A Reunion

Is scheduled for the first week of July in Providence with some of the people I love most in this world. Seriously, these are people who let me endure anything – just knowing they’re alive and well helps me keep my chin up. They include Gabriel and CaptainC (married pair), Skellum (a real word), and FunkyMike. We were all in undergrad together – it was a pretty conservative institution overall, so the oddballs tended to bond together into a smaller sub-school. Actually, by the time we were Seniors, the tenor of the campus had changed (I was no longer getting death-threats and having beer bottles thrown at me because I had purple hair and leftist politics.)

We were all in a kind of loose band, both tribal and musical – the musical arm was called Ants in the Cellar. For those of you who know the Ants, well, you’d know who I am anyway, for those that don’t, I doubt you’d be able to find any record of us. Actually, one of the flawed poems below (written in ’96) touches on the Ants – in particular, it’s addressed to the much missed Dennis Sampson, who out of love and respect, gets his full and real name on the blog. Dennis fought a long battle against mental illness and depression which he ultimately lost in ’98. Despite the stress this placed on him, he was a genuinely sweet human being, someone who felt the world intensely, who had an immense sympathetic range. Dennis had a knack for transforming my poetry into songs (very very different things, I assure you) and we worked together on over 20 of ‘em, including tweaking much of the early Ants material. Our specific bond was very important to me – it made me feel connected to the greater tradition of music and audience, not just like some obscure scribbler. I've worked with other musicians since then, but we we put our heads together and worked, Dennis was always right with me, always made the songs "true" to the poems - which is no easy task.

The circumstances of Dennis’s death were tragic – a series of near misses which lead to his suicide, and I still feel some guilt about my small part in them. I had moved back to Providence from New York and was working on fixing up my new apartment (and a failing relationship). The plan was to call Dennis and FunkyMike to have them over the new digs. I called Dennis a day too late. I think it’s the second biggest regret of my life – that I didn’t put the paintbrush down, call Dennis earlier and say, “Hey, grab your guitar and a bottle of wine and come over; I’m back in town, the new place is a mess, but I miss you brother.” It took me a long while to get over what happened and it still creeps me out – my leaving 3 messages on his answering machine with his corpse in the same room. Dennis apparently heard about my being back before he killed himself, and that’s particularly hard to take. I know he thought I wasn’t going to call, that I had abandoned him, and I know he died with that small piece of thought adding to his burden. Perhaps I couldn’t have done anything for him, but I still feel as though I let him down, as though I let selfish concerns and a sense of needing to have my material shit "squared away" take precidence over simply calling a friend, which is also hard to take.

The surviving Ants are going to do some recording of Dennis’s songs, cut a record, and give any proceeds to charity. Gabriel and FunkyMike have apparently formed a five piece out at the college where Gabriel teaches and have taken the first steps towards making this happen. Gabriel says they've played out twice thus far and people have been very responsive to the music (which is hard to pigeon-hole - we had so many influences and some really unique songs.)

Comments

[FunkyMike]

Hi Scoplaw,

What up dude. I just did a random Ants search and I came across these great poems/memoirs. Small world. How's school? Joel was in town recently and we jammed. We have Rob C (Dennis's friend) on bass now.

Keepin' it in the fam,

FM

[Scoplaw]

Miguel!

Good to hear from you man - shoot me an e-mail, would ya?

Scoplaw