When I read the news, my body reacted like I’d been slapped in the face. I went back to bed, started doing French lessons in Duolingo, and made it my entire world to win first place in that week’s Diamond League tournament. I studied French all day every day for the rest of the week, barely stopping to eat or sleep.
When I remembered, near the end of that week, that the song “‘Til I Die” exists and realized that he had now died — and so he’s no longer thinking those thoughts — I doubled over like I’d been slugged in the stomach.
I’ve done everything I can in my mind to pretend that nothing has changed, because I didn’t personally know him; pretend that bceause I already knew there wouldn’t be any more new albums, it doesn’t really affect me. And yet, every night as I head to bed, I start crying; as I lay there, trying to sleep, I find some sort of new, incoherent, sleep-addled revelation that somehow crystallizes this loss — which I always knew would happen, was always unavoidable — in a way that finally, truly makes sense out of everything.
I’m afraid to stop listening to weird ’70s and ’80s Beach Boys’ albums, because they’re the only ones I don’t have memorized and it feels like when I do… if I stop staring straight at the grief… then I’ll forget, and he’ll really be gone. As if I can fix him in place with my focused attention and stop his soul from flying away into the aether now that his body is gone.
I miss you, Brian Wilson. I never knew you, and also, I know you better than I know anyone else. Your soul spoke to mine, and I’ll always be soul-bound to you.
I hope that I would have made you proud. You are my father in my heart. I will always try to live up to who you were and how much good your music has done for the world… and for me.