Sadness As a Gift: Music, Grief, and the Long Work of Acceptance
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
-Kurt Vonnegut
A lot has been on my mind recently. My brother Tyler unexpectedly passed away a month ago. It had been many years since we’d had any regular interaction. I can’t recall the last time I saw him, despite him living right next to my parents’ house. None of this lessened the shock of suddenly losing a sibling.
Tyler was a brilliant, kind-hearted, complicated, and introverted person with a vast inner world. Four years younger than me, he was a gifted musician and multi-instrumentalist who wrote tunes, stories, and poetry. When we did speak it was always about music that was lighting us up at the moment.
Since his death I’ve discovered more commonalities- podcasts, books, and TV shows we both connected with. Though he was a stranger, I was stunned by our similar passions. I discovered that he had bought a specific autographed comedy podcast book that I had also been wanting. I had bought this book but regretted not getting a signed copy, yet we never discussed this shared interest. I now plan on giving away the unsigned one.
Now, of course, I grieve the relationship we could’ve had but didn’t. Our lives seemed to run parallel to one another’s. Like many of his family and friends, I turned to music for healing and to express the inexpressible. Since my musical “coming to” over the past few years, that seems to be the (or at least my) ultimate utility of music: to help us reference and express the depth of human spirit, emotion, and meaning itself. That it can also be aesthetically beautiful, feel good to listen to, and be endlessly studied and optimized-all that’s a great bonus.
After seeing Tyler’s friends pay their tributes and make playlists to remember him, I thought curating a collection of songs would be helpful for me to honor him, and to pick up the music sharing, at least in one direction. Because he was in many ways a stranger to me, my methodology for putting this music together relied on a growing intuition: sensing what music and lyrics pointed to not only what little I knew of Tyler, but our lives in the wake of his passing, as well as music that I imagine he’d enjoy but never shared with him.
It was something to do, and something to share with those who knew him much better than I.
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Apple Music: https://sdz.sh/bGLtv7/applemusicapp
Spotify: https://sdz.sh/9nMAnc/spotify
YouTube: https://sdz.sh/C1ZXyT/youtube
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Hovering around two hundred songs and 14 hours, it’s a good first effort. It pulls from a few different sources:
-Songs we shared together (mostly all from half a life ago)
-stuff our parents and family occasionally listened to
-songs I love that I should’ve shared with him
-songs I studied and performed
-some occasional levity and references
I’ve been curating and listening to this playlist for weeks, wholly spending too much time considering the worthiness of each tune. Some of this music came to me recently, helping me through this year and the general business of life. Other music seemed to be a stylistic fit with the little I knew of Tyler. Still, other music he and I might go way back with. My main criteria was mostly a metaphysical one- the music had to feel right, to honor Tyler’s memory and capture some of the feelings I had.
I know he loved books, and I wish I could’ve shared lyrics that I loved from writers like Adrianne Lenker, Anais Mitchell, Madison Cunningham, and Gabriel Kahane, all which I included. Several records this year I found myself being nourished by, like Lenker’s “Bright Future” or Jacob Collier’s “Djesse Vol. 4”. I included some of both, the atmosphere of each seeming to ring true to this situation.
There are also instrumental pieces I studied on piano or grew to love included: a Chopin Mazurka I was taken by the first time I heard it in a college music class, Liszt’s Un Sospiro, Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1, Claire De Lune, the haunting prelude Footsteps in the Snow, and John Adams’ mesmerizing China Gates. I had left home and moved away from him before really gaining awareness of all the great classical music that existed and I think Tyler would have enjoyed these. The trailblazing John Cage and Henry Cowell even show up here, with the futuristic Sonata No. 5 (played on a modified “prepared piano”) and mammoth The Tides of Manaunaun. I could never begin to play the insane Alkan etude Le Festin D’esope, maybe the most virtuosic piece of piano music I know, but wanted to include it to highlight Tyler’s love for animals. It depicts all the animals in Aesop’s Fables, in dramatically different theme and variations.
When I was in college, a performance of choral composer Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque gave me such goosebumps that I wanted to also include it, along with Caroline Shaw’s unbelievable Partita for 8 Voices (a piece I discovered at a music camp last year and somehow seemingly prudent here). Many other songs included here have similar backstories:
-“Send in the Clowns” was included because it was used in a tribute for a classmate that died in my High School band.
-Chet Baker kept me company in High School, as I started to make my own life and spend more time away from home. The hopeless romantic archetype has always plagued me and Tyler too, I imagine.
-Pedro the Lion’s “Teenage Sequencer” stood out to me with its high-definition capturing of the feelings of adolescence. Similarly, the clarity described in their tune “Quietest Friend”, reckoning with parts of yourself or your past long forgotten, help put words to my feelings.
Because he shared my penchant for absurd humor, I had to include the theme song occasionally used in the aforementioned comedy podcast (the fanfare from Sondheim’s “The Frogs”), inexplicably played in its entirety by the host before and after a consistently insane game of “Would You Rather”. The host insists they play this game every week (they don’t), and nobody’s allowed to talk during the music. Comedian Jon Benjamin’s jazz piano record is also here (who readily admits he isn’t a musician and that the record must be offensive to actual pianists). I considered throwing in a song from the show “Nathan for You” that featured a smoke detector beep throughout (for…reasons), but opted to pull it for overall “listenability”.
