More on March 💡

remember to remember me, standing still in your past

Hi readers,

March is a tender time for me. I’d like to tell you a story. This time last year I wrote a bit about my friend Doug. He died on March 4, 2019, months before his wedding to Genna.

I met Doug and Genna while waiting for a Wilco show in Madison, WI in 2015. They were first in line, I was second. I like to think I’ve never met a stranger, and Genna had a cool shirt on, so I told her so. The rest is confetti.

After Doug died, Genna asked me to go with her on their honeymoon trip, which was Solid Sound Festival (Wilco’s biannual music and arts festival held in North Adams, MA).

This was such an honor. A gut punch. All the air leaving my lungs at once. My heart swelled. That June, we loaded up Genna’s car and drove from my apartment in Wisconsin to our little room in the back of some eccentric woman’s house in North Adams.

I was really, really going through it that summer. We got somewhere east of Chicago and had to stop at a gas station because I was having a panic attack. The attendant knocked on the door and his big voice boomed through the metal hinges.

“You okay in there? Me and your friend are asking.”

“She gets panic attacks,” I heard Genna say, soothing both of us at the same time.

I opened the door and sat on the curb in between the attendant and Genna. I put my head between my knees and started trying to name the states in alphabetical order. Nameless Attendant tenderly put his hand between my shoulders.

“I get those too. I feel for you, man. It’s tough to live in this world.”

Genna and I looked at him at the same time. We went inside and bought extra large lemonades and bubblegum and drove and drove and drove.

We stopped in Niagara Falls and got Wilco themed tattoos while wearing our matching shirts. We were dead tired from the drive and spending too much money and being sun-burned.

After settling in and meandering through the actual festival days with friends, we hit a good routine of checking out the live shows and side stages. I randomly met Peter Buck of R.E.M. in line for a hot dog (and he was unbelievably cool). I physically smacked into David Spade in the crowd one night, noting that we had the same haircut. I even went on an incredibly awkward (but earnest) first date with someone I had met earlier that morning. We went to the John Hodgman show and only spoke about a dozen words the entire time we knew each other.

But one of the greatest things about that weekend wasn’t just the music. Solid Sound had various art installations throughout the grounds of MASS MoCA. It was like this scavenger hunt to seek out work from artists like Jenny Holzer and Annie Lennox.

Genna and I needed a break from the heat one afternoon, so we linked arm and arm and decided to check out James Turrell’s exhibit Into the Light. You can read more about the work here, but essentially, it was this giant room you walked into, in sections as to not overwhelm, that seemed corner-less and infinite.

In my years, I’ve written a lot about my relationship with light as a concept. It’s something that is so meaningful to me. The tattoo I got in Niagara Falls is literally the Wilco lyric “that illiterate light”. I’m obsessed with the art of illumination and shadow, highlighting and hiding. We both had butterflies as we sat down on the matte white floor and waited.

James Turrell’s installation is one of a series of works that uses light effects to draw our attention to the way we perceive our surroundings and, ultimately, to recognize the uncertainty of perception. Throughout the 10-15 minute experience, a bath of changing color fills the room, punctuated by periodic bursts of strobing light. As the light changes, viewers watch the boundaries of the space disappear before their eyes as if the room has been shrouded in a cloud of mist.

For the Solid Sound weekend, we were told that the light effects were random and that theoretically, each group or pairing got a different combination or pattern of lights. So, Genna and I sat and watched, and let ourselves be absorbed into this womb of color, of belonging.

On our drive to Massachusetts, we had talked briefly about what it would look like if Doug sent us a sign that he was with us that weekend. Would it be a hint from Jeff Tweedy himself? Would we see hummingbirds everywhere? Would we meet someone who looked like him, who happened to have a penchant for ska and peach pie?

No. We met Doug in the light. In the misty glow of a late Saturday afternoon, the colors switched - slowly at first, but then with rhythm, from a red to an orange to the most perfect gold you can imagine. My mouth fell open. I couldn’t squeeze Genna any closer to me.

“It’s him,” she said, turning to me with those big glassy eyes, magnified by her glasses and the glare of the bursting bulbs around us. I nodded. I knew. I know. He sent us the lights.

We cried together in the yellow light. We cried for Doug, for everyone we have lost too soon, for everyone we didn’t know we had yet to lose. We cried for ourselves. Genna took my hand and cupped her own face. I collected her tears like ocean pearls.

The lights stayed warm and golden, alternating between tan and orange, bright yellow and fiery red.

We were sitting in Doug’s future. He was standing still in our past.

Each March I’m reminded my friend, of the love he leaves behind, of the idea that no one ever dies who’s name is still repeated by the living. There’s a really great quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer season five finale:

It replays in my head a lot, especially now, especially lately. And so if you read through this and think of someone in your life that has held your heart in such ways, I hope you are brave and remember that life is for the living.

All my love,

H