Those old sad songs

It's my day for sad old songs.

The laptop they gave me in October has a great CD burner in it. I moved some of my MP3s over to it and burned a disk (just picked up 50 blanks for $16); I'm going to see if they'll work in my car. It's been surprisingly stubborn about playing burned disks. Some work, some don't.

Anyway, I'm reviewing the disk. The song that's playing now is Feels Like Heaven by Fiction Factory. It's from the late 80s, but it really escaped my notice till I was in Curry's art supply store one day in summer 2003 with my buddy Roc. I found a copy of it and I can remember testing Camtasia software by filming an icon of Invader Zim's dog-suited robot Gir dancing while I played the song. I sent it to Jody to amuse him. That was during the beautiful renaissance in which everyone, especially Jody, believed he'd beaten the cancer and come through the other side. There were still months of good times ahead before that awful day he told me he was feeling the pain again.

So many of these songs have become about Jody, and the strange but beautiful, multi-layered relationship we shared all those years. I've written about that in this journal time and again, and though I'm aware of it,I make no apologies for it. It still makes me desperately sad to remember I've lost him, that his cleverness, kindness, humour, and uncomplicated, unconditional brotherly love exist only inside me, standing like the sole remaining support of an elegant bridge, tumbled into the water with the support on the far shore gone. You know, it still hurts. But oddly enough, deep down, my greatest fear is that someday it might not. What an utter betrayal that would be... of myself, of Jody. I would be a whole other person if that happened, and the person I am now would be dead too, because my love for Jody and our friendship is a defining characteristic of who I am. I wouldn't be the person I am now without him, those ten years. And dozens of other people could make that same claim.

O simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting older and I need something to rely on...

So I end on a happier note... Someday, Someway by Robert Gordon.