All we can do is be good to one another
My process for reviewing an artist or album is simple enough. First, I let the album play once, twice, maybe three times and if there are any tunes I find especially striking, I go back and give those a few more listens.
I do this before doing any background research on the band because I want the music to make its own impression, free of publicity material, band bios, and especially other reviews or write-ups.
Whether my own insights are worthwhile or not, it is imperative to me that they be my own, so…music first, then the where, what, when, why, and who of the thing.
That’s how it came to pass that I listened to the enjoyable new release from California’s GospelbeacH half a dozen times before digging into the lineup and discovering a tragedy. Their press release for the album mentions, among other things, the “return of virtuoso guitarist Neal Casal”.
I can tell you from what I’ve heard here, virtuoso is no exaggeration. Wanting to know a little more about Casal’s background, I started checking the usual sources. That’s when I found that Neal Casal died this past August 26th, a few days before I received the new album in the mail, a victim of suicide.
That, coupled with our recent Dave Berman Tribute to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, as well as the upcoming October 13th tribute to area drummer and personal friend Hunter White, has led this week’s feature to take a decidedly different turn. I’ll save the album review for a later date.
The first time I encountered suicide as something besides an abstract term, I was in junior high, an eighth grader. A ninth grader, we’ll call him Jackie, stayed home from school one bright spring day in 1985 and around noon, he called the office and asked to speak to the principal. When the man answered, Jackie, on the other end of the line, put a shotgun to his chin and pulled the trigger.
Our small city fell into a panic. Adults couldn’t conceive what someone so young would have to feel so hopeless over. For some reason, adults committing suicide was tragic but…understandable?
I was asked to be part of a panel of five students who appeared on a local radio show to discuss teen angst and suicide. I didn’t know Jackie, to this day I don’t know why I was handpicked for the program, but I remember thinking at the time (and I was not a cynical fourteen-year-old) that for all the hand-wringing and emotional outcry, it amounted to nothing really.
Nobody knew why, nobody knew who else might, nobody knew what to do to make sure it didn’t happen again, and, disgustingly enough, some people took the opportunity to be in the spotlight.
Nine years ago, the soon to be ex-wife of a dear old friend of mine called me and asked me to check up on him, because she was worried. I gave him a call (I hadn’t known they were experiencing any marital issues) and yeah, he sounded awful. His source of grief was less the dissolution of the marriage and more the imminent separation from his children, who he loved more than anything in the world.
We talked for a long time and at the end of the conversation I had him convinced to come spend a week or two with me, to get away from where he was, come to a safe place and catch his breath. He sounded better, he sounded hopeful, he said he was looking forward to it, he even managed a laugh as we hung up the phone. He’d come down the following week, he told me, and I was glad. I actually felt I had done something, something good and useful for someone I loved, and I was looking forward to seeing him.
Two days later I got the call that he had hanged himself with his belt.
Suicide raises so many questions but in this case the question I have asked myself over and over since that happened is this: Did he really feel better after our talk? Was he really going to come stay with me and just backslid, a dark moment that took over? Or was our final conversation a ruse, a way to set aside my fear of what he knew was coming? I have always thought the former more than the latter, but I don’t know and can never know and once again someone is gone by their own hand and what is there to say?
I don’t know what else I might have done. I wish I did.
I wish I had a neat and tidy answer to offer now, “Here’s what we do about this…” I don’t. Nobody does, though people will try, and you can’t fault them for that. We are, all of us, the current end result of millions of years of ingrained survival instinct. Self-destruction is so diametrically opposed to everything we are, everything that brought us here, that I can think of no other mystery so profoundly beyond our ken to grasp. I wish I had an answer to offer today, but I don’t.
I promise we’ll get back to the music next week but for now, remember those who have gone. Don’t blame them; if they could have helped it, they would have.
Don’t blame yourself. I believe if any of us knew what to do, we’d do it. It’s not a solution, not even a mildly profound suggestion, just a plain and simple thought when I can’t think of anything bigger or better; be good to each other.