing over and over in different light, different times, different mindset.

So here you go:

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As I made dinner last night
I put on Low’s Ones And Sixes
beautiful record
moody
haunting
and
I got sad.

As I showered this morning
I put on Low’s song “Try To Sleep”
Sad again.
With ache.

Sad has often been the thrust
the heart
of Low.
Not the only thing/mood/mode they do by any means
there’s love in there
desperation, anger, faith, doubt, love, hope
but
sad comes through
a lot
They articulate for the rest of us what
we can’t quite
put into words
or notes
or gorgeous harmonies
or tense dissonance
or blown-out noise
or simply perfect heartbeatic drums.

Beautiful sadness.
Quiet sadness.
Surprisingly loud sadness.
Angry sadness.
Noisy sadness.
Harmonious sadness.
Hopeful sadness.
Anxious sadness.
Clashing sadness.
Sadness of all stripes.

But this
my sad
is different.

The other sad still applies.
But this is different.
Extra
layers

Because Low’s singer/drummer Mimi
died
a few years ago.

And, while a lot of music I listen to
is made by people who
have also died
most of whom I never met
(and that gets a little
parasocial)
This is different.

I don’t feel that same ache
listening to John Lennon’s voice on
”And Your Bird Can Sing”
or most any other Beatles or Lennon song
Even though
at 40
John was quite a bit younger when he died
than Mimi was (55) when she died

You would think those extra-stolen
15 years
and five cruel gunshots
and Lennon’s worldwide fame might
make Lennon’s
more tragic to me.

And, I admit,
when I used to watch
The Compleat Beatles on VHS
there wasn’t a time,
as the tape moved on
that I didn’t hope that
maybe this time
John wouldn’t die.

He always did.

John was gone before
I even knew about him.
I was four years old
on that December night
outside The Dakota.
(He was outside the Dakota.
I was likely on 12th East in Salt Lake City.)
Do I wish Mark David Chapman
had gotten help?
Or missed all five shots?
Or never read Catcher In The Rye?
Or that he had thought, for even a moment,
about Yoko
and Sean
and Julian?
Or had a dad who wasn’t
an abusive terror?
And hadn't cancelled those appointments
with the clinical psychologist?
And took his meds
got right with God
Settled down
A dog
A favorite restaurant
A regular at the Friday night football game
willing to man the chains on the sideline
if Gino calls in sick
and someone needs to mark first down?
And heard a late-era John Lennon album,
maybe even a guest vocal on a Traveling Wilburys song
instead of all this well-meaning, cobbled together AI stuff?
Of course.
Who wouldn’t wish those things?

I love Lennon’s music.
“Dear Prudence” has been my favorite song
off and on
for decades.
And still this is different.

What about Jeff Buckley?
Younger. Shorter career.
Drowned in the Mississippi River
at 30.
All that untapped promise.
Tragic, by any measure.

Still I had only had a couple years
with Buckley’s music.
I was 21.
A couple breath-taking years
For certain.
The bridge in “Last Goodbye” alone.
Even just from a purely mathematical viewpoint, though…
This is different.

Mimi’s music has been
my soundtrack for
almost half my life.
Soothing my now-17-year-old
as an infant
on a long road trip
with her bell-pure harmony on “Sunflower.”
Later
the sound of my twins’ in their car seats
imitating Mimi’s reverbed-out
snare drum
in the patently-patient outro of “No Comprende.”
Earlier
moving me & Holly to watery eyes
to chills
in an old chapel in Amsterdam
when I was
Jeff Buckley’s age.

Different.

Mimi died at the hands of
not a crazed fan like Mark David Chapman
but at the hands of
a mass murderer,
cancer,
that stupid, merciless, damned disease.

Echoes of my brother Ben
My Aunt Christine, who I never met
Her husband my Uncle Jamie, who I did
My mom’s cousin Joan
My neighbor Amy
My coworker Isaac
So many
Too many
Someone you know, more likely than not.

Just like them
cancer stole Mimi
before her time.
Whatever “her time” means.

This is different.

Mimi wasn’t just half of Low
which was
usually
technically
a trio
but don’t sweat the math
She was also half of
Low’s other half
(I said don’t sweat the math),
her husband
Alan

This wasn’t
The Stones losing Brian Jones
Pink Floyd losing Syd Barrett
AC/DC losing Bon Scott
The Who losing Keith Moon.
Crazy Horse losing Danny Whitten.
INXS losing Michael Hutchence even…

The tragic loss of a bandmate and
dear friend.

Those bands all went on
Soldiered on.
All of them continued to rake in their millions.

This is different.

Low never made millions.
And Low wouldn’t continue
couldn’t continue
without Mimi.

Because there is no Low
without Mimi.

I would guess
Alan wondered
and may still wonder if
there was even Alan
without Mimi.

So this is different.

Fair or unfair
I will always pair
Mimi’s passing
to that of my own friend
and bandmate
Pat

A guy who I worshipped
before I knew him
In a ska band I worshipped
that never made millions either
but made my hair stand up on end
made me thrilled to be alive at the thundering peak of “Ring of Fire”
made me drench my shirt in sweat
bam-bam-slamming around
made me drive
to old warehouses
to armories
to makeshift venues
for just a touch
of that transcendence
that release

And then
somehow
to have
that transcendence
that release
his thump
and bam-bam-slam
on my own songs?
On the same stage?
In my own life?

And then
somehow
to have
it all snatched
away

This is different.

What’s more human than believing that your particular strain of sadness is somehow

different?

So there’s that pair
who may have met once
Mimi & Pat
who played
like no one else
with heart
with fuzzy mallets
without apologies.

So excuse me if I get a little sad
a layered sad
listening to Low
because, yes, it is Low
and it’s not just Low
it’s Mimi and Pat and Ben and Aunt Christine and Uncle Jamie and..
and I guess I’m grateful, on some level, to feel
sad

Grief
inenviable

Grief and love
inextricable
fraternal twins

Grief
inevitable
love’s chaser

One, the greatest gift
The other, its… tax?

The final song on the final Low record starts off:
“I put a lot of thought
to the price you pay”

So maybe the greatest gift, on one hand
And the price you pay, on the other.