Glen Hansard inspired us all to make art

The news hit hard.

Glen Hansard, the Irish troubadour and voice for the broken and broken hearted died in a motorcycle accident on July 29 in Dublin.

He was 56.

He left behind a wife, a 3-year-old son and five million broken hearts.

Ireland is in mourning, from Dublin to Donegal, from Sligo to Skibbereen and every town in between.

The day the news broke, I wept watching him star and sing in Once, the movie that took 19 days and a lifetime of sorrow to shoot. What a gentle, tender voice, yet so powerful. Those words, “Take this sinking boat and point it home…” felt like a eulogy of sorts.

His career started when he was living in the projects near Dublin in Ballymun, 45 kids to a classroom, struggling in school that had low expectations for kids like him. One teacher saw the light in his soul and fed the flames.

Teacher Frankie Burns told him, "Leave school today, go home, get your guitar... go into town, and start playing music now."

Glen never stopped.

He was 14 when he started as a street busker on Grafton Street in Dublin. He ended up the leading the influential Irish rock band The Frames. He gained world wide fame when he and Markéta Irglová won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008 for “Falling Slowly” from the low-budget hit movie Once.

Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech:

“Thanks! Go raibh míle, míle, maith agat. This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot it on two Handycams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we'd ever come into a room like this and be in front of you people. It's been an amazing thing. And thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy. Thanks to all the people who've helped us. They know who they are, we don't need to say them. This is amazing. Make art! Make art! Thanks.”

Make art! Make art! Please do.

His life was a work of art built on a pillar of empathy and love for every talented busker with an open guitar case, like the musicians above that I met in Galway.

Glen organized Christmas Eve busking events. He made you want to be a better person. Not a richer one. Not a famous one. A more loving person. A kinder human.

This tribute by U2 frontman Bono captured his soul and our loss:

“Sometimes I would wonder if Glen Hansard really existed…Seriously, he was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly…in fact, very present this presence…

A smiling rascal if you needed him to be… this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun… no airs, plenty of graces...

Of course, Glen was the shining star of the Christmas Eve busk… sometimes the only one reminding the rest of us that Christmas began with a refugee born in a manger, which is hardly a step from living on the street.

To be utterly yourself by being more interested in others - a clue for any of us trying out different persons. He really was who you thought he was. He could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK…and more than that, he worked very hard so that less people had to live on the streets in the first place.

When the crowds got bigger and for safety’s sake Glen had to agree to move the busk to a stage kindly provided outside The Gaiety Theatre, he would say ‘we’ll give it our best but it’s not really a busk if we’re not on the street!’…because that’s who he was- a performer at eye level in any situation. The stage was a separation he wouldn’t recognize. Of all the grand and gigantic venues he and The Frames played, you sensed the street was his most favoured place to perform. And street people, his favorite audience.

Voice of the streets. A choir of angels in one man. The rest of us blessed to stand there beside our very own and very earthed Angel Gabriel…All of us welcome in his choir, whatever shape or form.

…and I’m telling myself this morning that if he never existed, then he can never cease to exist. For me, he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning in an open guitar case.

May you rest in the peace you gave to so many.” - Bono