On the 16th February we lost our friend Glenn Fernando. Glenn was a wonderful, generous, kind man, an exceptional guitarist, and someone who touched many people’s lives – I suspect without ever realising it. His brother Denis asked me to write something to share his music with as many people as possible, and also to talk about mental health, grief, and coping in times of great sadness. Because Glenn was a lovely man and whatever happened he’d want us to be alright.
First, the music. Check out this track by clicking on the play button.
You can listen to the whole album on Spotify here:
Or look up “Missionary Fades – Intakes of Sanity” on Deezer. Listening to and sharing his music is the best way we can cherish his memory.
You can also help more people hear his music by sharing this tweet I have set up:
Glenn’s funeral service will be on Tuesday 10 March at the Sacred Heart Church, Quex Road, Kilburn, NW6 4PS, and rather than bringing flowers the family would appreciate any donation you can make [here].
In the rest of this article I’m going to talk about grief, about Glenn, about how he told stories with his music and about taking care of ourselves and each other. If you don’t have time to read all that but are hurting because Glenn has left us, that’s fine, just make time to give yourself a hug and hug someone (or something) you love. Yes, I have been hugging my PlayStation this evening.
Ownership of Grief
There’s an awful feeling you can get when someone dies that you don’t have a right to feel sad. Perhaps this is because you know they had family, closer friends, lovers, who must be hurting more than you are. Perhaps, worse yet, because you feel somehow culpable in their loss. I spent years feeling guilty for not being there as a friend died of leukaemia (I was on a ship with the Navy), and somehow thought that meant I didn’t deserve to grieve properly. Even though I knew that didn’t make any sense I still felt it. Guilt is almost as heard to bear as grief.
So, I can tell you I feel a bit weird writing this. Glenn and I were friends during the one year I spent studying drama at Roehampton Institute London. We played a lot of guitar, we drank £1 bottles of Becks in the student union, and I just have a whole host of lovely memories of this kind, gentle guy who always had time for you – especially if you came with a guitar. Since then, we’d get in touch from time to time over social media. The last time we “spoke” was nice little mutual love in – he had his new album, I had my new book, everything was right in the world. Everything, it seems, is built on sand.
Sure, I’m sad that an old friend died. But what gives me the right to write this article? Who the hell do I think I am?
Nobody has ownership of your grief. You don’t have ownership of anybody else’s. If you’re hurting because you’ve lost someone, that’s all there is to it. There isn’t a right or wrong amount of pain, or a right or wrong amount of time to feel it. Sometimes the loss of a family member can feel right, a matter for little grief, whereas the news that an ex-girlfriend from teenage years has passed on can knock you for six. Everybody has to feel the way they feel, because there isn’t much else by the way of choice and trying to justify it is just a waste of time.
Some of you reading knew Glenn better than I ever did. Some of you never met him at all. Yet however well you knew someone who is lost, sharing that hurt, letting other people know how sad you are, gives them permission to feel sad as well. That permission helps us heal. Talking about why we loved that person is always worthwhile. I can’t imagine a single member of Glenn’s family begrudging us feeling sad that he is gone. So, give yourself the right to hurt. Wrap yourself up in a blanket. Let me share some memories with you.
Glenn the Storyteller: Music is Writing
Music is writing. It’s storytelling. When I first met Glenn, I was very serious about being a singer songwriter. In the sense that I thought my songs were very serious. Glenn was serious in the sense that he worked at his music, that he strove to understand.
Amongst the outpouring of grief of Facebook one of the things that is clear is that Glenn was able to make a great deal of impact on people in a very short amount of time. I think that was, in part, because he was such a good listener. Don’t kid yourself that this was something he was born with. I have three kids, and I can tell you we aren’t born with anything more than the voracious appetite to feed and the ability to produce projectile poo. Glenn listened because he wanted to hear. This made him very special to all of us who need to be heard (and all of us need to be heard). Then he reproduced what he heard and felt in his music.
My mate Phil and I use to play guitar with Glenn. I don’t think Phil would object to me saying that both he and I were really quite bad at playing the guitar back in those days. We were pretty much five chords and a bar (CAGED system anyone? Yeah, this is getting really guitarist specific). I didn’t even like bar chords, because “I didn’t like the way they sounded” (They hurt my hand on the guitar I had at the time, which had an action so high it would make a Bullingdon Club night out look sober.)
Phil found some tapes of us all playing together. I haven’t heard them yet, but I know what they’ll be like. Phil and I will be earnestly plugging away, and somewhere within that noise (sorry Phil, you know I love you), Glenn will be finding a melody, a harmony, a way of expressing the emotions that he hears.
Music has all the same qualities of writing. Rhythm and texture. Theme and analogy. You can raise a pulse with short sentences and punchy musical phrases; you can stir a memory with a clever reference or a riff that reminds us of Little Red Rooster. All of that started with the capacity Glenn developed to listen, and the driving desire he had to express what he had heard and what he felt.
Listen to his album. It’s all there in the guitar lines. They way he moves from mood to mood – the actions and the expression – just listen to the music. Listening is where it all starts, and it all ends.
Artists, Real Life and Mental Health
Glenn’s family haven’t shared how he died. I think we should all respect that. Let me state this clearly, as someone who has both experienced and caused an above average amount of death in my time: it doesn’t matter. It feels like it should, but it doesn’t.
You can try to use cause of death to make sense of the senselessness of it all. You can use it to make you feel guilty, like I did with my friend who died of Leukaemia. Cancer is something easy to hate; car accidents give us the promise of a villain to hold responsible for this sense of loss.
