Dumped

“The mind will change, and change shall be relief.” — Edgar Bowers, from Amor Vincit Omnia

The first time I was dumped, it was by letter. She sent it, then got on a plane to go on a European vacation with her family. I was 15 and thought I was in love. She used lyrics from the America song, “Sister Golden Hair,” in the letter:

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?

Thus, a song that should be fading into obscurity as it has for almost everyone is now forever The Dump Song in My Story. Grand.

That was my first real relationship. We met at a youth conference, and it lasted through several months, a dozen or so letters, two more conferences, a stay with her family, and an Allman Brothers concert. I remember being a bit bummed, but that part isn’t a searing memory. These days, it’s primarily a sweet set of adolescent recollections.

I got dumped by several more girls before meeting my wife. Some of that was painful, but mostly in a self-indulgent way. You know, Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me, as Linda sang in the Zevon song. It became another part of My Story: the stalwart, good guy who gets dumped. All very noble, self-righteous, and essentially ridiculous.

It was years later that I got a lesson in what being dumped really feels like. It wasn’t a girl.

I’ve been a bass player since I was 9, and a bad one for most of that time. In high school, I was in the band because I was buddies with The Amazing Drummer. You wanted him, you got me. And this, too, burned itself into My Story. In college and after, I was with a band that did appreciate me, but I couldn’t see it through the morass of insecurity I’d built up. But when that band broke up, something glorious happened.

I met two geniuses. They were a special, commando writing duo at my company, and they were like gods to me. I was 25, they were 40ish. Both were European-trained Real Musicians, composers, accomplished. They were funny. They were nuts. And, miracle of miracles, they asked me to form a band with them.

Genius One was The Composer. He was almost skittish with people, and a creative dynamo, as long as he had creative foils around him. To this day, I view him as one of the few true geniuses among the artists I’ve met. I found him charming and terribly interesting, but I didn’t really fall for him.

I did, however, fall hard for The Conductor. He was not the creative genius The Composer was, but it seemed The Conductor could do anything. He’d studied with Krzysztof Penderecki, played guitar with Tony Levin, and played soccer with Franz Beckenbauer. Or so he claimed, and I believed him. He was a Buddhist, and seemed a master. He also had a way, when you were one-on-one, of making you feel he was absolutely in the moment with you. I more than looked up to him.

We became very close friends. He, his wife, my wife, and I spent a fabulous vacation together in Ottawa, riding bicycles, seeing museums, bonding. I often told people I wanted to be The Conductor when I grew up.

That band took a turn when we added Genius Three. The Madman had played in a band with the Composer in years past, and he offered us a gig if he could join and if we were willing to do his pieces. When I developed a repetitive motion problem in my hands, The Composer suggested we become an a capella group, and thus we became Nemo’s Omen, Rochester’s foremost a capella, performance art, comedy act. What ensued was a couple of years of magical, insane creativity. 20 years later, I still meet people who vividly remember seeing us do our signature work, “Monkey Rectum: Theme and Variations.” Good times.

I felt like the ordinary guy who had somehow landed the Smokin’ Hot Chick. But hot chicks catch other eyes. The Usurper was an academic poet, brilliant, with connections in the serious performance art world. He recruited The Composer and The Conductor, they started getting music festival gigs, and Nemo’s Omen faded away.

And The Conductor just disappeared from my life. The Madman and I bonded in our condition as dumpees, and went on with two more bands. But I knew, or thought I knew, that I’d had and lost the great musical love of my life.

In My Story, I did vilify The Conductor. How could he do that to me? Why? I imagined it was Buddhist non-attachment misunderstood and taken to an absurd, hurtful extreme. Where am I with it now, almost 20 years on? I’m not sure.

I’m thinking about all this because I’ve suffered another, worse dumping this year. Music, personal, spiritual… the whole megilla. At the end of last summer, after being with my church for nearly a decade and leading the Saturday Worship Band for three years, I was asked to step down from my role as the Saturday Worship Music Director. I had no warning, and was dumped by a person I loved deeply, whom I saw as one of my closest friends, and to whom I felt I had been almost inappropriately loyal. The details are ceasing to matter now.

But this was a new experience. I slept very little for the better part of three months, and plunged into the most serious depression of my life. I felt I’d lost the best musical situation I’d ever have, several of my closest friends, and my church. It put my family in a terrible position, since my children go there and my wife works there. I felt like I finally learned what it means to be dumped.

I initially saw what I went through as grief, and it has been a form of it. Strangely, I had five close friends go through divorces last year. And talking with two of them, I saw that this was much more like divorce than having a loved one die. The corpse keeps walking. Thriving. Not needing you. Did it ever?

The meeting at which I was dumped happened at a favorite lunch spot. That felt ruined for a while. But my wife and I decided we couldn’t allow that to be another casualty, and a few months later, met for lunch there. As we were finishing, who did we see sitting by the window but The Conductor and The Composer.

Now, I’d kept up with The Composer over the years, but it had been 16 years since I’d seen The Conductor. And you know what? The second he turned his open, warm smile on me, I didn’t care about any of what I’d felt. And I see the whole thing differently somehow. Or it doesn’t matter. Or I’m older and with perspective see that we will all feel betrayed at times when others are simply trying to live their complicated lives.

The Conductor and I intend to see each other more now, maybe work together again. I’m excited about that. He still glows in my eyes. Weird.

Being dumped by the church is still overwhelming me. I’m stuck in my self-pity, and maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s not. I’m probably a long way from being whole around it.

I sang Colin Hay’s song, “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” at church once. It was right after the friend who later dumped me from the church job had lost her father, and I saw her cry while I sang. It’s an incredibly beautiful song, and I’ve wallowed in it often this year. I found a live YouTube version with a long, spoken introduction. Hay is grateful for the song’s success, but points out that, “The reality is that you do, don’t you? You do get over people. You think you won’t, but you do.”

And I know I will, I just don’t think I ever will.