“I’m scratching at the surface now and I am trying hard to work it out.”
I really am. The score is uneven. This is not fair.
***
Busking is hard. I don’t think most people understand just how hard it is to stand on the street with just your guitar and your voice and belt out your truth. It’s naked in a way that cannot be explained, only experienced. Glen Hansard started busking at 13 years old. At thirteen he said “rock and roll is here to stay, come inside well it’s ok.” Yeah, that’s an obscure lyric to most but he would’ve gotten it.
I tried busking as a teen, first going in to Harvard Square when I was 17 and skipping my algebra and philosophy classes at college. I’d sit in the pit at the top of the Red Line entrance and try hard to be somebody better than I was.
There were always other strummers singing non-stop Beatles all day and John Lennon’s Imagine. “Imagine all the people, living life in peace?” That taught me more than any philosophy course could. John Lennon’s death was still fresh and painful to folks even though it happened ten years earlier. I felt the loss but I was also detached from it, he died when I was 9 years old.
***
The Commitments came out around the time I was first heading into Harvard Square. It was a fun movie about Dublin soul. Bono would later have a guitar that said “The Goal is Soul” and I think he stole the idea from this movie. Glen was the guitar player in the movie and played a scrawny red-haired dude but what was strange was that it looked like he was actually playing the guitar. It wasn’t some fake pantomime with a telecaster. It was a worn thinline with its black paint already wearing through. It didn’t even look like a prop; he played it like it was his own.
At the end of the movie Glen’s character, Outspan Foster, can be seen back busking on Grafton Street.
Art imitating life?
***
My generation has had its fair share of musical heroes and plenty that have burned out way to soon. Kurt Cobain’s passing was one of the biggest and it was both tragic and sadly almost predictable. We watched someone whose pain became mass marketing. What does that do to a person? Chuck Klosterman once wrote that Kurt's fans didn't just love his music. They wanted him to save them. Is it worse to claim you're the savior, or to have millions of people tell you that you are? Either way, it'll fuck with your head.
***
“Take this sinking boat and point it home.”
We're broken enough to know that no one is coming to save us. We have to save each other. We were taught to believe in fairness and doing what’s right will always win only to have that thrown back in our faces time and time again.
“Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice.”
But what if we could try to live up to these ideals. We can still have hope. Hope can’t die in a wall street crash or a real estate bubble. And we can’t let it die on a motorcycle in Dublin. We can lift each other up.
Glen did that. He lifted up. Always. The stories of him always reaching down to help lift someone else up are streaming in and are seemingly endless now.
Mine? I gave him a sticker that I knew he would get. “This Machine Shares Love.” My take on the Woody Guthrie “This Machine Kills Fascists.” I knew he’d get it because it is his ethos too. When I told him that I had busked on his street. HIS Grafton Street. He just looked at me and said “My man.” And gave me a big hug.
It was a hug that lifted up. He saw me, I felt seen.
Was he a perfect human? Feck no. Was he working towards it? Always.
I understand why people were lost when Lennon was shot. It made no sense. Why kill someone who makes art?
Glen’s makes even less sense. A motorcycle? Seriously? A fucking motorcycle?
***
For years his touring schedule was always the opposite of mine. I’d be in Europe when he was in California and vice versa. I was complaining about our opposite tour schedules to a guy named Jimmy that I was on the road with in Germany sometime in 2015 or so. He had known Glen since his early days with the Frames and Glen would crash at his place in New York City. After Once became a Broadway hit, they would still hang out in the city from time to time. Jimmy told me about Glen dumpster diving to get a jacket out of the trash and saying to him, “You got money now, you don’t have to get your clothes out of a dumpster.” And Glen responding “but it’s still a good jacket.”
There’s no big takeaway from that story but it somehow underscores the idea that he never left the street.
***
“Time will be the healer once again.”
I’ve toured solo across Europe and the United States. I’ve spent hundreds of miles where the only voice in my car was Glen’s. I’ve cried alone singing along through New York and the Carolinas and Texas and Colorado and Germany and Belgium when the stresses of being a musician by myself out in the world and trying to share love and positivity just beat you down. I never knew Glen’s specific struggles but somehow, he knew mine.
“This gift will last forever
This gift will never let you down
Some things are made from better stuff
This gift is waiting to be found.”
I’m not a religious man but I absolutely believe in the power of song. Song can lift us all up to our better angels. To see and feel the struggles of those around us and want to help. The issue may be bigger than me - but maybe I can help.
Glen started the Christmas Busk over a decade ago as a way of helping the un-housed in Dublin through Simon Communities of Ireland. The busk grew to be bigger than him.
I’ve been trying to organize one of those in my city for a few years now. The red-tape and unfriendliness towards busking in the U.S. have caused some challenges but strangely, the city got back to me yesterday about making a Christmas Busk for un-housed charity and the local foodbank happen here in my hometown.
Maybe that’s how this goes on.
***
Glen’s funeral will be next week and broadcast on RTÉ News and in lieu of flowers or gifts, the family has asked that donations be made to Simon Community & Ukrainian Action. Even in death he’s still trying to help and lift up.
This is why his death hurts so fucking much. He was one of us. He was our brother. He was still living the promise of being a real decent human being and he still fucking dies on a motorcycle by himself in the middle of the night. And goldbrickers who have only taken and never given get to die comfortably of old age with no consequences. And... and! FUCKING AND.
***
I have Joe Strummer’s quote “The Future is Unwritten” and Glen’s “Don’t Give Up” from his song This Gift both tattooed on my arm. I’ve listened to This Gift at least once a day for maybe a decade. It is a constant reminder to be grateful of what it is I do.
And I am.
Somedays the reminder to not give up that comes at the end is what pulls me through. Now it’s also a tribute to Glen that I carry with me.
“If you long enough
And you don't give up
If you're strong enough
And you don't give up.”
The two tattoos almost seem to be in conversation now. The future is unwritten, don’t give up. Strummer to Hansard.
***
If Glen's life meant something to you, please consider supporting the causes his family asked us to remember.
Ní bheidh a leithid arís ann!
There will never be their like again!
Dublin Simon https://www.dubsimon.ie/donate
Ukrainian Action Ireland - https://www.ukrainianaction.ie/donate
Ukrainian Action UK - https://donate.justgiving.com/.../ukraini.../donation-amount
Ukrainian Action (Rest of the World) - https://www.ukrainianaction.com/donate