You can also resent someone for leaving, even if it doesn’t make sense, even if it wasn’t their fault they were hit by traffic, or caught or disease, or voted Conservative one too many times. That’s okay. You’re allowed to be a bit pissed with Glenn as well. It doesn’t have to make sense; it doesn’t even have to be fair. If you let yourself feel it, that feeling fades in time. If you hold on to it, it turns black.
Because, at the end of the day, Glenn is gone. The loss would be the same if he died tripping over a traffic cone or died saving the world from meteorite-wielding dinosaurs. He still wouldn’t be here any more. Another memory – I’m pretty sure he was responsible for me waking up in my student room, grotesquely hung over, to the orange flashing light of a stolen traffic cone. Time destroys everything.
Trying to justify death leads to an endless, unhelpful rabbit hole: just read Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and then promise not to subject yourself to that sort of useless existential angst ever again. Death is not the only philosophical question. We’ll never play guitar with Glenn again. We’ll never hear him laugh or see him close his eyes as he sings. That’s enough to justify every bit of hurt you have. You don’t need any more.
It’s a bit of a cliché that artists are more likely to have problems with Mental Health. Certainly, it’s something we explore more. Art is about emotion, and very often about hurt. Listen to Repetitive Strain or All Protect this Lie from Glenn’s album. But, in this sense, it’s once again a form of listening.
If I write a sad story (as I have been known to do), it’s because I want you to know that you’re not alone in your sadness. It’s because I want to know that I’m not alone in my sadness. All of us have problems with our mental health – it’s part of our health, it’s part of us, it’s not something special or weird, it’s part of being a human being. With every note that he played, Glenn proved that he had been listening. And asked for us to listen.
The things we do can make a difference. I write books in the hope that they will touch people, that they will change people, that they will help. Glenn wrote music. And what amazing music he wrote.
As this is a writing blog, I should probably emphasise that this is a crucial point for any writer: listen.
Coping with Sadness
If you’re sad, you’re not alone. If you’re hurting, you’re not alone. These are normal parts of the human experience. Rubbish parts of the human experience, but there we go. So how do we deal with feeling this bad?
Well, first of all, please don’t ever believe that nobody cares about you – or that nobody could ever care about you. Sometimes people who should love us don’t – parents, lovers (clue should be in the title but often isn’t), people we call friends but turn out to be shits. That doesn’t make you bad. It just means you’re not right with them. The right people are out there.
Ask for help.
Call people up. If you’re feeling really low, and I know I feel that way right now, the last thing you may want to do is see people. It takes a lot of courage to make that call. If you can, if you can find the strength, do it. We’re an animal that is meant to be in groups. Don’t hurt on your own. Get out and be with people.
Flipping this round, if you have a friend that keeps on saying they’re too busy – and you have to read this carefully – pop round for a cup of tea. I’m no trying to encourage stalking. But sometimes the person who says they can’t come out means they’re hurting so bad they can’t find the strength to ask. So, if you can, if you have the space, show them you can listen. Play melodies to their chords.
Don’t forget the good stuff. Death is, to quote Gaiman, the high cost of living – and on his short journey with Glenn gave us moments like this:
We were always going to lose him. But at least we got to spend time with him on the way.
What if you can’t cope with the sadness?
That’s okay too. All of us have things we can’t do. I, for one, can’t shut up at a party. Unbearable sadness is not something ever to be ashamed about.
There are a number of medical and charitable options that you should absolutely try if you’re hurting. There is no harm in seeking counselling or a psychiatrist. I know in the UK at the moment that it’s very difficult to get access to those services – might I suggest that there is no harm in voting Labour? Are you ashamed to take paracetamol if you have a fever? Go to the hospital with a broken leg? Then why be ashamed to seek help for something at least as much and often more.
If you have the money, investing in yourself and getting some counselling may be the best decision you ever make. If you don’t have the money and can’t beat the waiting lists, well, the current lot in government want you to die. Fuck those guys. Your friends are the best weapon you have. Find them. If you really, really don’t have friends, try hobbies – Games Workshop, Badminton Club, Art classes, politics, whatever buzzes your button. This shit works. Don’t be scared. It works.
The Samaritans are an amazing organisation that have helped me on more than one long, dark night. You can call them on 116 123 or check out their website at Samaritans.org. You are going to have a totally positive experience. They are trained listeners. They will let you say all the stuff you have got to say, and they will not judge you. Nor should they. Part of being human is hurting; if you aren’t hurting you aren’t human.
Don’t kill yourself.
I don’t know how Glenn died and I don’t need to know. I do know that my long held fantasy that one day we’d meet up and play guitar together again, and this time I’d listen to him, and play harmonies that showed I was listening, and melodies that matched his and showed how much I cared about him, has been dashed on the hard rocks of reality. And that hurts like fuck. If you’re hurting like me – and remember, I don’t own your hurt, this isn’t a competition, and you never have to justify your hurt – if your hurting, remember there are lots of people out there who want to help. Hell, there’s a contact button right here on this website. Tap me up. I have time for you.
And thanks to everyone who shared photos and videos, which I wantonly stole for this article. You can find the memorial thread on facebook here. I don’t have any photos from my time at Roehampton, or of Glenn and I together, which makes me think: take photos. Record your jam sessions.
Listen to his music.
Glenn was an exceptional guitarist and a wonderful human being. Please, for me, for him, for his family, for everyone who has every cared for him and you hope will every care for you, take a moment to listen to what is now, tragically, his life’s work.
Oh, and take a moment to this tweet I have set up: lets get as many people listening to Intakes of Sanity as we can.
Glenn, man, I love you. It is the curse of the rationalist that I can’t believe there’s anything left of you but your music and our memories. But what a marvellous thing you left behind. Your life made a difference, a positive difference, and we will all of us remember that between our tears.
