I’m exhausted today but I’d like to say a few words in remembrance of Glen Hansard. I surprised myself by bursting into tears when I learned of his passing, though why should I have been so surprised when he affected my own work?
If you’ve never seen the film Once, you’re missing one of the rawest musical performances I’ve ever witnessed. His passionate performance, the way he opened his chest and let it all out when he sang, the hole in his guitar that could only have been born of relentless strumming, made me want to write about someone with that kind of artistic courage. Made me want to be that person.
It was those rawest parts of Glen I had in mind when I wrote my second novel with a guitarist in it at the Bluebird Cafe:
Then a determined strum grabbed my attention, followed
by a host of down-tuned bass notes.
The man who had been in the back of the place now sat
onstage; his hair glimmered as he tossed his head backwards
like he was doing a shot of air and he sang from a depth I didn’t
even know existed. His soul was all jagged glass expelled into
the dark that would have to find a new name, because when
he sang, darkness dissipated.
The muscles of his face contorted as he catapulted syllables
from some unidentifiable place in his body. The protracted,
terrifying primal scream slowly softened into a vibrato-laden
whisper: the pain was still present, but bearable. It was
possible to live through it, the notes said, if you sang it away.
The door to my right opened and closed but I barely
registered the escape as the father, apparently not wanting his
daughter to witness,…what exactly was this? – hustled her
out.
The musician’s battered Martin had the beginnings of a
second hole beat into its face. His thumb and the part of
his hand below it must be bruised, the way he attacked his
acoustic. Even though his guitar wasn’t plugged in, twice the
music came from it than should have. With no overhead
mic, no less. My eyes couldn’t find any other source of
amplification.
How were his fingers capable of the force that
guitar must have taken to be so battered? Surely afterwards
his fingers would be bloody? The man gulped for air, didn’t
even try to recover before going again.
Then the air grew silent abruptly, but the muscles in his
arms remained rigid, and I knew then that he was the song.
No one clapped. No one said or did anything, which seemed
fitting.
My shoes carried me out the door after him where I clumsily
tried to explain to him and myself what I was feeling with,
what were they, words.
I’d been cold and hungry forever, his music had said, and
not known it. Now, I didn’t have to be.
Without warning to either of us, my lips attached themselves
to his as if I wanted to suck his music right from his mouth.
After I kissed him, he stood there with his worn Martin
dangling from its homemade rope strap across his chest,
eyes downcast, hands in his pockets. Though I apologized, I
wanted to kiss him again.
“Aren’t you going on?” he asked, nodding at my instrument
I hadn’t realized I had carried out. He wiped at his lips with
his shirttail.
The snow fell onto our hair and shoulders.
Still embarrassed I said no, no, of course I wasn’t going on,
not now. Maybe never.
From Southern-Fried Woolf, all rights reserved.
I don’t know what else to say except that I’ll miss the songs he never got to write, the performances none of us will ever get to witness. But I’m deeply grateful he was here long enough to remind me what artistic courage could look like, what accessing the soul directly can be.
I’m so glad I was introduced to his music. I know my own art is different because of his.