Darkness Doubled.

“I remember
How the darkness doubled
I recall
Lightning struck itself

I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else”. Tom Verlaine, MARQUEE MOON, Television

I first heard this song in 1977. I was a year out of high school, working at the Royal Bank as a Teller, or customer service representative or whatever crap name they came up with to hide the drudgery. I was an emotional infant. A babe left by the highway, in hopes that a wayward traveller would see me. They would pull over, stopping their car, putting on the flashers. They would pick me up and hold me in the rain.

It’s a week after the big event, a three day celebration of family, friends, and music, glorious music. I was turning 65.

It’s not like it was the end of the world, or even the end of a sentence. We played something old, something new, a borrowed song, and some jumping blues. The two weeks leading up the event, barely articulated as A Night To Remember. After the death of Bobby Goodman. It also became a tribute to our fallen friends whose lives had been cut short. Robert Abernathy (Bobby), Robert Harvey ( one of the coolest guys I had the pleasure of playing with), Jewal Maxwell ( Suede) and Matt Steffich ( Slide). Time had run out for them. Yet I was still here.

Why am I still here?

I remember the conversation I had with God on the plane from New York to Atlanta in 2007. I was having a heart attack. I didn’t know that for a fact when I was on the plane. I knew the burning in my chest was not right. I felt the feeling of life barely holding onto the edge, saw my life taking baby steps on the airplane wing jumping into the clouds, and I said God, I don’t know if this is my time, but if it is, then thank you for such a great life - but if there is more you need me to do in this life, then please let me get to the ground without dying.

Once upon the ground, calling my sister who was picking me up, I said,” I don’t feel so good.” Making it through the vast Atlanta airport concourse, and driving back to her house in her SUV, my Mother in the front passenger seat as we had picked her up at the airport too. Her sister’s husband, Scott, telling me to go to the hospital. Me calling my wife from the gurney at the hospital saying, they say I am having a heart attack.

I love you.

And fast forward fourteen years later, and I am getting a triple bypass and another life.

Scott, my sister’s husband died the year before my bypass. Another heart attack. His second.

I remember how the darkness doubled. I recall lightening struck itself.

What did those words mean to Tom Verlaine when he wrote them? I can’t speak for him, no one can. Not even a Tom Verlaine anymore. But they take on more significance as I grow older.

Our musical event, the big three day affair, brought so many friends together, it was like an old homecoming, and I was the Queen. Or maybe my sister should get to be the Queen in this story. After all, it was also her birthday. But I felt like a guy on top of the world.

I was playing music with my band of 40 years, Jazzmanian Devils, my brothers from another mother, and the mother was Jazz. We have made so many memories together. We have brought people together in song, played weddings galore. We come together for funerals, and fallen friends, and birthdays. My birthday in particular. I would come together for their birthday, but nobody asked. Should they have to ask? Do you ever think about anybody but yourself?

The opposite of darkness is lightening. Did it strike itself?

Does lightening ever strike twice? Is any raindrop the same? Do raindrops always fall on my head? Do these memories pool like water, like dirty little puddles that grow up to be creaking bones and voices? Do they flow like tears, or rivers of years, gathering forces, onward as darkness doubling, slow at first, then going viral, rushing over the rocks. Our little boat goes over the Edge. The Falls.

But miracle of miracles, we are still here. We survived. We gather our friends, holding them closer, ever so close as we run for the shadows in these Golden Years.

What keeps us going strong, beating the odds, isn’t dwelling on the past or the last gig. It’s the discovery of the new. New music, new friends, new purposes.

A friend is upset that only 890 people have seen his YouTube song. He is not wrong. It deserves way more views. I check the stats on one if the few videos I have up. It has 590 views. More than I thought. I smile. Lower your expectations. Sense of humour. Who do we hate this week? The things that keep us going.

I have a lump on my neck. The blood tests are good. The X-ray looks good. So no worries, yet the mystery continues. A migrating voice box. An Adam’s Apple that fell from the tree, was grabbed by a squirrel, who then buried it in deep in my neck along with his nuts for the winter. It is just Glands. Glandland. Probably nothing.

After all, I have friends with real tumours, not just a mystery lump. I don’t have time for worrying. I have too much to do, like figuring out who I want to be when I grow up. What? I have already grown up?

This is it?

Listen to some great music: