“When a musician dies, a whole library burns up.”
I didn’t know Rob Grill personally, but I grew up loving his music. And when one of his friends told me he passed away the other day I was just floored. A loss is a loss and there’s really no right way to articulate how you “feel” or “think” about the whole thing, when you still wrestle with those feelings in realtime, but here is me trying my hardest to articulate just exactly how I feel about all that.
“because of the nature of our generation,” a friend blogged, “the losses seem to be more devastating and personal because of the musical, artistic and creative, etc., endeavors, accomplishments, even failures of these people and our connection to them and their work.”
I responded to her with the following:
I was surprised last night by a guy I hadn’t seen in two years or more. He’d seen my notice about an informal gig and drove 40 some odd miles to come out of his own personal exile to ask if he could share a stage with me.
Another day I might have said “no thanks, solo gig, I’ve got this,” or “let’s rehearse some day first…” etc., but I was just plain happy to see him and excited to jam, so he broke out his ’79 strat and a little vox amp and just kind of added whatever he felt like to each of my folk songs, originals and covers for about an hour and a half. I don’t know if it’s because of this newest loss, or just getting older in general or what, but I’m starting to remind myself I don’t want to take a single friend, old or new for granted. I plan to live each day like it might be my last, and treat each sighting of a friend like the first and last moment I have with them or something. Will I do this for a few weeks and then go back to the usual rut until some next old friend or acquaintance dies, or keep this up the rest of my life? Remains to be seen.