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Music is funny. I used to identify with what kind I enjoyed or didn’t, and thought it was a quantifiably objective thing. As a musician I have similarly been captured, and sullied, by the “thingness” of studying and practicing music, knowing (and caring) too much to be an effective musical conduit.
Now I see (for me at least), a deeper function, a doing as opposed to an easily defined product. Music can serve as a container for story and emotion, with an individuality and depth of human expression that words can’t touch. It’s more about us, accepting and bearing witness to this world and this life, even bigger doings- than it ever was about the music. Like language, it points at the meaning but isn’t necessarily itself the meaning. Unlike language, that meaning and the overall merit of music is unchangeably subjective, something one can easily forget when studying and teaching it for a living.
How it makes us feel will always be a good enough compass. How many of us have been transported back in time or to a certain person or place, via the listening of mere music? And how many times have I been inextricably changed by music giving a tune and words to the content of everyday life? Listening or playing brings with it an experiential presence, if you are open to receive it.
The specific stuff we latch onto is really trivial, based on our culture, upbringing, mood, and environment. What strikes me as far less trivial is how we can use music and art (or anything else) to help bear witness to our experience and emotions. It’s especially the art made in that light that invites us to express ourselves through it. Yet it almost seems anything taken in with a certain amount of openness can lend a new perspective. Listening to this playlist over the past month has taught me to find the truth and beauty in any lyric or melody.
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I’m focusing on the power of music to do this but it isn’t unique. Anything that invites us to be in the moment and present in the world enough to actually notice it can work. Such things are needed to contextualize and reveal the meaning of lived experience.
That meaning is almost always implicit. It’s also found in a home cooked meal, moving book, or a great day spent with a friend. It’s found when the mind goes quiet and temporarily drops the act of being in any sort of control, interrupting the (frequent) narrative of our life in which we play the main character. It’s the flash of remembrance, in the middle of a dark movie theater- ah yes, this is just a movie, that you’re actually sitting with your family, overly fed and entertained, living a life full of innumerable blessings (like the luxury of getting lost in the movie to begin with).
I hope Tyler found those moments frequently, and he seemed to. Everyone deserves to. These songs have helped me consider and discover those moments and figure out what to write here. I’m grateful that I’ve even found those moments as a result of his passing, however bittersweet they inevitably now are.
I mentioned how I’ve been building this playlist for weeks. Be it my own self indulgence, or something more sacred or cosmic, but I have had a growing sense of what belonged here to properly convey my sentiments. These songs helped me to connect with someone I hadn’t interacted with closely for many years, however mysterious that is. They represent my attempt to be more forthcoming and open- not only with Tyler, but my family and friends, and with the world in general.
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The day after I found out about Tyler’s passing, my wife and I were supposed to see the legendary Herbie Hancock. We decided to still go, welcoming the distraction and desperately needing a date night. Herbie shared some poignant words through his vocoder midway through the concert seemingly speaking to our situation, and in general to the loss present in the background of much of the world. He spoke of the reality that we are a family, collectively. That family takes care of one another, celebrates differences, and doesn’t let (any) conflict obscure the fact of our shared being.
I recall finding another quote from Herbie years earlier, along my musical journey: “Now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.” I can attest to that paradox. This is art’s gift to us mere humans. I now see that we should resist any lofty ideas and judgments about it and instead point to its necessary and magical ability for us to bear witness to, and process, this life.
It’s how the dead live on: through explicit memories, yet even more viscerally- under the covers, in the background, through the experience and perspective we acquire having lived and been changed by them. They’ll absorb into everyone and everything they touched, just as our bodies go back into the earth one way or another, and just as music can accompany us on our journey. Nothing is ever lost.
I suppose I’ll get back to playing, teaching, and writing about music- not to mention the real work of being a worthy husband, dad, son, and brother. We all have our own path to take. I hope for myself and those reading with whatever our lives’ work is, that we can cultivate those much needed moments of repose via whatever means necessary. This music, as it always has, will help me reach wherever I’m going, more affected by others and in less control than I can ever know.
Tyler, here’s looking forward to some much-needed music making together in the next life. Until then, I promise to keep listening.
Been searching for your eyes
All I see is blue skies
And that old man beats his crooked cane
It's time to let go
Leaning on the windowsill
You could write me someday, and I bet you will
We could see the sadness as a gift and still
The seasons go so fast
Thinking that this one was gonna last
Maybe the question was too much to ask
(Possibly Helpful/Needless) Instructions for Playlist:
Shuffle On!
Skip When It Gets Weird
Find The Songs to Fit Your Current Mood
Infer Far-flung Thematic and Lyrical Significance specific to your life
Discover New Stuff
Apple Music: https://sdz.sh/bGLtv7/applemusicapp
Spotify: https://sdz.sh/9nMAnc/spotify
YouTube: https://sdz.sh/C1ZXyT/youtube
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