For You, Because You Need to Know

I got sad news on Monday. Someone who meant something to me took his own life.

Kind of a weird opener for a Valentine’s Day post, I grant you, but bear with me. There’s a relevant point here. (And if you’re looking for something more romantic, you might enjoy this post instead.)

John was young — just 27 — a talented musician whom I’d known since he was only 18 or 19. He earned his chops, worked like mad to build on his talent and become an incredibly respected drummer, and — this is an even bigger deal when it comes to calling musicians for a gig — he was always 100% reliable.

Not just on the bandstand, either. His drum kit was always set up before I even got to the gig.

When I made my CD, Online Dating Blues, back in 2009, we recorded it live in his garage studio, and he not only did all the recording and let me use the space for free, but he spent hours with the sound engineer, overseeing the mixing and mastering with us into the wee hours.

Didn’t charge me a penny for that, either.

John bent over backwards to do his best for you. He was my #1 Go-To A-List drummer — the one I always called first for a gig. His students adored him. Everyone adored him.

I didn’t know him outside of playing music together, but I adored him, too.

We do not know how we touch each other

Jake, my #1 Go-To A-List pianist, was in that studio with me and John, and Doug on bass. (I think Jake and John might have actually met through me, when I played a live gig on Stanford radio back in 2007, and asked them both to be in my band. Then they hooked up with Doug and gigged for a couple of years as the Big Beat Trio.)

Jake called me on the phone yesterday to talk about John, and how steamrollered we are. “I always thought we’d all play together again, that maybe you’d make another CD with us, that we’d have more gigs together.”

Yeah, me too, Jake. Me, too.

I’m still reeling. John was so young. So beloved. And he seemed like the most grounded person on the planet — an old soul. The last person I would have expected to lose to his own hand.

Yet here we are.

We do not know how we touch each other

All of this has made me think about the ways in which we touch each other.

Really, I barely knew John. We played a bunch of gigs and recorded a CD, but it’s not like we talked on the phone about life or anything. We were part of each other’s circle, but one of the outer layers.

And yet his loss sears like a hot knife.

The world without him just seems so terribly wrong.

We do not know how we touch each other

It’s funny, I’m reminded of when I discovered the writing of David Foster Wallace.

Oh. My. God. I fell madly in love with his voice, the way he thought, his way with words (and his use of parentheticals [which so accurately reflects the way I, myself, think]).

After reading one essay I was practically a DFW groupie.

Only later did I discover that he’d taken his own life, probably only a few months before I first encountered his work.

It astonished me how devastated I felt. How much I grieved for someone I’d never actually met. My chest hurt to realize there’d be no new writings from him, that I’d never have the “someday” chance to go to a reading or a book signing.

The world without him just seemed so terribly wrong.

We do not know how we touch each other

I get emails from strangers pretty regularly. Notes out of the blue, from people I’ve never met, who were touched somehow by something I wrote or said, or some video they saw.

I touched them in some way, and the brief notes they send me touch me, in turn. Those notes keep me going sometimes, when it all seems like a slog, when being an evangelist for creative expression feels like an exercise in futility, and my big dreams seem impossible to achieve.

People in Congress have some kind of formula to figure out how much to weigh people’s opinions. If one person writes an email, they know there are many more who feel the same way, but just didn’t take the time to write. I figure the emails I receive, the comments on posts, the rare letters sent through the mail (yes, people still do that sometimes!) are representative of many other people who’ve been touched by me as well, but just never took the time to let me know.

Well, God bless the ones who take the time.

I don’t know that it would change anything, with the kind of illness that John and DFW had, but I still wish I could go back in time and somehow let them know that, dude, you touched me. You mean something to me. Without you in it, the world would just be terribly wrong.

We do not know how we touch each other

You might have made somebody’s day today. A smile or a joke in the checkout line might have shifted someone’s lousy day to the positive. Something you said ten years ago and immediately forgot about might be the mantra that keeps someone else going.

I know John probably couldn’t have taken it in — I don’t know that any of us can — but it feels important to say it anyway.

After all, each other is all we really have, in the end.

So you, you reading this post, please know that you touch people in ways you cannot possibly know, just by being you. Please know that the world without you would just be so terribly wrong.

Then let the people in your life know that they’ve touched you. It could make all the difference in the world.

Go out and spread the love. Happy Valentine’s Day.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!