Recently, to celebrate my dad’s birthday, I decided to fly myself and my dad to Vegas to meet my sister so we could all treat ourselves to a Herbie Hancock concert. More than 20 years ago while living in Korea, I held communion with Herbie Hancock at a concert he performed and during which I had nothing short of a spiritual experience which ended in the distinct pleasure of actually meeting the Head Hunter himself. I was thrilled to be seeing him again. You can read about my earlier concert here but first read this …
One of my all-time favorite Herbie Hancock albums is Gershwin’s World. Do yourself a favor and sprint to your closest turntable, CD, cassette tape, or 8-track player—or if you must, spotify tab—and feast your ears on this suite of reimagined Gershwin tunes. He blends classical style with jazz and funk and features an all-star cast of notable musicians as well as a full orchestra.
My favorite is his version of Summertime featuring none other than … (wait for it) Joni Mitchell and … (wait for it some more) Stevie Wonder. I know. Anymore, it’s hard for me to hear Summertime and not think of this version of the tune.
So to see Herbie again and even better that my sister and I could take my dad was tops. I mean as a kid, he took me to both jazz and classical concerts on the regular and is largely responsible for my love of music and in particular jazz music.
I must admit, in past years it has been all too easy to default to The Red Iguana, my Dad's favorite Mexican restaurant, every time a gift-giving situation arises. Even if it is singularly the greatest Mexican restaurant in the entire world, getting the same predictable gift cert year after year is the gifting equivalent of eating yesterday’s tortillas. So as I headed to Vegas I was puffed with pride that I wasn't phoning in the same old tired gift for his birthday this year.
But the night before my Vegas trip, I got some terrible news. I learned that Heather, a dear friend and regular yoga student of over 15 years, had tragically suffered a massive brain aneurysm and collapsed into a coma despite only being in her late 40s or early 50s. Young. This terrible news darkened my heart, casting a cloud over my upcoming trip.
There was no hope of recovery. A life-long giver, it’s no surprise that she was an organ donor so her family decided to keep on life support for a day or so until they could organize the harvesting of her organs.
The news of my friend suddenly bowing out of this world was a gut punch. I just kept reading and re-read the email. I was shocked, sad, and angry. All I could do was swear.
The next day, my dad and I met at the airport. Especially on short flights, I like to “Keep Calm and Carry-On” so I was packing light with only a backpack. My dad was traveling lighter. Or so I thought …. He showed up to the airport with only a small laptop case that looked like it could have held all of maybe one paperback and a mini tube of toothpaste. Where was all of his stuff? I learned soon enough. As we were going through security he started pulling mountains of stuff out of his pockets. It was like Mary Poppins pulling lamps and tea pots out of her magic satchel. He pulled out his big ole’ fatty wallet ala George Costanza, cough drops, tissues, a comb, and change—like coins in case you want to, I don’t even know, how do you even use change any more? Maybe he thinks payphones still exist or something. He must have filled up four tote bins at the TSA security checkpoint. I’m surprised that the TSA didn’t pull him aside, worried that he had enough metal in his pocket to make a dirty bomb or something.
Even though I was packing light, the news of my friend’s condition felt like I was carrying the world on my shoulders and a stone in my heart.
As we were landing in Las Vegas, the flight attendant who had been cracking jokes the entire flight (maybe his other job was a comedian on the strip) thanked us for flying with their airline and then with a sly grin on his face informed us all that we could all collect our “physical and emotional baggage” on carrossel 7.
I smiled as the most vivid image bloomed in my mind. I imagined scores of anxious travelers crammed around a luggage carousel, all craning their necks for a view of the baggage portal as it spat out the dead weight of people’s heavy emotional baggage, rolling down the ramp and lolling languidly onto the moving beltway like misshapen Pez being dispensed by an airplane-sized dispenser. Each bag a different shape, weight, color and size. Some bags were bright red and looked angry. Others were blue and looked misshapen, sunken, and depressed. Others, steely, guarded, shiny, metallic. Invariably someone's bag would be the physical embodiment of their mother rolling down the luggage return. In my mini mental melodrama, each traveler looked weary and tired yet jockeyed for a strategic spot around the moving carousel so that the instant they saw their all-too-familiar baggage—complete with personalized luggage tag and familiar travel stickers, zippers straining from all those stuffed emotions—the traveler could elbow their way in and heft it off the carousel to lug it behind them as they strode off into the world.
Not me.
Defying an almost obscene proclivity to follow the rules, I decided to go rogue. I simply wouldn’t pick up my emotional baggage. I was going to abandon it, a large, rarely-used but always heavy heart-shaped bag the color and weight of stone, to circle the luggage carousel at the airport forever. I simply would not claim my emotional baggage.
Let it turn.
So, as we disembarked from the plane, many passengers heading toward baggage claim, my dad and I walked straight out of the airport to the passenger pick-up to meet my sister.
