Dan.M.

I haven't really written anything since Cole's been gone.

I mean, I guess that's not entirely true. A few months back, I had this brilliant idea of pulling out my computer to write things down whenever I felt a particularly painful moment. I squashed that project though, pretty fucking quickly when I realized..well.. that it was really fucking painful. I thought that it would make me a better writer or something, but all it really did was put a magnifying glass on my sadness. So, no, I haven't really written anything since Cole's been gone.

Most days, I feel like I am being swallowed.

So much of myself died with Cole when he left this earth. And the parts that didn't feel weird and distorted now. I didn't know it would be like this; I never wanted it to be like this. But alas, here I am.

One of the coping mechanisms I use to pull myself out of the belly of grief is music. I spend a lot of time alone, a lot of time alone but with headphones in. Music helps me navigate through this constant movement of emotion inside me. I once told my therapist that my brain feels like the little miscellaneous box beside someone's entertainment stand. The one that discreetly hides all of the cords for your TV and modem, the one with the wires that are all jumbled up and twisted, but you would never know because they are all hidden in a box. That's what my brain feels like. Music helps me untangle the cords. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but it does to me.

I have good taste in music; I always have, it is one of my strong points. I know that music taste is selective, of course, but what I select to listen to is good. Just trust me on this one. There are so many artists that make me feel something. But if I sat down and thought about it, there are probably only about five bands/individuals I have consistently had on rotation for the last fifteen years or so. The OG's. These bands have carried me through most of my adult life, through the grit but also the good.

Dan Mangan is part of that rotation.

My friend messaged me in June and asked if I knew Dan Mangan was coming to Tofino in November. It was the first I had heard of it. I headed directly to the website to find out when tickets went on sale. The day they dropped, I had my computer and phone in front of me. No way was I missing this. I bought two tickets for Friday and two tickets for Saturday. I justified the gluttony of going to both shows by telling myself,

"It's Therapy, you are just paying for your Therapy in advance."

Over the last five months or so, I had thought of the upcoming event more than I should have. It really amped up over this last week though. I had this feeling in my stomach gnawing away at me, this overwhelming sensation that somehow I needed to find a way to tell him how his music has helped me tremendously over my adult life, but mostly how it has helped me survive this last year. I racked my brain on how I could achieve this. I actually found it kind of strange that I felt this so strongly, but looking back, I guess it isn't that weird. My whole blog is centered around trying to articulate my thoughts and put them down on paper for the people I care about to read. In hindsight, this was pretty on track with my love language.

I envisioned how I could meet him after the show. From previous events, I knew that he was pretty engaging and interactive with his fans, so I figured that would be my best bet.

The night before show number one, I did the same old song and dance. I walked down to the water with my headphones in. I sat down in front of the sunset, watching the silvers and blues of the sky and the water dance together. I cracked a ceaser, and I listened to Dan Mangan.

I realized that night that it wasn't going to work.

Even if I did meet him, the timing was all wrong. There would be too many people around. I know myself too well. I knew I would get nervous that other individuals would hear me. It was too sad of a thing to bring up. A real fucking vibe killer, ya know?

So I accepted it. I decided that I would just have to thank him silently in my mind, that, that, would have to be enough. 

The next day, I decided to go for a run. I completely stopped for months; it's something I am just getting back into. I went on Wednesday and Thursday last week, so to try to force it back into being a habit, I pushed myself out the door for a run on Friday as well. I had the first show that night and wanted to clear my head. I was only about ten minutes into my route; part of my run leads me past a Hotel, maybe a thirty-second window it takes to jog past the parking lot. I usually look down at my feet, half to get in the zone and half to not trip over anything, but as I passed it this time, I looked up and over at the cars. The same moment I was doing this, Dan Mangan just happened to be getting out of a vehicle, and wouldn't you know it, he was alone.

I had a very brief moment of uncertainty about what to do. But obviously, I reacted before I thought it through because all of a sudden, I heard my voice say

" Excuse me!'"

