More than words can say

Musicians bond with each other deeply, sometimes instantly. It happens because our neural networks synchronize when we play together. No really, it's a science thing, they've documented it, look it up. So because our brains start grooving together when we play together, we get deeply lodged in each other's heads and hearts.

And sometimes a musician, say a mandolin player just for example, happens to also be a fantastically good person who practices deep compassion and kindness, who inspires everyone around him to be kinder to each other, to play more and better music, and to live gently and love everybody. A family starts to grow up around such a person, based on that whole synchronized neural network and heart combo platter thing. Everybody adores everybody, because the dominant vibe is love--love of music, love for each other, love for the audience, for the place, for the time. Life gets so good. It's beautiful and magical and precious.

Then that mandolin player finds out that he's got cancer, so his musical family, which by now is HUGE, gathers around him and says "We're gonna do whatever it takes to keep you around because the music and the love and the vibe are too good to let go, and we love you like lightning loves thunder, do you understand?" So everybody gets together and raises a bunch of money, treatment is given, and the mandolin player gets better and all is well.

Until the leukemia happens. And then it just hurts and hurts and hurts. The family gathers around the mandolin player again, but this time everybody feels helpless and scared and utterly bereft. But they hold him tight, and they check on each other, and they say "I love you" to everybody so many times it seems unreal, but because of him every time they say it, it means more than it did the last time. And they wait.

And then the messages go out, he's gone. It's over. And it feels like the heart has been ripped out of the whole community, and yet the relief that his pain is at an end is equally great, and the two feelings whiplash back and forth and through the family for days. But the beautiful thing is, everybody talks to everybody, bonds are renewed, hugs are exchanged, and one person helps another heal, and that person helps another, and so on, like great ripples in the shared neural network.

I was at folk club when it happened. It was my friend Kimberli's turn to share a song, and something inspired her to sing "Death Come a Knockin'," and just after that the message came through. Bobby has gone home. And we knew, we all knew. She had the profound honor of singing him home. And her eyes shone from the tears of deep sadness, and from the fire of knowing she helped him find his way.

There's a hole in the world where Bobby used to be, and no one yet knows how deep it really is, or how far it goes, or whether anything will ever heal it. Nothing and no one will ever replace him, but hopefully that hole will slowly fill up with the kind of love we found playing music together. Blessed be, safe journeys, and hurry back. We got tunes to play, my friend.