"Mourn" is out now. Listen on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud.
When we come home, they'll name the streets after us.
For my grandpa John, that really was the case.
If you ever want to see it in person, drive through Washingtonville, New York, stop at Betty's Country Kitchen, honk your horn at the blue CYO gym as you pass by...you'll see his street sign right on main street on Route 208. It all looks pretty similar to when I used to be a kid there, dressing up in wizard capes in my cousins' basement, immortalized somewhere on home video tapes that I may never see.
There have only been a few times in my life where I wrote a line without knowing what it means and then a few years later, it ended up becoming true. When we come home they'll name the streets after us became that way. But I didn't get lucky with that one, it's because of my grandfather's once-in-a-generation dedication to the community in which he lived.
He was king of his town, a town called Washingtonville. And nothing could stop him from moving about town, not even cancer.
When we got the news, we didn't know how long to expect him to be around. But he stayed, surprised us all, fought for a while. Fought from a hospital bed and fought from a homemade hospital bed. He was deeply religious, and he of all people didn't have to give his mortality a run for its money, but he was stubborn, ritualistic, not one for giving up. He was a lot to look up to. And he seemed to think his work here wasn't done yet.
That life work was made up of a lot of things. He ran our family's printing business, Spear Printing Co., and therefore printing is embedded in so many of my childhood memories. The smell of the print shop. The countless whistling, loud machines, the dusty stacks of different sized paper, the maze of rooms and wood wall paneling...the ringing phones. It's a smell and environment you don't forget, especially when you first experience it as a kid. Everyone in our family helped out at "the Shop" at one time or another. Printing was my grandpa's career but also a way he could give back. He printed my first ever business cards for me as an "artist" when I used to sketch the same four characters again and again in the fourth grade. It was magic to see my name on a business card alongside my drawings that birthday. Years later he would be there for me when I released my first music. He printed the cover of A Living Inverse, and then a year later printed the entire album booklet for How To Stay Young. He would measure things out with scientific precision, doing machine-like math of slicing measurements in his head, often talking out loud to himself...these moments in the print shop quite literally helped bring my music into reality.
His work also included being the founder and director of the local CYO basketball program where he provided so many kids with the means to play basketball, serving as editor and publisher of the Orange County newspaper, coaching basketball and traveling with his teams until his last moments, and attending daily Mass as an altar server at the local church, all while contributing to the town planning board as a fifty-year member...plus a whole lot more.
But there's a way the world sees John Spear, and then there's a way that I see my grandpa.
When I was living at home and when my grandpa was sick, I was going through a lot that I wasn't aware of at the time. Eighteen days after There's More To Life came out, my grandpa passed.
It rained so hard afterward that it seemed to suggest heaven was opening up to welcome a new member, and shaking up the clouds by doing so. Or maybe, the weather was simply mourning with us. Either way it was fitting, our family spirit was somber, but there was also a lot of work to do. Writing the perfect eulogy with my uncle, planning the luncheon for after the funeral mass, making sure the wake would be able to fit everyone who would come (no joke, thousands of people) to memorialize John. I shook almost all of their hands. So many of them had no idea who I was, and probably never will, and though they had brilliant and heartwarming memories of John, they didn't have memories of him as a grandparent.
I often feel like we don't give ourselves time to mourn.
There are a lot of things that happen that people don't talk about when somebody dies. The energy and work that goes into planning a funeral, writing a eulogy heavy enough to hold up to the life it honors, the nuances of the family members' relationships to each other, who knew the deceased the most and who deserves to do what. It makes me think: is it ever possible to memorialize someone fully, completely, and truly? What about who that person was when they were alone in front of the mirror on their sunlit mornings, filled with optimism? What about the person they may have aspired to be but never became, a projection of the person we loved that we never got to witness?
Someone in my ex-girlfriend's family had cancer, which I've hinted at in some of my songs, and I always knew when we were together that I could never fully understand what they were going through. The pain it causes when someone you love is bedridden day after day, the way it feels to constantly visit the hospital, the nuance of every day...administering medicine, the confusion of different doctors' opinions. When someone you love is sick you're constantly searching for the truth. You search for a cure in a big sense, but you also search for a way to cure every day that brings another tidal wave of pain.
Years later, just like how my lyrics about renaming the streets would become true, this circular grief would also become true...as I became entrenched in the experience of one family member having cancer, and then watched it turn into two. And at last, finally, I felt like I understood.
Our grandparents are our couriers of memories.
They tell us stories, and we know in the moment that someday they won't be with us anymore, and it will be up to us to remember those stories and store them in our heads to keep them alive for our children someday...yet somehow it's still hard to listen, still hard to ask the right questions and understand the details of our grandparents' lives, hard to ever understand who their first loves were, hard to ever know what is hiding deep down in their memories...
So instead, we get some little things, their idiosyncrasies, the things that stick with us for one reason or another, perhaps because they are the things that relate to us individually the most. My grandpa always mixed orange juice and cranberry juice with particular proportions that felt perfect to him, and I've since taken up the trade; he contributed to my music by printing my album covers and booklets; he lived his life as a shining example of how to give back to a community, which I admire and aspire to do; he drove me to the airport in an unforgettable race down the highway to fly to visit Annie for the first time, so he helped me fall in love; and he was a printer who worked with ink for his entire life, by writing it, by printing it, by sacrificing himself for it just as I plan to do with mine.
So rest in peace to my grandpa, and rest in peace to all of our grandparents. May we appreciate them while they're with us. Hear their stories, remain in awe of their idiosyncrasies. If I never got time to mourn, writing this is my attempt at closure. Releasing this song is my attempt at sharing what I've been through and also my personal tribute to the first grandparent I am lucky enough to miss.
I'd like to leave you with two things:
This article:
John Spear will Always Have His Way in Washingtonville:
https://hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com/2016/12/29/john-spear-will-always-way-washingtonville/
And the original demo from which I made "Mourn." I wouldn't normally share something like this, but I want this to exist permanently somewhere, and what better place?
I hope you like it.
May all our heroes find their restless place in the sky.
I swear upon this family blanket
I swear upon my cracking skin
That this winter’s just a habit
I’m slowly getting out of it
My Grandpa’s crying over breakfast
He says this meal just doesn’t fit
I can’t stomach my food either
The weather must have made me sick
We don’t have many things in common
But tonight we’ve gotta
Don’t leave anything forgotten
It's all we do
Alright
I’m giving up my gold
I’m selling all my shit
I’d rather have nothing than grow up someday and lose everything
I’m giving up my gold
I’m selling all my shit
I’d rather have nothing than grow up someday and lose everything
I’m giving up my gold
I’m selling all my shit
I’d rather have nothing than grow up someday and lose everything
I know it’s cloudy in heaven tonight
But will you let my Grandpa in?
I know it’s cloudy in heaven tonight
But will you let my Grandpa in?
I know it’s cloudy in heaven tonight
But will you let my Grandpa in?
I know it’s crowded in heaven tonight
But will you let my Grandpa in?