As Heather lay in the hospital, standing in line to step into the great beyond, at that moment I chose to honor her by focusing on the many bright memories of her life, the things I love about her. I chose to leave the inevitable grieving for later.
After abandoning the weight of the loss of Heather on the imaginary emotional baggage carousel, my backpack felt lighter on my shoulder. I felt warmer carrying the light and memories of my friend and leaving the grief and heartache behind.
Now, at the risk of being heavy-handed, I’d be thick if I didn’t say this: I’ve learned the hard way that grief is nothing to pretend away or put in a closet. Grief must be honored and can even be appreciated as a beautiful testament of the love of those who have passed. It reminds us that we are human and as such we are all connected to each other in this complex family. (By the way, here’s a link to my audio recording of Yoga Nidra for Grief if you or someone you know could use it.)
My sister met us at the passenger pickup and as we drove away, it had been a while since I’d been in Vegas and I was soon reminded very acutely how Las Vegas is a great place—a weird place but a great place.
It was a warm April morning and surprisingly fresh for being in the desert. But as we drove away in my sister’s car, I couldn’t help but notice the litany of billboards all featuring champion personal injury lawyers, preening and flexing their legal muscles on the billboards lining the freeway. I mean how dangerous is it to live in Las Vegas, anyway?! Seeing these billboards felt cheap and gross, like a parade of the worst parts of humanity.
At our hotel, my dad wanted to rest for a bit before the concert. While I unpacked, my dad turned on the TV and started flipping through channels, stopping on “the news” which chose to show some horror story about a guy who liked to torture animals. They announced that “any sensitive viewers should be aware.” It should have also said that if you’re not sensitive to images of animals being tortured you need an immediate psychiatric evaluation. So refusing to subject myself to that form of abuse I decided to go out for a walk. I wanted to be around people. We’d chosen a hotel positioned decidedly off the strip so that it might be a little quieter. Outside of the hotel, I pointed myself toward the heart of Vegas and started walking.
As I was walking, it was hard to get the idea of tortured animals out of my head. What has become of the human race? Gah! Then I glanced up and saw yet ANOTHER personal injury lawyer billboard, one that I had to read over and over again to make sure that I wasn’t inventing things. It said …
You can’t make this up!
And I mean some people I know and care about sport a good comb over, no judgment, but this guy makes it into a high art, he’s like Baroque roco-combover.
First, it’s torturing animals now it’s searching for dead bodies at the bottom of Lake Mead? Damn.
A 30-minute walk helped to clear my head and landed me right in the heart of the Vegas strip and soon enough I found myself swimming in currents of people. Sometimes I’m averse to being in large crowds like this but somehow in this moment it felt comforting. I kept looking around at all the people. Normal people. Glad that none of them were dead at the bottom of Lake Mead.
Avoiding cassinos, I found a nice rooftop restaurant and ordered a salad and a beer. I do understand the paradox of that meal choice. As I sat eating bites of my chicken caesar, sipping my IPA, I just looked around at all the people. It was a big busy restaurant and there were a ton of servers, all of them busy, cheerfully bopping around serving people. It wasn’t lost on me: people serving people. I took my time to eat, absorbing the feeling of people as I contemplated what it meant to not be on life support or dead at the bottom of lake mead with people who may or may not be injuring themselves trying to search for my dead body. I lingered not wanting to go back to the hotel room and subjecting myself to more shitty news.
Eventually I did arrive back at the hotel so I could iron my shirt to look sharp for Herbie. You know, in case I got to go backstage again and meet him again like I did in Korea. Unlikely but hey, it happened once.
When we got to the venue and sat in our seats, there were big screens with “Happy Birthday, Herbie!” all over the place. He was turning 84 that day and performing on his birthday. When he danced out onto the stage, looking so chipper, happy, and vibrant he was met with tons of “Happy Birthday!”s from the audience. He grabbed a mic and responded with, “You know what? I already got my birthday wish: I woke up this morning!” Round of applause. I thought about Heather who did not wake up this morning and would not the next and what a gift it was for me to not only wake up that day but to have the distinct pleasure of being in a large concert hall listening to Herbie Hancock, this legend of music.
At one point in the concert, the rest of the band left the stage, leaving Herbie by himself at one of his many keyboards. He said, “You know, there was this emerging technology that was starting to become popular back in the 70s and 80s. The Vocoder. You sing into a microphone and your voice is processed through the instrument that you’re playing. Back then, the technology wasn’t good enough for it to really work but it works much better now.” Then he starts to speak into his microphone and play on his keyboard, his voice took on a futuristic, kinda robot-like voice but with a bunch of harmonics, like a choir of robots were singing together in the voicings of Herbie’s chords he was playing on the keys.
He started to play and because the sound was dependent upon him speaking at the same time, he said bashfully, “I feel I have to say something important.”
But then he did say something important.
