Life Imitating Art

Want to hear the cruelest irony of my emotional life? I wrote "I'll Just Smile" about Matthew Richard Shumway, a song about liking him but being too shy to tell him and having no intention of ever doing so and being content the way things were between us. He died without knowing that song was about him.

He passed away on a Wednesday, July 20th, two days after I drove to Shands in Gainesville to see him in the ICU. A couple weeks prior to that he came into my mind for some reason, I don't know why. I had a boyfriend at the time, so I dismissed it. A long time ago I hid him from my facebook News Feed because I didn't want to be reminded of him, because I was trying to not like him and get over the whole somethingness/nothingness of the whole thing. Of course, with him comatose in a hospital bed and attached to a dozen machines, it was time to tell him everything, so I cried and recounted memories and said everything he'd deserved to hear.

You can't make this stuff up. Maybe I wouldn't feel as strongly for him as I do now if I hadn't made such an effort to keep him off my mind back when we lived in the same town. I made a conscious decision to not go after him; I could like him all I wanted, but I didn't want a drunk boyfriend, and he drank a lot. That choice was what was most healthy for me at the time.

I feel like a fool though, when I think back on the times I was sort of mean to him or ignored him. The very last time I saw him before he had his stroke was New Year's Eve 2010, and as we said our good-byes Gage had asked him, teasing me, "Shumway do you know Haylee?" Shum looked at me like the cat that ate the canary and said, "Yes, we know each other". Though we'd been acquaintances for over two years, at times with palpable emotional tension, I never felt like I knew him that well but always, always just wanted to spend some quiet time with him, play guitars or something. Like my song said, "I'd like to grow in what I know of your gentle soul by merely being near." He told me before I left, "I have unlimited texting now and we can shoot back rapid-fire messages" and I said, "Yeah, that'll be the day." He'd disappointed me so many times before; not texting me back when we first met, not replying to a facebook message I sent him once. For a second he seemed taken aback. Then his face softened as he said, "Yeah, that'll be the day." Gage, very protective of me, didn't think Shumway was good enough for me and he was proud of me for finally saying like, "No, I'm not going to get excited at the prospect of getting to know you better because I will not let you disappoint me again."

Is this honestly the last interaction I had with him? You can't make this stuff up.

I'm working on a song now about asking his permission to remember our history the way I wish it had happened. It was agony to accept my feelings for him and then see him suddenly. I would cling to my oath that I would not make a move on him, knowing full well he was entirely too shy to put the moves on me. The most forward he got was one day at the pub after a rugby match (picture me, track pants, jersey, no make-up). I said good-bye and had almost left the room when he said, "Hey Haylee?" I stopped and said, "Hey Matt?" and he looked down at the floor and mumbled, "You look really pretty today." Aaaaahhhhh!! I said thank you and went around the corner where I could giggle and jump like a teenager. When I'd confessed to Kerri and Gage that I had a crush on him, Kerri said, "How can you have a crush on Shumway!?" She didn't see what I saw, and neither did he.

You can't make this stuff up.

So how can I make art imitate life? I feel as if I haven't been very creative over the past year. There's so much more that happened between Shumway and me as nothing was happening, like the night we chatted on facebook at 3am the cloudy August night the Perseid meteor shower was on, trading youtube videos of songs we wanted the other to hear. I do want to remember everything accurately, except for the times I could've been more kind to him. One of the best was when we slow-danced on the porch at Mother's to some 1940's big band music. Pure magic. He was very good, and he confessed that his mother made him take ballroom-dancing lessons when he was younger. I still remember what it felt like to rest my face on his shoulder, to feel his cheek near my ear and the way he held my hand against his chest. And my mind wandering to the fact that I was wearing baggy khaki shorts and my crazy-lookin' "Love Is Real" Daniel Johnston t-shirt, haha.

This isn't at all where I thought this blog was going to go. I guess I needed to get this out. There are so many more memories I hope I'll always be able to recall easily. It would likely be more healthy to try to move on and find an interest in someone who hasn't been dead almost seven months, but the artist in me loves this agony. I always knew he was really special, and the fact that he was taken from us so young confirms this.

More cruel irony: the first time I went over to his house, he'd been trying to learn this song on guitar, with which I've been obsessed ever since: "Ghost" by Howie Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmlr0Jc9hPQ

October Morning

The clouds are a ceiling this morning,

Just enough light coming through.

Am I letting it shine through me?

Under the overpass I see signs of life,

Probably not one you or I would want.

Am I just putting this thought away?

Each life that rides past me in its own vessel,

Some of them better or worse than others.

Am I judging a book by its cover?

People get so angry, sometimes so do I

At a person they will never meet.

I just cruise along in my seat,

Am I helping them get through their day?

Power lines connect us all

And give birds a place to sit before they

Launch a swirling formation.

Am I appreciating this beautiful performance?

So if we're all heading somewhere,

Different paths and destinations all,

Am I still going in the right direction?

The First On the Second

A most delightfully lazy day. Just sayin. Have a nice (real!) fire going in the fireplace, the Gators won the Gator Bowl, right now watching Ulster v Munster to study up on 15's. Hungry though, I see ramen noodles in my future.

2011 began with an emotional sprint and saw an 8.5-year streak go down. Then I got hit in the gut in July when Shumway died, and my collective heart-and-mind were wrenched out and run over on the highway. (This is him with my sister and me on New Year's Eve last year... sigh.)

Rugby was good to me all year, and I was good to it.

I am determined and newly inspired to learn to speak Spanish as I've discovered the music and voice of Alejandro Sanz, and I'm desperate to discover the lyrics.

