While it’s okay to talk about trivial matters—food, beer, and what restaurants we like; songs and bands; maybe why Tom Brady is better than Ben Roethlisberger—some argue, we mustn’t discuss the weightier issues confronting us—like death and the attendant fall-out from grief and loss.
There was a tacit understanding when I was coming up that certain topics were notably off-limits in mixed company—the old adage, always refrain from “politics and religion.”
Apparently that’s not the case any longer. Political thoughts are offered with little regard to how well-framed and supported they are by logic or fact. Then, there is no shortage of those ready to offer (inflict?) prayers on your behalf (even if they never seem to be “answered”). So, the old taboos no longer apply—unless it’s talking about death and the subsequent way it affects the lives of those left behind. At least that’s how it seems to me, more than a year out from the event that changed the lives of Mary and me.
A few weeks ago, I heard a track on Jeffrey Davison’s Saturday morning “Shrunken Planet” program on WFMU. It was by a band listed on the playlist as Bipolar Explorer. Something about the song, “Lost Life,” was evocative and then Davison mentioned how the album where he pulled the cut from, was a reflection on the death of their singer, Summer Serafin.
The band has the requisite page on Bandcamp and they’re on Wikipedia. I found additional information about them and Summer. She was a beautiful and talented actress who died all-too-young. Her band mate and love of her life, Michael, has soldiered on, making music that recognizes how grief and loss leaves those who loved the person who is gone, forever affected (and afflicted). It’s about death and what follows for those left behind, yet, I don’t find the music of Bipolar Explorer morbid, or in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I ordered “Sometimes in Dreams,” and it is a haunting and profound exploration of lost love in musical form.