He said, “You know, I learned something during Covid. As I saw millions of people getting sick and hundreds of thousands of people dying, it made me realize more than ever the truth that as humans we are one big family. And like all families, we don’t always get along [laughs] but at the bottom of it all there’s always love.”
“It started me thinking about how we gotta learn to take care of each other, to help each other. And I started thinking about our kids and about how we are teaching them to help each other.”
“You know, sooner or later AI will rule everything anyway [more laughs]. It’s here. It’s our child. You know, it grows based on how we teach it. How and what are we teaching it? Are we teaching it to help us and to help us help each other?”
Then, as he’s speaking into the Vocoder, he simply repeats one phrase over and over as he modulates the chords through his keyboard, “Help us. Help us. Help us ….”
Without changing the words, the meaning began taking on many changes in my heart and mind.
At first I heard a prayer for help, “Help us. Help us.”
Then, my mind inserted a silent and simple preposition, “Help us [to] help us.”
Then, I heard it as if us humans were speaking to AI to “Help us [learn to] help us.”
Then, it was as if AI was speaking to humans, pleading to learn how to help humanity. It was the voice of the Future asking how to proceed forward.
During this reverie, someone from the audience yelled yet another, “Happy birthday!” now the equivalent of yelling “Freebird!” and any concert, to which Herbie smiled and said, “Happy birthday to all of us!”
He was welcoming us into a rebirth, into another day, into another age.
All I could think about was people coming together—the people on the strip, people in the concert hall, people in the world. I was struck with the truth that as we all sat there during the concert—all of us with different histories, and different stories—in that moment, we all shared a heartbeat. We shared a now.
It was almost overwhelming to think of all the harmony that Herbie has crafted throughout the world and all over the world through the power of his music. I was immensely moved by this thought and tears flowed down my cheeks.
In my blubbering, I sniffed a little and without missing a beat, my dad pulled out some tissues from his Mary Poppins pockets and handed them to me. As I pulled a tissue from the little plastic pocket, I noticed with a morbid curiosity that the tissues were from the Mcdougal Mortuary. I guess when you reach a certain age, you’ve been to so many funerals you probably stockpile these things.
The concert ended and with smiles on our faces, my sister headed home and my dad and I headed back to our hotel. I wanted to write down what I heard in Herbie’s message and so opened up my laptop to make some notes. Within seconds of opening my laptop I learned to my deep horror that Ben, ANOTHER friend, yoga student, and fellow musician had died unexpectedly. He was young. The announcement didn’t explain how he’d died but just that his funeral would take place at—get this—Mcdougal Mortuary. I can’t make this stuff up.
Such complex emotions, right?!
I’m floating and in love with the world thanks to this beautiful and life-affirming concert I just witnessed yet people I care about are passing away right at left, animals are being tortured and people are dying at Lake Mead and others are getting injured while looking for them. Damn.
We woke up and went straight to the airport to fly home. Sen and Elio picked me up from the airport. Heather’s family were going to take her off life support in the next hour or so. If I wanted to say goodbye, I had to go then. So, I dropped off Sen, Elio, and my luggage at home, and before heading out to go to the hospital and say goodbye to Heather, I remembered that she always requested for me to play the clarinet in yoga class so I grabbed it and headed out.
At the hospital, I met with a few other heart-broken friends outside of her room. Some family members were saying their goodbyes inside her room and we wanted to give them space.
Eventually, we were invited in and I went to her bed, held her hand—still very warm—and though she was in a coma, I told her how much I loved her and appreciated her and how each time our class practices yoga and meditation we will be connecting to the part of all of us that never dies. I told her how I knew how much she loves the clarinet and that I brought it to play for her.
Without thinking much about it, I started playing Summertime. I dunno, it just felt right to play. It’s just what came to my mind. After, one of the nurses popped his head in and said, “Did I hear Gershwin?”
They were about to take her off life support and I couldn’t bear to be there when they did so I gave her hand one last squeeze and left.
As I left the hospital room and walked down the most aggressively lit hospital hallway in America, the words of Joni Mitchell in Herbie's "Summertime" sang through my head 'One of these mornings you're going to rise up singing, spread your wings and take to the sky ….” I wasn’t thinking of those lyrics when I chose that song but now that they were resonating in my head, it nearly stopped me in my tracks.
Then I thought about Ben. And I remembered that he had a very peculiar job: he’d get calls at all hours to come collect and transport organs harvested from organ donors all over the state and take them to where they were needed. I imagined Ben getting one last call, that someone was being taken off life support and that he needed to come and collect—kidneys, a liver, maybe a heart—but upon arrival he realized that something was different about this call. He wasn’t there to take organs but rather to take a hand. And as he held Heather’s hand together they would boldly and calmly walk over the bridge of light and into the great beyond, toward home.
People helping people.
May we all celebrate every new day we get to live on this beautiful and complicated earth. And like Ram Das says, may we all help each other by taking each other by the hand as we walk each other home.
Help us [to] help us.
Namaste,
