In Retrospect...

When my friends experience times of crisis, one of my stronger inclinations is to go throw a mixed CD together, because who doesn't feel better with new music? Normally I resist this urge, understanding how juvenile this might seem to someone who is trying to grapple with, say, issues of life and death or extreme physical pain. I resist the urge for the most part, but there are a couple extreme cases when I have given in to this urge to make a cd to cure what ails you. Unfortunately, whether or not the recipient of the mix cd reads much into it, each mix cd becomes invested with excruciating meaning once I've given the cd away.

Last December, my boss of seven years suddenly became ill. He was having debilitating chest pains. He kept on working, but his color was so gray and he looked awful. He was a major mentor in my life and I was passionately loyal to him, so to see him struggle through this health issue was torture. What could I, small insignificant Shannon, do in a time when he suffered so? Make cds of course. He and I had often traded cds over the years, both of us being compulsive music collectors but having incredibly different tastes. It makes me laugh, but I almost never liked what he gave me,though he often came 'round to the albums I gave him which just proves my point that I have the best taste in music ever.

A few days of this illness wore on and he looked worse and worse. I started to feel frantic. I sensed what was going to happen, even though I wouldn't acknowledge it to myself. One day, after a particularly difficult day for him - I even think he snapped at me - I went home in a frenzy, agonizing over my beloved boss being so sick he snapped at me. I stayed up late into the night burning cds for him. I started writing letters to him, trying to tell him how much he meant to me and how making cds is my way of giving chicken soup to a sick friend. By the time I went to bed, I had burned six or seven albums and had six or seven drafts of this letter littering my living room floor. The next morning I woke up super early and finished burning more albums for him, using up every blank cd I had. I was so excited, I was like - he may be sick, but this will be a little perk for him, because I knew he LOVED borrowing albums from people and listening to new music. Sometimes I think it was less about whether he liked the music or not, but about being able to say he'd heard this or that in any conversation. I think he really truly wanted to be as well versed and knowledgeable about all types of music as possible - to him, it was the ultimate cool, which I totally understood because I felt the same way.

That morning I had an early off site meeting, but I was hopping with excitement to give my boss twelve new albums and I was really excited about some of them and I just wanted him to have them so badly. I got back to the office around ten or eleven, and when I pulled up his car was in the parking lot. I practically ran inside so that I could give him the cds, because he often left at that time in the day. I got to his cubicle, but it was empty. I ran back to the window and his car was gone. We must have passed in the elevator. I left the cds on his chair and thought expectantly, excitedly, of him finding them the next morning.

That afternoon I left early. I don't remember why, now. I just did. My good friend called me around 4pm. When I answered the phone I shouted 'holla!' Silence met my greeting and I knew something was wrong. I have some bad news, she said. And I knew what it was before she even said. "Neil Callahan passed away around 3pm this afternoon", which was around the time I was driving home from work. For the next few days I couldn't go into work. And I kept picturing those cds on his chair, just sitting. Never listened to. Unacknowledged.

Fast forward to last month, which is when I received the news that my friend had had triple bypass heart surgery. Yes, the friend that I talked about in the last post. I went into frantic frenzy mode, because here was somebody else, somebody closely connected to Neil even, that was so deathly sick. I had to make him a cd. It was an emotional imperative.

ryan
1. 'All Your Way' Morphine
2. 'You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told)' The White Stripes
3. 'Letter From An Occupant' The New Pornographers
4. 'Train In Vain' The Clash
5. 'Whistling In the Dark' Firewater
6. 'Portland Oregon' Loretta Lynn
7. 'That's It, I Quit, I'm Movin' On' Sam Cooke
8. 'Game, Set & Match' The Herbiliser (featuring More or Les)
9. 'Go Tell the Women' Grinderman
10. 'Paper Planes' M.I.A.
11. 'Hang Me Up To Dry' Cold War Kids
12. 'Angry' The Bug (featuring Tippa Irie)
13. 'Shake and Pop' Nick Lowe
14. 'Boney Fingers' Hoyt Axton
15. 'Traveling Man' Dolly Parton
16. 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' Pixies
17. 'Ring the Bells' James
18. 'Whole Wide World' Wreckless Eric
19. 'My Year In Lists' Los Campesinos!
20. 'The Worst Day Since Yesterday' Flogging Molly
21. 'Midnight Rider' Willie Nelson
22. 'Long Way Home' Tom Waits
23. 'extraordinary machine' Fiona Apple

I put this together thinking about how cool the music was. I ignored the lyrics of the songs, for the most part (except for maybe the first and last songs, were are signature songs of mine and explain Shannon better than any other songs I've ever heard) so I gave it to him (I wrote in huge red letters on the front THIS CD IS GUARANTEED 100% AWESOME) and after he had it, it occurred to me to think about WHAT the songs were saying. Why is this so important? Because this particular guy is the unrequited love of my life and though I do try my part to be over him, I wasn't really at the time and had some residual uncertainties about something that happened between us earlier in the year that never panned out. I listened to this CD in horror, after I gave it to him, thinking about our past history and the fact that the guy just had heart surgery. Hear are some choice lyrics:

You just keep on repeating/all those empty "I love you's/until you say you deserve better/I'm gonna lay right into you/you don't know what love is/you just do as you're told/just as a child of ten might act/but you're far too old/you're not hopeless or helpless/and I hate to sound cold/but you don't know what love is/you just do as your told

That's It, I quit, I'm movin' on

You didn't stand by me/no not at all/you didn't stand by me/no way

It's been the worst day since yesterday

Portland Oregan and slow gin fizz if that ain't love then tell me what is, uh huh