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Pink Tambourine

from My Big Break - volume 1 by Ben Seretan

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about

On the way to a recording date one morning last summer my friend - reclined fully with her knees up, sprawled as she always seemed to sit, fully chilling - told me that she had spoken to her therapist at length that week about the session, about getting the chance to play music with me. This took me by surprise, I said really? She said, yeah - singing in a band is something I’ve literally wanted to do my entire life and you finally gave me the chance. She blurted the words out, direct and quick and to the point as she always was, and smiled her huge infectious grin at me, tears welling in her eyes. She was never one to say anything other than what she meant and I felt how deeply my band’s invitation to sing with us meant to her, I felt how deeply we had bonded. I smiled back. It’s so easy to be jaded, to be cynical, to be cool - it’s much harder to be earnestly excited but she was all the time and got me to feel that way, too. Playing music with her gave music back to me, I felt its power and its human heart in a way I hadn’t in a long, long time.

My friend was an incredible person, full stop. Full of energy, full of love, mischievous, a wildly talented sculptor that lit up any room she entered. I knew her primarily as an artist and was so happy that she had started dating a good friend of mine - they were well matched and deeply in love, everyone was rooting for them. One night last summer she held an opening at a gallery near the old navy yard in Brooklyn. Wanting it to be more than just an opening, my friend had set up a karaoke machine, complete with fog and DJ lights. And when no one took the charge to get the singing started, her and the gallery curator hopped up. I had never heard my friend sing before, I had no idea she could, so when they belted an absolutely perfect and totally devastating version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in pitch perfect harmony - a version that, in spite of the cheesy karaoke backing track, moved me to tears - I was completely taken aback. She had an uncanny knack for singing close, intimate harmonies, lines above the melody that made everything sound richer and more aching. She could take a perfectly fine song and turn it into something novel, something special, just as she could take a normal evening and turn it into one of the best nights of your life. We started singing together shortly after that - at the closing of that same gallery show we sang a song of mine together, her voice dancing and bounding above mine, giving it depth I had never quite felt before. But she was that way - she could see more good in the world than anyone else I’ve ever known, she could make you feel like you mattered.

The night my friend died I was standing in the lobby of a concert venue looking for her boyfriend, we were supposed to hang at the show. I texted him that I had arrived and that I was looking for him and he replied that I should give him a call, he had terrible news. I darted outside and had the awful phone call. There had been an accident, she was on a bike, she hadn’t made it. Shock set in and a powerful wooziness almost knocked me over, I could not grasp what I was hearing, it kept slipping from my grip. I told my friend I loved him, we cried, we hung up, the meaning of the conversation slowly inflating and taking up all the space in my lungs. Another friend of mine was at the show and so I took him outside and explained what had happened. We held each other on the sidewalk outside the venue, the sun setting behind us and a call to prayer ringing out and echoing off the buildings. We stood in each other's embrace for a long time as concert goers streamed past us. Not knowing what to do with ourselves we stood slack jawed - we were rooted to the spot and if we left, it would all become real. So we reluctantly decided to watch some music. My friend and I gingerly took the rearmost seats in the upper balcony, hiding in the shadows from any buddies in the crowd. The music was already underway - a pounding, circular bass line that sounded like a snake eating it’s own tail, driving drums pushing against it and gaining in momentum and intensity, a harmonium droning on, blaring away, and a bass clarinet weaving in-between the notes, bounding it together. This was a group from Chicago that I loved, I had been looking forward to seeing them, but something strange happened as I was listening - I recognized each sound, I saw each musician sawing away, but the lines and rhythms never congealed into something I recognized as music. As I sank further and further into my grief over the course of their set I found myself unable to feel the beat, unable to hear it as anything other than complicated noise. The underlying scaffolding had been taken away, my ears had nothing to land on, and in that moment I knew that this music would not save me from the terrible reality facing me outside the venue, just beyond the spot where my friend had held each other and cried.

My gone friend gave me the great and terrible gift of singing on a record I’m working on. Her voice is so warm, bell-struck, crystalline and crystal clear - both a compliment to my own voice and beautiful in its own right. On the recordings she matches my phrasing so precisely, or she soars above me operatically, an “ooo” saturating in reverb and echoing out deep past the edge of the song. She was so generous and so eager to sing these songs, deeply personal songs about growing up in California, my relationship with god, living with an alcoholic - in other words things I am self conscious to sing about. But she took an enthusiastic, running leap at them and gave them so much life, so much power. There’s one spot in particular - a song about the beautiful freedom that comes from the collective, corporeal experience of the dance floor. The song, which grows in intensity and finally breaks with a triumphant and towering coda, talks about going from being one person to being one person in a crowd. My friend’s voice, riding sweetly above my own, ushers in the catharsis of the rest of the band - behind her the bass drum pumps, the synths swell, the crashes crash. It gets me now because she was that force in life, too - she’d bring you along, build you up, make you part of something greater, all with total ease.

The day after my friend died I walked to the corner where the accident took place - a shrine had popped up over night with candles, a note of love and sadness scrawled on the inside of a used pizza box. My two band mates met me there and, after hugging the strangers gathered around who had also been affected by my friend’s life, we quickly scurried off to our practice space nearby. There was something we had to grab. When my friend had first performed live with the band she felt like she didn’t have enough to do in-between her gorgeous harmony lines - there were long instrumental sections where she didn’t feel she knew what to do with her hands. So we gave her a tambourine to shake, a bright pink plastic one. No one has ever been as excited to play tambourine as my friend was that afternoon - she shook it so hard she got a blister, grinning and dancing the entire time, reminding us again and again how amazing it was that we got to play music, that we were all in a room, that we were all alive. We took the pink tambourine back to the intersection and tied it to a pole with a bandana, dangling above the lit candles on the sidewalk. As we stepped back, trying to say goodbye, I could hear it rattling in the wind.

