Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Everything Ends Badly, Or Else it Wouldn't End*

Jay Bennett, former guitarist for Wilco, died last week at age 45.

This news creates an intersection between two wildly unrelated trains of thought that Ive been having over the past week and a half.  First, with the new Wilco album due out in over a month, I had been eagerly awaiting a taste, and my wish was granted when the band put up a stream of the album on their website.  Ever since Ive been trying to get my thoughts together on the sound of the album and its relation to earlier albums, three of which involve major contributions from Jay Bennett.  Ive also been thinking about death.

Death and music.  Lets go back to the beginning.

Two Saturdays ago I got a disturbing phone call early in the morning, and a succinct voicemail.  "call me back, its important."

I made the call, and asked what had happened.

"Joe is dead."  Silence.  I don't hear it.  I ask him to repeat.  "Joe is dead" he responds "he was hit by a car last night, he was dead when they found him."

--

Ive never loved a band as much as I loved Wilco the summer before my senior year of college.  I was living in a hot cramped room in the third floor of an old seven person house in Ann Arbor.  There were four or five of us around that summer, and I was only working part time while the rest of the guys were just waiting until school started.  We got drunk on the porch, we smoked pot all day, and we listened to music, and the music that we listened to was Wilco.  Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  Being There.  Summer Teeth.  We found every demo tape and b-side we could get our hands on.  We soaked up every bit of Wilco's music that we could.

The music was my escape.  It fit every mood I had.  Sunny pop songs for listless lazy July days.  Boozy barroom rock for nights spent getting drunk on cheap beer.  Quiet folk ballads for evenings watching the day turn to night from the big porch.  The songs fit my life.  Love songs ached for lost love like I ached for my girlfriend who was spending the summer in Ireland.  Rock songs inspired us as we jammed away for hours at night in the basement.  Layered pop songs kept us occupied as we smoked pot and talked about whatever subject happened to be running through our heads.

It was summer, and we had nothing to do but listen to music.

--

The week after Joe's death I did my best to keep it out of my mind.  I kept busy with work and only had the occasional realization that he was in fact dead, and I wasn't ever going to see him again. 

I am a poor atheist.  I want an afterlife.  Death scares me.  Nothingness scares me.

I want answers to my questions about life, and I want there to exist some great purpose, even though everything I observe leads me to believe that human life is much like animal life.  We are born to survive, to mate, and to eventually die.  Humans are like an ant colony.  Cogs in a global biological wheel.

If that's the truth, you can have it.  I want rules.  I want the world to behave like I was brought up to believe it should, justice should be served, good things should happen to good people.  I don't want funerals for friends younger than I am.  

--

Jay Bennett was a rocker and a musician through and through.  He could play just about anything you put in front of him if it had strings or keys, and often did with Wilco.  His prowess on guitar helped Wilco tour after the departure of Brian Henneman, and Bennett's talents on keyboard would appear in the next album.

Being There was Bennetts entrance on to the Wilco scene, but Summer Teeth was his real crowning achievement.  The collaboration of Jeff Tweedy's dark and violent lyrics with Jay Bennett's sunny pop songs produced a fully realized pop album.  Bennett and Tweedy used flourishes of keyboards and other sounds to give the album a warm plush feel to contrast the dark mood of the lyrics.  The album opens up like a coffin, smooth crafted exterior driven by despair and pain.

--

I arrived at Joe's funeral early.  A few of my friends were gathered in the parking lot.  No one was talking much, just the occasional greeting to a passer-by or attempt at small talk.  We moved into the large lobby of the church.  Against the far wall sat the casket, surrounded by flowers, and people weeping.  I couldn't bring myself to get any closer than 10 feet.  I saw enough.  I didn't want to see him, laying there lifeless.  Too much.  Too real.

I took a seat for the funeral service and soon found myself numb.  I wasn't thinking about Joe, or death, or anything in particular.  I was just staring, my body hanging limp.  There was nothing to say, he was too young to be up there in a coffin.  He was cut down before he should have been.  He crosses the road at the wrong place early in the morning, and bam.  Nothing.  That's it folks, shows over.

As much as I wanted to believe that it was unfair, I could only conclude that ultimately, that's life, and fairness just doesn't have a lot to do with it.

So Joe is dead, cut down at 24.

And Jay Bennett is dead, sadly passing at 45.

What had Joe done?  Grown up, and went to college, but he was barely out of school.  He finally found a job in Chicago, but was only at it 5 months.  What had Jay done?  He had played in a bunch of bands, mastered a number of instruments, and left a large musical record behind him.

--

Two weeks ago I might have talked at length about Jay Bennett's death being tragic.  A musician dead before his time, his best music left unwritten, best songs unsung.

Is Bennett's death any less tragic in light of Joe's fate?  Not necessarily.  They were both taken too early in the eyes of those they left behind, both left unanswered questions about their legacy, what would they be known for.  They were both good people, and neither deserved the fate they were ultimately handed.

As a child I had a much different, albeit naive, view of the way the world worked:  

Bad things didn't happen to good people.

I have spent my entire life trying to come to terms with the reality that this statement is patently false.  Not only do bad things happen to good people, but the reason things happen is often much more a product of chance than karma.  There is no guarantee that things are going to work out how you imagine, and even the best laid plans are subject to the whims of chance.  While it is terrifying to think  that there is no justice (at least justice as imagined by an 8 year old, where everyone gets what they deserve) it is also strangely comforting to know that chance is just as blind as true justice.

--

Both deaths are tragic for what can't be said about the departed.  One cannot help but think about the music that Jay Bennett will never make, or the family that Joe will never raise.  While we mourn the losses, we have no choice to carry on with our own lives, trying our best to savor the things we love a little bit more.  Life isn't fair.  Death doesn't care how old you are or what you've done.

All you can do is live your life, do the best you can, and look both ways before you cross the street.

(I stole the quote in the title from a Bill Simmons article I read today.  He got it from the movie Cocktail)