rus vanwestervelt

Last weekend, I celebrated my 42nd birthday, and my wife gave me an iTunes gift card as one of my gifts. At first, I played around with the idea of getting a vintage Roches CD, as I really miss some of those songs that got me through some tough days teaching in my first years in southern Maryland. But for some reason, I typed in “BOSTON” and rediscovered two of the more significant LPs that got me through junior high school and my crush on Linda…

I bought their first two albums for what one would have cost me at any record store, and within minutes I was reliving those memories of everything new: love, freedom, and great music. Brad Delp and Tom Scholz had really put together something amazing. Scholz’ brilliance in the orchestration of the music took full advantage of Delp’s high voice and unparalleled ability to overdub….They were humble, and they really enjoyed making some fantastic pieces of music.

On Friday, I told a good writer friend after a cup of coffee that I had picked up these two albums, and I was enjoying the heck out of the lyrics, the notes, and the memories.

A few hours later, I learned that Delp had died within hours (minutes?) of my conversation with my friend at the cafe. It was an eerie thing to feel so close to that music, that voice, those memories after not feeling or hearing them for so long.

But then I remembered an article I read very recently in the latest Shambhala Sun journal, where a writer was more than fascinated with the connection he had with his readers. To paraphrase loosely, he wrote that, even though months or perhaps even years will have passed between his writing these words and me reading them, we have created an inexplicable, yet eternal bond between us that knows not of time. For the moment I picked up his article and read his words, the contract had been completed, and we fulfilled our roles as writer and reader. He was waiting for me to read as long as i was waiting for him to write, and when the time was good for both of us, we met.

Delp’s music reminds me of this bond between the artist and the audience. He has given us all the greatest of gifts with his voice, and we are the lucky ones to be the recipients time and time again, even beyond his time here on Earth.

May we all find a way to make that bond with the ones we love, even if we have not yet met them. It does not matter if it is music, poetry, art, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, or medical discoveries; let us all leave that message to be discovered over and over again, for all generations yet to be born.

It’s hard to imagine any writer not being influenced in some way by the now-late Donald Murray, even if the name doesn’t ring a bell.

I was first introduced to his writing and his teaching in 1989. I was a Summer Fellow at the Maryland Writing Project’s Summer Institute, a newbie still to the world of teaching, but a hack writer who knew only that this bug, this thing inside me that compelled me to write was here to stay.

The Institute, a five-week program that invited teachers from around the state to devote most of their summer to learning about writing and teaching, was supposed to prepare me to share this new-found knowledge with other teachers in my school and around the county. That was the goal. But I couldn’t plan the untimely death of my father just two months before our first meeting, and I certainly couldn’t plan the timeliness of just how life-changing the Institute would be for me as a person, me as a writer.

The teaching impact, that came later.

For me, on that first day, I bought my copy of Murray’s Write To Learn, a rather flimsy paperback book about how writing leads to discovery of our selves, and discovery leads to a life worth living, and a life worth living leads to–well, to everything good. Including all that happens with writing in the classroom.

The first section of Murray’s book was all about the Daybook, claiming your place to write, your place to be you. And with the timeliness of my father’s passing, I jumped headfirst into the pages of Daybook I, a cheap, green-blue spiral notebook of 70 pages that led me along the paths of self-discovery for those five weeks. I pondered Thoreau’s writings, my own father’s actions in his life, the power of spirituality, of love, of patriotism, of life itself. In those five weeks, Murray gave me license to be me, take risks, ask the questions I never had the courage to ask.

Since that summer, I have completed over 30 daybooks, some of them spiral notebooks, others with leather covers, some blank, some ruled, some large, some small (I’ve come to favor the bigger blank books, with the hard cover). Between the covers of all of these books remains me: raw, emotional, contemplative, happy, sad, angry, hopeful. Story ideas, examples of good writing, good living, life-changing quotes, drawings…it’s all in there, uncensored.
At just about the same time Donald Murray was leaving this world, I was making the decision to pack up all of my daybooks, finished and unfinished, and focus only on my one Daybook throughout 2007, a sort of tribute to the sanctity of this journal of all-things, all-thoughts, all-me. It wasn’t until a few days after I made this decision that I learned of his death.

Donald Murray worked tirelessly with writers and with teachers about the importance of relevance, the importance of understanding your audience, and the importance of taking risks. I can think of no successful writer who has not mastered any of these three essentials when it comes to communicating effectively. The fact that we are all better writers because of these essentials is due in no small part to Mr. Murray.

His passing comes at a time in my life where my writing and my career is in a wonderful but risky transition. After reading a memorial written by Chip Scanlan at the Poynter Institute, I feel like I’m back at the Maryland Writing Project’s Summer Institute all over again. But this time, it’s 2007, not 1989. The risks I am ready to take will begin on the pages of my daybook, just they always have, but thanks to the life Donald Murray lived and the countless contributions he made to writers all over the world, those risks in ink will spill forward into a new career of writing and teaching–one that I hope makes a difference not only to me, but to my family, to my readers, and to the many writers and teachers with whom I proudly share this profession.

When I decided to join the 2,996 project, I found myself once again torn emotionally by the events that happened five years ago. To focus on a single individual, however, was more overwhelming than I could have ever imagined.

After i agreed to do this, and I hit the return key to find out who I would be remembering on my blog, I wasn’t ready for the rush of feelings that hit me.

Nothing, though, could have prepared me for seeing that first picture of Brett, a life filled with love and energy, great plans and dreams, all taken from him and his countless friends and family that will forever miss him and hold him dearly in their hearts.

Like a magnifying glass concentrating all the sun’s rays into a fine stream of light, I guess that seeing Brett’s picture brought the intensity and the magnitude of 9/11/2001 to me through his eyes.

It mattered. It matters still. And we will never forget. Despite all of the political maneuverings and mishaps and disasters that have come upon us in these past five years, one thing is certain: Nothing, or nobody, can ever diminish the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and nothing, and certainly nobody, can ever erase the memories of the 2,996 individuals who lost their lives on that day.

May we all say it together, keep it forever in our hearts, in 50 years, as strongly as we do today.

We. Will. Never. Forget.

I’ve included some text from a New York Times tribute to Brett printed several years ago, but as you read the words, look deeply into the pictures of Brett that I’ve added from other sites. See the love, the life, the energy, the beauty of a man so young to be taken from us. May God bless him, and may God bless his family and friends, for now, and for always.

Having spent his teenage years near the ocean in Bricktown, N.J., Brett T. Bailey seemed to pass whole seasons wearing a wet suit — whether it was winter, spring, summer or fall. “It was hard to get him out of the water,” said his father, Kevin Bailey. “He loved surfing. He loved swimming. He loved anything athletic. He was very playful.”

Mr. Bailey, 28, worked as a lifeguard when he was a teenager but there was little question that after college he would become a broker, like his father and three uncles before him. “The financial world is kind of in his blood,” Kevin Bailey said. He worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange before taking a job as an options broker three years ago with Euro Brokers in 2 World Trade Center.

Mr. Bailey was a determined athlete. He started the summer with a 26 handicap in golf. By September, his handicap was down to 19. “That tells you what he was like when he set his mind to something,” said his father. “But one of the most interesting things about Brett was his ability to make friends very quickly, almost upon meeting them. He had such a diverse group of friends. From the New England fisherman to the Wall Street broker, they were all equal to him.” (source The New York Times)