I'm Still Here, Glen
I’ve been rolling around in Glen Hansard’s music for the last several days. In my 47 years on planet Earth, he’s not the first artist I’ve loved that we’ve lost. But he’s the first in a long time to knock me over like this.
In the depths of my worst depressive days, his voice was one of the things that actually got me through. Two songs in particular, on repeat. “Say It to Me Now” and “Falling Slowly” have been a soothing balm on the pain in my synapses for almost two decades.
From the former:
“Scratching at the surface now
And I’m trying hard to work it out
And so much has gone misunderstood
And this mystery only leads to doubt”
And from the latter:
“you have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time”
ONCE changed the way I thought about indie film, and the way I thought about musicals. Those two songs in particular said what I couldn’t say to myself. That I wasn’t alone in wrestling with my doubt. That the boat could still be pointed home.
I didn’t know the man. But it gave me comfort to feel those words sung by someone who might have been there too. In the abyss of depression, I don’t see light. But it saved me to believe that light might exist somewhere. His music was that light on a lot of days.
I heard him say once that at a certain point, he wasn’t playing the songs anymore — the songs were playing him. Using him as an instrument to reach whoever needed to hear them.
I watched a reel of Glen playing in the last hours of his life in Ireland. He looked to be exactly in his element — eyes closed, strumming, singing from somewhere real and vulnerable. Then he got on his motorcycle. And then.
Some of the discourse online has turned to blame — he was drunk, he shouldn’t have been out at 4am, why wasn’t he home with his family. It’s human to think that way: if I don’t do those things, I get to stay and fight another day. But most great artists already know the truth beneath that faulty logic: a meteor could fall on my house tonight. Glen could have been crossing a street at 6pm and been hit by someone else’s motorcycle. That’s why artists shun the illusion of the safe life — the cubicle job, the 2.3 kids — for Something Else. Nothing is ever safe to begin with.
This morning, listening to him, I got chills, and couldn’t remember why that happens neurologically. A quick search reminded me: your brain reacts to unexpected sound with a rush of adrenaline, then a surge of dopamine once it registers you’re safe.
If that isn’t the artist’s whole journey in one sentence, I don’t know what is. All of us looking for a way to express the unexpected — and flooded with relief the instant we connect with someone else who’s been there too.
The chills aren’t “goosebumps.” They’re your body’s aliveness sensors. Your whole system saying: I’m still here.
Rest easy, fellow artist traveler. However it happens, we’ll all be there one day too.
For now, I’m still here, Glen. Listening.
Fellow huge fan here. That stanza from Falling Slowly gets me EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I read something right after he died and I’ll paraphrase it here. He grew up in a household where his dad drank, was silent and communicated no emotion. And he said to himself, well I’m gonna sing, and I’m gonna sing about *every* emotion. And I think that’s my North Star right now, and pointing me home ❤️
Glen must have strummed his guitar like Willie it’s worn in the same kind of way. I didn’t know him or his music but he was one of us, just seeing his guitar would have told me that, your words Dara confirmed it. I’ve had PTSD and the depression that goes with it for more than 20 years, I wouldn’t change a thing to escape it, I earned it. I saved a man’s life while wounded myself, my only concern was keeping him alive, I have no idea if he’s still alive, I would hope so. Depression is like a great beast that wants to play with you, but it can also be ephemeral, shape shifting when you push back against it. Focus has helped me immensely, I find it interesting that I chose that word, because for 19 years I was a focus puller on motion pictures, I lived because of my ability to focus. God knows, a phrase I’m reluctant to use, to the point I almost never utter it, that depression while a possible mortal enemy can be overcome by caring deeply and sometimes daring to love again. That was a powerful little piece you wrote Dara, it rang with the clarity of a bell that in time will ring for each of us. 🙏