I previously posted a photo of a painting in oil and paper on canvas by John O’Donoghue, Piano Takes Centre Stage.
This is one of the paintings I found a week ago as I was writing a chapter featuring my Musician. The scene I created reminded me of a time long ago. I’d been living back in an area near my (two) hometowns after graduating from college. When I was driving through one of those towns, I saw a sign on a local bar announcing that my old friend Riley would be playing there.
We’d lost touch; I heard and knew things about his life, but I generally followed the adage let sleeping dogs lie. Some friendships are meant for a place and time, and then they fade away. I went home and wrote a poem of eight verses that summed up those earlier years of friendship.
A few lines, near the end:
I’d believed your music would always last
Then for a time thought you’d left it behind
But I knew I’d given up too fast
When I saw your name on the roadside sign
© Becky Cochrane, 1979
The full poem was sad, wistful, and now rereading it, I see it conveys truths I’d forgotten of how people other than us damaged the friendship. Maybe we’d let that happen because we thought it was time to put away childish things.
I couldn’t stop thinking of him. It wasn’t a romance thing. We were both married. I wondered to Lynne if I should go see him play. She and a friend of hers offered to go with me. So we did.
I don’t remember if he was playing piano when we got there, or guitar. But it was surely when he was playing guitar that he glanced out at the tables and… I would wish everyone in life could just once see someone look out with shock, with disbelief, that turns to wonder, and then to utter joy at the sight of you.
It was the resurrection of a friendship that wouldn’t stop until the day he did, on this date, January 16, 2008. There are a million stories; some I’ve told here, some I never will. But for a brief moment, in my novel, I got to bring my amazing friend to life again using a character who is unlike him in almost every way except talent.
Riley will always be alive in my heart and my art. These are the last four lines of that old poem.
Maybe nothing ever really ends —
Life is filled with twists, with bends —
Life is lovely when it sends —
Guitars, pianos, drums, and friends —
© Becky Cochrane, 1979
You were lucky to have him, he was lucky to have you
Lucky describes the summer day he showed up among a random gathering of friends. It was a rollercoaster of a friendship that along with laughter, creativity, and endless conversation required patience, forgiveness, and grace through the decades–from both of us. He could be careless. I could be cruel. There are times we were only spectators of each other’s lives; other times we lost the plot completely. Still, we endured and loved and learned, and it was real.
It sounds like it was like parts of that “loving you’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it” song
All just part of being human.
Had to look up the song because I didn’t know it.
Famously talented, or what should be an album cover.
I’m really crazy about his paintings! <3