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Missing Owain
Apr. 19th, 2013 01:14 amOwain Phyfe died last year. I can’t help you with who he was to thousands of people who loved him as the great musician and performer that he was; go look him up. I miss him so badly, and people talk about going on, but I can’t go on yet. I still have no idea what we will do without him, and as much as everyone mourns him I can’t quantify what is going on in my head, or why, on some level, everything has stopped. I’m sorry, but there are people who are so specific and vital in their function that their death truly brooks no replacement. Owain was such a one, and I don’t know how we will go on.
I’m pretty sure Owain knew who I was. So I can’t say we were friends or drinking buddies, or we ever even played together. But Owain was – I don’t know, my co-worker sounds like we passed each other in the break room. My fellow performer would be closer – as we related via the kinship musicians feel for each other – and in a quiet way that I tried not to show, Owain was very much my hero. Not just because he was a brilliant musician, with a perfect voice, or his onstage demeanor that put everyone at ease, or his performances that lit up wherever he played, from a tiny tent to a thousands-seat theatre. It was Owain himself.
You have no idea until you go out drinking with a bunch of performers what sad, bitter, stupid, entitled, selfish, bitchy things will come out of our mouths at the end of a day. I won’t elaborate on it, but it can go on for hours, in that long, blowing-off-stress way that we’ve all experienced. Well, Owain didn’t do that. Not just that he kept it to himself or out of sight. I mean, you could tell that Owain just didn’t think that way. I’m sure he had his bad days, but sitting around and bitching wasn't his thing. When you talked to Owain for five minutes you wanted to erase from your memory any time you’d ever bitched about your audience or your job or your pay and find something worthwhile to talk about. Owain made us better people, even if it was just for the five minutes we were talking to him, because he talked about things that made you forget who you were talking to.
Owain would play for anybody. Fuck whatever circuit you were plugged into year after year. Owain played the Renfaires. He played SCA. He played bars, and Pagan Spirit Gathering when they asked him, or anywhere else people wanted him to play. And he didn’t sneer at any of these groups, or get into stupid dividing lines about how one was better because blah blah blah. And it wasn’t because he was a consummate professional, although he was. He just didn’t think that way. Talking to Owain was like a clear drink of pure water in the Chernobyl desert, something so pure and surprising that you could hardly believe it could exist in such an environment, but had to believe it was from an older place.
Owain couldn’t help but have an influence on the people he worked with, and he touched people profoundly. No one else sang the way he did, or played with the brilliant Cantiga; the New World Renaissance Band is forever mute, and there can be no replacement. No one else was even close to doing what he could do in our little circle. So yeah, he’s gone, and the hole is wide, so wide. We are joined by it and separated by it, gazing at each other over its vastness, and I don’t know where we can go from here. Life goes on, I know, performances happen, but we all know what’s missing and will never return.
I thought maybe if I could see it enough times, maybe I’d know how to do something like it, how to understand my life as a gift, how to participate gracefully in the human theater that exists outside of music. But he’s left us behind: a bunch of poor broken bastards who can barely meet people’s eyes and string a few words together unless they’ve got a glass of wine or an instrument in their hands, and somehow we’ve got to go on, and make this happen, and somehow it will happen because it's a mystery. God I miss you Owain.
I’m pretty sure Owain knew who I was. So I can’t say we were friends or drinking buddies, or we ever even played together. But Owain was – I don’t know, my co-worker sounds like we passed each other in the break room. My fellow performer would be closer – as we related via the kinship musicians feel for each other – and in a quiet way that I tried not to show, Owain was very much my hero. Not just because he was a brilliant musician, with a perfect voice, or his onstage demeanor that put everyone at ease, or his performances that lit up wherever he played, from a tiny tent to a thousands-seat theatre. It was Owain himself.
You have no idea until you go out drinking with a bunch of performers what sad, bitter, stupid, entitled, selfish, bitchy things will come out of our mouths at the end of a day. I won’t elaborate on it, but it can go on for hours, in that long, blowing-off-stress way that we’ve all experienced. Well, Owain didn’t do that. Not just that he kept it to himself or out of sight. I mean, you could tell that Owain just didn’t think that way. I’m sure he had his bad days, but sitting around and bitching wasn't his thing. When you talked to Owain for five minutes you wanted to erase from your memory any time you’d ever bitched about your audience or your job or your pay and find something worthwhile to talk about. Owain made us better people, even if it was just for the five minutes we were talking to him, because he talked about things that made you forget who you were talking to.
Owain would play for anybody. Fuck whatever circuit you were plugged into year after year. Owain played the Renfaires. He played SCA. He played bars, and Pagan Spirit Gathering when they asked him, or anywhere else people wanted him to play. And he didn’t sneer at any of these groups, or get into stupid dividing lines about how one was better because blah blah blah. And it wasn’t because he was a consummate professional, although he was. He just didn’t think that way. Talking to Owain was like a clear drink of pure water in the Chernobyl desert, something so pure and surprising that you could hardly believe it could exist in such an environment, but had to believe it was from an older place.
Owain couldn’t help but have an influence on the people he worked with, and he touched people profoundly. No one else sang the way he did, or played with the brilliant Cantiga; the New World Renaissance Band is forever mute, and there can be no replacement. No one else was even close to doing what he could do in our little circle. So yeah, he’s gone, and the hole is wide, so wide. We are joined by it and separated by it, gazing at each other over its vastness, and I don’t know where we can go from here. Life goes on, I know, performances happen, but we all know what’s missing and will never return.
I thought maybe if I could see it enough times, maybe I’d know how to do something like it, how to understand my life as a gift, how to participate gracefully in the human theater that exists outside of music. But he’s left us behind: a bunch of poor broken bastards who can barely meet people’s eyes and string a few words together unless they’ve got a glass of wine or an instrument in their hands, and somehow we’ve got to go on, and make this happen, and somehow it will happen because it's a mystery. God I miss you Owain.
