One Man's Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell

XXII. Monday for Two Years

144 XXII MondayforTwoYears Iboughtassortedfruittreesfromthatsame plant company later in the year, thinking that I was doing well enough to give growing something outdoors a chance again. I ordered $150 worth. When they arrived, I put them behind the front door until I could plant them. They wouldn’t fit anywhere else conveniently because they were so tall. I forgot they were behind the door almost immediately. They were gone from my recollection and I didn’t find them for months. They died from lack of water, their plastic shipping packages still tied around the roots in a shriveled bundle. My disappointment at their ruination was tempered by the vagueness I was living in. A year later, I ordered another shipment of trees. The same thing happened. After that I made sure I lost that catalog. My voluntary and treeless solitude at Music School made most people uncomfortable. They were either overwhelmed or dispassionate about the drama that I was living. It was easier to ignore me, even though I was desperately shouting at the top of my lungs, paralytic vocal cords notwithstanding. I was not clamoring for their sympathies. I needed Monday for Two Years � 145 something much dearer and far more difficult to give: their understanding . What I didn’t realize at the time was that they didn’t know how to react to someone who’s died and then been brought back brainand nerve-damaged. They suffered a “confusion of kindness.” Or they just nervously turned around and walked the other way. Or they didn’t say the right things, or do the right things. Often these were the closest of friends,sometimes a concernedfamily member,but they shiedaway because it hurt to watch me. As I had quite rightly figured, no friend of mine wanted to see me come limping. They wanted to see me as they had before: “young, drunk, and hot to go.” There wasn’t a lot of that Vince left, and I was afraid of letting anyone who had known me before see me like this. As a result, I never found myself chumming it up with my music buddies from the past. Most of my old friends treated me like a tragedy, like the walking dead. In self-defense I rarely thought of yesterday. It hurt to be so different from the people I had shared a career with. I WISH THE WORLD WASN’T GOING SO FAST IT HAD TO LEAVE ME BEHIND. LIVING WITH THE UNDEAD. Themostcomforting thing Icameto know aboutpeoplewhoview a serious-injury condition is that they are just people. They run like hell from things they don’t understand. No one understood me or my cockeyed little world now. For the record, it’s easier to lie in the sickbed. When you stand at the side of one, you open a whole other can of worms. I will always have great affection for the courage of my closest friends and relatives . They had to watch my uncontrollable slide into brain damage. It was like I was balanced on the edge of a black hole, and no one was prepared to endanger themselves by lending me a hand. I couldn’t blame them, and I couldn’t forgive them. 146 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell No one could help because they didn’t know how. If I was to walk or talk easily, or to play the guitar, I’d have to show them. This concept was as important to know about the new world I was living in as anything else I would teach myself. Kathleen Vick says, “He was hurt. I think there was an almost childlike surprise at the things that people would or wouldn’t do. Just a genuine, hurt kind of surprise that people would react to him the way they did.” I had apprenticed myself to a local designer to see if I could perform the functions of a graphic artist. There I became familiar with T squares, Exacto knives, ink pens, and rubber cement. There I showed up on time and ran errands. All my musical friends used the same commercial artist, as had I in the years before. When they stopped by now, I tried to remain as scarce as I could. While I was working there, I applied for funding from the state. After some spirited horse-trading on my part...