Not too loud, just loud enough that he turned around. I ran over, and again emotion took over because, holy moly, did I fucking goooo for it.

"I'm so sorry to bother you, but wow, I can't believe this is happening. I manufested it! Nope, I mean, I manifested it. Sorry, I'm really nervous. I just can't believe I get to tell you this. Your music is so important to me, and man, I've had a terrible year, like a REALLY terrible year. My brother died nine months ago, and then my dog died like ten weeks after that."

I said it in a way that suggested, can you believe that fucking noise? I kept going.

" I just really can't believe I get the opportunity to do this, but you just need to know what a powerful impact your music has had on me. It's gotten me through a lot. I sat on the beach yesterday evening and listened to your music. I came to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be able to tell you this in person, but here we are, and wow, sorry, I'm really nervous."

I literally couldn't stop myself.

"You should also know that there is this one verse in one of your songs that I just feel so hard, and I'm going to get it tattooed on me, but I am going to change some of the lyrics to honour my brother and my dad. Oh, my dad, ya, he also died."

Could you imagine? I didn't care, I told him the lyrics I was switching. I had zero shame about it. I was just really happy that this gnawing feeling in my stomach would most likely go away now.

After I finished my absolute tangent about the tragedy that has plagued me, he thanked me for sharing and asked if he could give me a hug.

Dan Mangan asked if he could give ME a hug.

We had a conversation about the upcoming show that night. He asked if I was going, and I replied.

"Both nights!"

We talked a bit more about music, and then I asked if he could take a picture of us on my phone but if he could actually physically take it because I was shaking so much.

"Ya, let's do it!"

He said.

My lock screen has a photo of Cole and me, so it was nice to be able to show him who he was. He asked a little bit more about what happened. I said it was sudden and unexpected, and then I paused a little bit and said, "Mental health."

He was kind, and he was empathetic, and he had the exact same type of reaction I daydreamed of so many times.

It's scary to meet someone you, for lack of a better word, idolize. What if it hadn't gone that way? What if he was, I don't know, kind of a dick?

But he wasn't.

And now the gnawing in my stomach is gone.

I went to the show that night feeling an immense amount of relief. The hard part was done, the part that, up until six hours ago, I didn't even know was possible. Now, my only job was to hunker down and take away as much as I could from this therapy session.

As most artists usually do, around the middle of the performance, he set us up with why he had written the next song he was about to sing and its significance. It's heavily coded about mental health—actually, it's not coded at all; it's very clear in the lyrics.

 Right before he strummed the first chord, just before he began to play, he leaned into the microphone and said,

"This one's for Cole."

Four words.

Four simple words unraveled the wires in my brain.

Thank god for my friend standing beside me; he immediately knew what was up. He instantaneously extended out his arm to wrap around me as I fell onto his shoulder to cry. When I say cry, I mean fucking cry.

After the show, my friends asked if I wanted to hang back and thank him.

"Nope"

I said as I was already walking out the door.

" That was a PERFECT moment, you don't fuck with a perfect moment."

I ended with the matter of fact.

I know my place; I sure as shit am not going to take more than I am supposed to from the universe—no need to be greedy.

Besides, it couldn't get any better than that, right?

WRONG.

I was VERY wrong. Humour me for a few more minutes, and I'll explain why.

Saturday afternoon, a different friend came over—show number two. We sat on the couch, and I told her the story of the night before. I cried again, and she cried with me. We decided that we should go for dinner. We ended up having a three-course meal with wine pairings. It felt fancy and rich, exactly what I should be doing after what had just happened.

I was starting to have second thoughts about ruining my perfect moment. I told her that the night before had been so intense for me that it felt wrong not to acknowledge it, she said to me.

"Let's go to the show and see what you feel. You will know what to do when the time comes."

It was a good answer, and she was right; I would gauge it and see where this all landed.

