It’s over, it’s done

I didn’t expect it to end this way; ‘The day the music died’. It happened just like that, a clean cut, both swift and silent like our transition to ‘online’ from ‘in-school’.

I expected our 93 year old band leader to die, then it would be over, so I treasured every week when Thursdays came around. I even shaved and made myself presentable. This has been my routine for over 20 years. About 10 years earlier, I was sitting at the bar listening when the band leader while playing the keyboard, leaned to his right to tell the trumpet to “keep playing, I feel funny”. In slow motion I watched as he went down, smoothly winding up on the floor, curled into a fetal position with a sweet look of peacefulness on his face. I thought to myself, “what a perfect way to go out for him doing what he loved, literally going ‘gentle into that good night’

But he did not die that evening. He came to, and would not leave by ambulance with the parameds who arrived in the lounge to attend to him. You see, this happened once before at the Wharf House 20 years previously due to dehydration and low blood sugar. So after our bandleader came to, he drank some water and ate a cookie given to him from a fan I called ‘the Cookie Momster’, who would bake and distribute them to the band faithfully each Thursday. Oh by the way. He finished the gig that night, like the ‘Spartan’ he has always been, and is to this day.

Our last date together was March 12, 2020. We got the call after that informing us the music was suspended for the time being. Of course we all understood so, what we didn’t understand, was that was probably it on the live music scene, on the jams, on the concerts, on the lively social scene around them, the community becoming a ghost town, ‘ghosted’, and gone baby gone.

And so are the activities and identities, and orientation of my week, and what was my personal normal. Gone are the musical gatherings, the friendships, the hanging out and hanging in with the band and with that which is no longer, but a dream of days gone by. Along with that, my canvas on which I paint metaphorically in song, my musical chops, the loss for many of my musical friends of gigs, venues booked, now closed, and festivals cancelled. Of life cancelled, of love cancelled.

“Life is but a dream…

A dream we had of our life.

The people we’ve known and loved, and who’ve known and loved us.

Ephemeral and transient; in and out of time and space.

In my dream, I heard myself.

In my dream, I saw myself.

In my dream, I saw my life.

And in my life, I lived my dream.

And in my dream, I lived my life.” …Ronald Kaplan

And when the music’s over, turn out the lights. …The Doors