mesmi x music

I am fortunate to not (yet) have lived with death in my own home, but have had it come as a visitor many a time — knocking on my door, staying over at a neighbor’s house, residing in the heart of a friend — and with increasing frequency over the years. 

For me, this past decade contained goodbyes to many people, those whom I barely knew and those who were integral parts of childhood memories. Sometimes the goodbye was formal, and sometimes the goodbye was never uttered, simply an announcement through someone who had heard from someone else who had heard. Sometimes the blow was years in the making, and sometimes it side-swiped with a blinding force. Another angle to the saying, “you never saw it coming.”

It’s a strange thing to be one left still standing amidst such calamity. Even on the periphery, it touches you. There’s a weight to it; one that accrues. The survivor’s guilt of simply living?

Death comes in so many forms, is not always so literal. We all, given the double-edged gift of time, come to say bye to former selves, to ways and places of life, to once-upon expectations.

There was a certain moment a couple years ago when I suddenly came upon a little pile of artistic goodbyes; gifted entities, bright souls, who couldn’t find a way to continue, or had had enough. Being surrounded by creative death gave me a different feeling of loss, one that really struck me in the most niggling, wormy way, like hitting your funny bone and having your body’s entire sensation be out of sorts.

It was an odd, shrouding sadness, and it was that night “Here Anymore” kind of just came out of me. 

I have seen death, endings, be the gateway for new sorts of life to emerge. And there is a beauty in it being a great unifier; the reality and realization of it that brings us inexorably together.

But a lot of it is still so, so sad. I think it’s something we may reach peace over but never make sense of. 

So mourning is necessary. The struggle to grapple with the loneliness and fathom what’s left; the tension, whether choice was a part of it or not.

The feelings of barrenness, and decay, and futility. It’s a desolate place, full of questions. Maybe acceptance and some sort of renewed fortitude lie on the other side, but in the meantime, the most one has strength for is to call out.

does anything last? does anyone really care? what do i do with this parched, empty field that is my heart?

“Here Anymore” may not seem like a very hopeful song, but it’s an honest one.