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This is all totally normal, this is how these things go. It's a process, and a long one. A lot of us have been through it. One moment you'll be fine and another you'll be swept over by the grief. It comes in waves. You'll think about this fact that everyone tells you - it comes in waves - while you're floating in the ocean for the first time since it happened. You'll be alone - your friend, who will somehow know to invite you out to the beach, will also somehow blessedly know to let you swim by yourself at first. You'll note the irony of grief coming in waves as an actual wave comes over you and with cruel comedic timing straight out of a Marx Brothers movie you'll burst into fat, ugly sobs as your body bobs up and down. You'll realize in that moment that the waves never stop coming, that the horizon spills out into forever, and that there is no discernible point at which these waves will not be a part of your life. You'll realize, too, that if you were to freeze any wave, if you were to take a photo of any moment as those watery hills roll toward you, that you would see your gone friend's hand in it and so you imagine her tracing each curve contained in each wave and building something out of it, bright and bold. In spite of all of this, these thoughts and sobs coming fast, you will still want to tell your friend how you saw her hand in the crests in the water, you will think about texting her even though you know you can't (and then you will imagine how many other friends and loved ones have sent messages or called despite knowing that she's gone, their faces dissonantly wrinkled and lit by harsh white text box light as they futilely hit send on a 3am "I Love You" sms).

If and when you meet a sleazy beat reporter outside your friend's apartment the day after the accident you may get carried away when telling him to fuck off. The fact that he will pose as a mourner to try and ingratiate will fill you with a hot, grief-stricken rage, and you and your two buddies will preposterously try to look tough (impossible) as you tell him to leave the block, to shut the fuck up, get the fuck out of here, etc. He will ask if you're threatening him and you will not say no, shouting after him "don't let me see you here again." You will probably start drinking for the first time in months shortly thereafter and somehow manage a good laugh about how great it felt to shout at him.

The first time you call your mom will probably be the first time you really let yourself go, when you really let the tears flow freely because you will be so touched by her asking you sweetie, what's wrong. Don't panic - just let the whimpers out, don't think about whether or not your roommates can hear you or if they've noticed you've uncharacteristically not left the house before 9am. Telling her what has happened will make the unthinkable real in a way you will not be prepared for. The second time you talk to your mom about it will be much easier, she will go into depth about an earthquake that has happened thousands of miles away - you'll talk about the richter scale and geography and it will be the first time you'll think of anything else that whole week. Later, after you ask your mom to tell your dad because you won't be able to stand doing it yourself, he'll call you and talk about the history of the grand ole opry - how the original radio call letters are WSM, something something, "we save millions." You will roll this phrase around in your head for the rest of the day, looking for some hidden meaning, but his excitement about his trip to Tennessee will touch you, more than anything he will actually try to say that's heartfelt.

You may find yourself unexpectedly on the 5th day outside a tiny, sweaty box of a room filled with shirtless people dancing to loud, pounding disco at the far end of your old neighborhood. This is crucial: make sure to go inside. Pay the cover, let the woman at the door stamp your hand with a stamp that looks like a lipstick kiss, change out of your funeral clothes in the bathroom with the beaded curtain elbow to elbow with your companion. Sweat through your shirt, through your pants, through your socks. Take your shirt off entirely, even, without a second thought as this will be the sweatiest and maybe greatest night of dancing of your life thus far. You will cry on the dance floor but no one will know, you'll be safe there under the lights. Step outside and pass an ice cold slab of watermelon back and forth, scrape your teeth along the rind, hold ice to each other's forward. This will all help tremendously, and when your body is still sore days later on your first day back at work it will help you crack a smile.

Later when you're asked to contribute something to a night of music honoring your friend at her brother's house you might find it really daunting. The Dolly Parton song you were working on covering with her - the one you sang last summer at her opening - might be too much to get through. It will be tough to learn one of her songs - to pluck out the chords on your first morning really alone since the accident, to listen to her DIY and messy and perfect recording of the song again and again to make sure you're getting the lyrics right - but in the end it will be worth it. You will feel that doing something terrifying - in this case singing a song you can barely get through in front of hundreds of mourning friends and family in a backyard - is a fitting tribute to your incredibly brave and kick ass friend. You will be inspired by this fact and you will sing the song imperfectly - out of tune at times - but it will be just the thing. You may even feel just for a moment, if you work up the courage to ask a huge favor of a friend and a singer you admire, when you close your eyes and hit the harmony that she is there with you, your friend's voice floating just above yours where you always loved to have it. When you open your eyes you will instead see a different friend, one who is still with you, who you realize has granted you an incredible kindness. You will notice these kindnesses small, incredible, and otherwise, in nearly excruciating detail. Everything that everyone tells you after you sing the song will crack you open and it is only then that you will feel that you have gotten to the bottom of your grief. It's all perfectly normal. This is all to be expected. You're not alone in this. It comes in waves. There will be fireflies just starting to blink on and off as you finish singing and, as her mom will point out, that is absolutely her. A light going on, then off suddenly.

credits

from My Big Break - volume 1, released July 16, 2020

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Ben Seretan Climax, New York

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