Will I finish my own album in 2012? I'm having my doubts! Gotta be positive though. About everything, especially myself.

Worse Still

The friend I wrote about in my previous post is fine, recovering at home, taking better care of himself. Praise God.

I called that situation "The Unthinkable". Well, reality is quite frequently what we don't expect it to be. A young friend of mine, 27, died after eight days in a coma, induced to save his brain from a massive stroke he suffered out of nowhere. But the damage was done.

There are many reasons why I'm having trouble coming to grips with this. Pray for his parents, Larry and Theresa. His funeral is tomorrow, geography prevents me from attending.

Life is never fair, and God does things for His own reasons. A good friend of mine says that God can see the whole tapestry, while we can only see the little frayed tassels that hang down. I trust God and His plan, that'll never change. I just wish young people didn't have to be taken away to remind us all how much we take this life for granted.

The Unthinkable

One of my best friends is very, very sick. He's in a hospital right now, has been for eight days, and has almost died twice. I can't go visit because the doctors want him to rest. This is horrible.

Rick has been the very best I could ever want in a friend, and I consider myself very good at being loyal and true to my friends. He stuck by me and defended me when I went through some really hard times, and at the time we'd known each other less than a year. We worked together at a rancid cesspool office of disguised evil, so we share an understanding of what's been killing him for the last twenty-six years. He loves my music and believes in me as a songwriter and a performer and encourages me to stick with it. I can confide in him and he confides in me. He's fun and funny and loves the Gators and Bruce Springsteen and can't tell you about a song without singing it and playing air guitar. My dad and I went with Rick and his wife to see Bob Dylan. He doesn't even begin to realize what a good person he is, empathetic and generous, hard-working, just a gem of a human being.

I'm literally beside myself. If anyone out there reads this, please pray for my friend Rick. When he gets released he'll have to make major lifestyle changes, so he'll need prayers for that, too. We all have our cross to bear, and right now his is heavy.

Lord Willin

As a man was leaving the office, a girl I work with said "Merry Christmas".

He turned around and said, "The same to ya'll too, Happy New Year!"

To which she replied, "See you next year!" Laughter was exchanged and general good vibes spread through the office.

As he walked out the door, the gentleman (who was wearing a Gator hat, by the way) said, "Lord willin, I'll be here!"

And I knew he was right, and thought of all the vain things I make plans about and was reminded of this passage from James 4:

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Is That What It Is?

Artemis is the Greek goddess of hunting, wild animals, virginity and the moon, twin sister of Apollo. This guy asked for my phone number over the weekend and it made me think of this story (and wonder why it's been 2.5 years since the last time that happened, what is it about me? I've been told I'm intimidating, being a referee of men's rugby (and women's), tall and not ugly and all). Anyway this is the story:

Artemis was once bathing in a vale on Mount Cithaeron, when the Theban hunter Actaeon stumbled across her. Enraged, Artemis turned him into a stag and, not knowing their own owner, Actaeon's own dogs killed him.

I mean she was pissed he saw her naked. She couldn't have him going around saying, "Yo I saw that virgin goddess Artemis naked!" BUT, I think it's significant that she turned him into a stag (deer), allowing him to live in the form of an animal she held sacred. Hmmmm. Then again she probably knew his dogs would attack him if he were a deer.

Infinite Jest, an amazing book I just read and highly recommend, had a character named Joelle/Madame Psychosis who was beautiful (the former love of her life, Orin would continue to refer to her as the "P.G.O.A.T.", as in Prettiest Girl Of All Time). Her father warned her about men who were only attracted to her looks, ("The sweetest syrup attracts the nastiest flies.") so she was paranoid about that. But the author called it "Actaeon Complex", ("deep phylogenic fear of transhuman beauty"), which is what men get around women who are so intimidatingly beautiful they're actually repelled by them and can't bring themselves to even talk to her. I can't say this is my problem (I'm actually quite awkward and get this same Actaeon Complex around good-looking dudes as I go around looking like an unmade bed) but it makes me feel better to blame it on this. Maybe I should be asking "What's wrong with this kid who wants my phone number!?!?" (just teasing - I know that a girl's phone number is like a trophy for a guy)

*(Ultimately, at Thanksgiving dinner at Joelle's parents' house (with Orin at the table) her father revealed some gross crap about him being in love with her so the mother freaked out and went down to the basement where the father had his lab (he was a low pH chemist) and threw a beaker of acid at the father, who ducked, so it ended up breaking on Joelle's face, which made her deformed and un-look-at-able, so she joined the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed and took an oath to always wear a veil to cover her face. And obviously Orin dumped her soon thereafter. At least she didn't have to worry if men were just interested in her physical appearance anymore.)

From wikipedia, other reasons I identify with Artemis' story:
The childhood of Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth. The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus.[17] A poem of Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, at three years old, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt; to have sixty "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, and for the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.[18]
Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo.[19] All of her companions remained virgins and Artemis guarded her own chastity closely. Her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, and the moon.

"She wished for no city dedicated to her..."
"...Guarded her own chastity closely."

And she killed Adonis, the guy everyone thought was so hot. (Also from wikipedia):
In some versions of the story of Adonis, who was a late addition to Greek mythology during the Hellenistic period, Artemis sent a wild boar to kill Adonis as punishment for his hubristic boast that he was a better hunter than she.

So, Artemis is one of my favorite mythological figures. There was a point but I forgot it.

You Know Who You Are

Thank you for bein a friend

Travel down the road and back again

Your heart is true

You're a pal and a confidant

And if you threw a party

Invited everyone you knew

You would see

The biggest gift would be from me

And the card attached would say

Thank you for bein a friend.