goodbye to glen hansard

One of my favorite musicians, Glen Hansard, died this morning in a motorcycle crash. He was in Dublin, the city that made him, the city he busked in as a kid, the city he never really left even after the Oscar win, even after Broadway.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually cried for a celebrity death before. But today, writing this while listening to his masterpiece Leave, tears are just pouring out of me. The song moves in two distinct gears: one like he’s waiting, holding his breath. The other lifts off, exiting the atmosphere. It’s impossible not to cry when you hear it.

Glen’s music altered my DNA. I spent countless hours with my guitar trying to learn every song of his I could. I could never capture the raw emotion and ache he put into every chord and lyric. Nobody could. He was singular. And his songwriting was masterful.

I became aware of him, like many of us did, in 2007 with his movie Once. My long-time situationship showed it to me. He swore it was the only thing that could make an entire lacrosse team sob together without hesitation. I was intrigued. So we pulled down his projection screen, turned up the subwoofers, and let the movie wash over us.

I've never been so drawn to a musician that fast in my life. That summer I reblistered my fingers, building the calluses I needed to play every song on the Once album, on my shitty Yamaha guitar, wailing through the chords and the lyrics alone in my room, because this man, this entity, had finally put into music feelings I’d never properly accessed on my own.

There was a song of his for every emotion I've ever had, every significant moment of my life. I didn't stop at that one album. I went through everything — the Frames, his solo records, the Swell Season, all of it. There wasn’t a single song I didn’t connect to. Each one was and is so special and different.

Say It to Me Now is urgency and desperation and sounds like it's running out of time as it plays. Winning Streak is tenderness, almost parental in feel, comfort offered rather than comfort sought. Falling Slowly, arguably his most famous song, is hope arriving cautiously after exhaustion. Maybe Not Tonight is knowing exactly what you should do but needing just one more night before you have to do it. Trying to Pull Myself Away is driven and insistent yet restless and circular, about someone who has already decided to leave but can't get their feet to follow.

I felt every note, lyrics, chord of his in my bones. I never got tired of any of it. But there were whole seasons of my life where I physically couldn't listen to his music, because I didn't have the emotional fortitude to feel what I knew it would bring up. That's how much his music could move a person

A good song burrows under your skin and makes a home. Years later it's still there, waiting, and it comes back the second you hear the first few notes, exactly as strong as it was the first time. Most things fade. Songs don't. They sit in you, permanently, ready to be felt again.

It’s the greatest gift an artist can give us. They hand you a piece of themselves that you get to keep forever, that becomes a piece of you too. And because of that, they can never die. Glen Hansard is gone, but he's not gone from my hands when I pick up a guitar, and he's not gone from my chest when one of his songs comes on. He's alive in every person who ever heard his music, learned his chords, blistered their fingers for him, screamed his lyrics alone in their room.

Good music keeps the artist alive long after they aren't anymore. Glen Hansard is going to outlive his own death, because the rest of us are going to keep carrying him around.

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