The show mainly was seated, but on Friday night, my friends and I stood in the back. I scanned the venue to figure out what the game plan would be twenty-four hours from then. There was a covered pool table at the back left-hand side of the room that a few people were leaning against. I thought to myself,

"Tomorrow, pool table it is."

And as luck would have it, when we walked in on Saturday night, it hadn't been occupied yet. We started the evening by leaning up on the right-hand side of it, sipping our zero percent Coronas because the show was dry. But as the night progressed, we slowly moved our way to a seated position. Hopping up with one leg still planted on the ground, and eventually, I was sitting cross-legged on top of the table, and my friend was doing the same behind me. No one seemed to mind, so we just rolled with it. We were almost sitting like we were on a school bus, my seat right in front of hers, so we both had to kind of pivot our heads one way or another to watch him perform.

The energy around felt a little different than the night before. Everyone felt a little bit more at ease. I started to get lost in the music.

Around the same time as Friday night, maybe about the halfway mark. Dan Mangan began to "set the stage" for what he was about to play. He started by saying something along the lines of,

"This next song is actually a demo that didn't even end up making it on a record."

The wheels in my head began to turn. He followed with,

" I haven't played it in so long that I had actually looked up the lyrics again today to relearn them."

I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, I spun my upper body around to my friend and said.

" He's about to play Kerouac spelled wrong."

As the last syllable left my mouth, I turned back towards the stage just as he finished with.

" This song is called Kerouac spelled wrong, and it goes out to Jolene."

I will say this, my friends show the fuck up. My girlfriend had already wrapped her arms around me from behind. She rubbed my back as I cried, and again, she cried with me. I don't have accurate words to explain what that moment in time meant to me, but I remember that I did cock my head to the left and whisper in my friend's ear,

"Am I dead?" 

I know that sounds like I said it sarcastically, but I assure you I didn't.

Now, I am by no means good at math. But even I knew that the odds of what was about to happen were pretty fucking high. This meant that I had about sixty seconds, give or take, to process that he was about to play the lyrics I told him I was going to get tattooed on me. Not the complete lyrics he wrote for the original song. But the modified ones I had shared the day before.

I put my elbows on my knees, and my head down in my hands, my palms upright covering my eyes, trying and failing miserably to stop my tears, and I waited, I waited until that last verse in the song. I took a breath, and then I listened to Dan Mangan sing out into the crowd,

"The old Nickle mine, Cole's old photograph, this wont hurt a bit, this wont hurt a bit."

And for those few precious seconds, the cords that unraveled in my brain the night before actually put themself into a nice clean line. Ready to be put away.

After that happened and a few more songs later, I signaled to my friend that I needed to step outside for a second. She followed suit. We smoked a cigarette, and I cried again. She said to me,

" I know you were gauging this and how you would feel by the end of the night, but I think this needs to be acknowledged."

I laughed as I exhaled my cigarette with tears streaming down my cheeks and said.

"Clearly."

So I did just that. I hung around until after the show. Until almost everyone was gone. Until I could get just one more minute of his time. And when I did, I said, maybe not exactly, but pretty damn close to,

" Thank you so much man. Hearing my brother's voice said out loud on stage these past two nights has been fucking special. I didn't think anything could get better than Friday night, but then you did what you did tonight. That small act of kindness, that service that you gave me..I'll carry that fucking always."

And I will.

Oh, by the way, I should clarify what the original last verse of Kerouac spelled wrong is. It goes.

" The old paper mill, Mom's old photograph, this won't hurt a bit, this won't hurt a bit."

The more you know.

What I said at the beginning of this story is true. I have hardly been writing this year. But whatever the fuck the last forty-eight hours have been has sparked a fire in my belly. It made me feel like, going forward in life, hopeful moments can still exist. Those pinch me kind of moments. And that, maybe, just maybe, fire and grief can co-exist.

Because, I am not ready for my film to fade out.

( I borrowed that last line. I don't know how copyright works. Please don't sue me.)

                                                                                                             J.W.