I'm An Organ, You're An Organ

Unexpected endings

It all used to be so easy. Well, no that isn’t true - it was never all easy. There was acne, and braces, and UTIs and cold and flu, exarcebated by smoking and other people smoking, and alcohol and too much sex. There was loud music that made our ears ring for days, and bad food and UV rays and air pollution.

But the decay hadn’t really begun, even though I thought it had when I was thirty five or forty. The friends hadn’t started leaving so suddenly, shocking us all with their absence. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, life is a recipe and our friends and loved ones are what make up the special sauce and we can keep eating the meal but will forever miss that bite, or tang or sweetness each individual added.

I’m tired, and overwhelmed, and I really haven’t had time to sit with the idea of Jeremy Tepper being gone, it just keeps popping into my mind at random moments and making me so sad. I think of Laura Cantrell who I knew first as a radio DJ at Columbia’s WKCR and then WFMU and as a friend and fellow songstress and then as Jeremy’s wife and I want to put my arms around her. I knew Jeremy from the early days of playing something resembling country music in the bars and makeshift spaces of downtown NYC and will forever remember his sweaty hug, fevered advice and enthusiasm for not just music but the whole life of making music. Maybe when I next see Laura and Jeremy’s not there it will fully hit me. Or maybe these things aren’t meant to hit us all at once, because people who were big parts of our lives not in an everyday way but more a we were young together and knew how much it all meant way are just about impossible to say goodbye to.

I haven’t had time to think of Scott Cornish, one of the biggest music fans I knew, who also passed away the past month - I think it won’t really sink in all the way that he’s gone until I go to play a show at our old spot in Catskill the Avalon and he’s not there. Just like Scott Schinder who died a year ago in June, it wasn’t til my daughter was about to play an Austin show (I haven’t had the pleasure recently) and I went to message Scott to tell him that it sunk in in an almost physical way…he’s not here anymore. I won’t see him again.

*

There was this organ — not a body part kind of organ, but a Hammond. Eric and I spotted it on the railroad tracks in Hudson when we first moved to New York. It was like a mirage, sitting there in the sunlight, like a photo you’d use on a record cover. We circled around it and started figuring out how we could tip it over and load it into the back of our Toyota Siena minivan. A shadowy figure walked over, he wasn’t really shadowy but just kind of hipsterish with t shirt, jeans, work boots and a beard. He said twenty dollars would buy us the organ. Maybe he claimed to work at Basilica, the event space on the other side of the tracks. Dude made himself an easy twenty bucks that day as I don’t think he had any legitimate claim on this organ, but it just felt like we were new in town and didn’t want to argue and cause trouble. I felt like I got to know pretty much everyone in Hudson from working at the Spotty Dog but I don’t think I ever saw that guy again.

Anyway, we got the Hammond back home and dragged it into the house and plugged it in. It didn’t work. Eric took out the Leslie speaker and made a cabinet for it that figured in quite a few recordings from our house. The organ we walked, pushed and dragged out across the yard and placed under one of the huge maple trees that seem to be as old as time but according to our original next door neighbor were planted in the early fifties when the houses were new. I remember telling Eric as we moved the organ across the grass, trying not to hurt ourselves, that I’d never moved anything so heavy in my life. I felt like moving the organ could kill me, it was that hard. But then it was there under the tree and the effort felt worthwhile. It looked beautiful, like it was meant to be there. Season in, season out, the organ stood proud and then started stooping a little but its colored drawbars and keys stayed bright, even as the wood wore out, breaking and crumbling.

Fast forward twelve years and we’re moving away. We make a big effort to paint and primp the place and our house sells in a matter of days. I’m happy and I’m sad, ready to move on but also more sentimental than I thought I would be about a house we’d been through a lot in. The closing takes place and I drop Eric off at the airport (see last post). The next day I return to the house to remove a last load of stuff from the garage: some will come with us and some to be hauled away by 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The guys are coming from Got Junk but they warn me they’re a little overloaded because our local dump is closed that day. They’re hoping that between two trucks they can take it all.

I simultaneously get a text from the realtor that the buyers want “the piano” removed from the yard. First we’ve heard about it—some communication slip-up? It’s disappointing and kind of what the fuck? But it doesn’t feel like something to fight, they’ve bought the house and want it…organ-free.

The Got Junk guys are sweethearts; they are sweating profusely just like I am. It’s a godawful heat wave. They each have a truck, are tag-teaming to get Catskill calls cleared out and truck the stuff back up to Albany. They check out the pile in our ex-driveway, agree that between them they can remove it.

“Oh, and - there’s this organ in the backyard?” I say.

I tell them there’s not a lot of it left, that there’s easy access from the street back there. One pulls his truck around and the two of them get to work loading it onto the truck.

Meanwhile a new neighbor from across this street behind walks by and waves. “Hi there, I bought this house and - hey is there any chance I could get them to take some of MY junk? “

Lady—I want to say. But I’m nice, I tell her they’re full up and and it’s easy, just…Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK - It’s really that simple. And nice to meet you-

She says she bought the house on her own, it needs a lot of work. I feel lucky to have a partner. This moving business is hard enough with two people. I wish her the best.

The guys take the organ away and I can’t help but think of Scott Cornish. He loved that organ, would celebrate any time I posted a photo of it. He stayed with us a few times after gigs nearby and he and I would sit out back early in the morning drinking coffee and communing with the Hammond. He’d watched it go from the mighty organ, through years of snow and sun beating down on it til it was weathered and worn, but he always saw the beauty.

And now it’s gone, like that.

I am an organ, you are an organ. We’re all just these great, graceful and then decaying structures. Who’s to say it’s better to hang in there til there isn’t much difference between us and the ground we stand on, outliving anyone who ever knew us — or go out proud and viable and leave people gasping at our absence?

Either way, it’s hard.