Nothing Compares 2 U
Remembering Ryan Muncy, the spring of 2020, and his lessons about how to survive a new normal.
This week, I want to share these two blog posts written by Ryan Muncy and me in June 2020. The University of Michigan’s EXCEL Lab had asked us to share our reactions, as artists, to COVID-19; to speculate on what might come next, and to offer some practical advice to readers. It was start of the pandemic, but people were already talking about the “new normal”. Three years later, it seems a little premature.
That spring, New York City was the eye of the storm. I remember refrigerated trucks lined up outside hospitals; a tent hospital in Central Park; a pier a mile away from my apartment turned into a makeshift morgue. I remember dropping groceries off on Anthony’s stoop, then standing in the middle of Bowery by Astor Place at 10 PM, no cars in the street to honk at me. Insidious anti-scientism. Learning to make masks. Learning how to cut my own hair. Singing social distance songs on Andrew’s stoop. Jam jar Negronis on a park bench. Surpassing the death toll from Vietnam. Then two Vietnams. Then three.
I’d only known Ryan for a few weeks before Covid shut the city—and live music—down. When he was assigned two sections of the music entrepreneurship course I’d developed for The New School, he sent me a polite email explaining that he’d heard wonderful things about me and asking if we might meet. It was just four days before classes began, and whatever annoyance I harbored at the last-minute request from a member of school’s star ensemble in residence vanished when he walked into my office and shone his gorgeous mix of charm, graciousness, off-the-curve emotional intelligence, exuberance, and absolute integrity.
Ryan came to observe my class twice—something none of my other colleagues had done. He said it was a no-brainer from a music ed perspective. (He told me that as a classical saxophonist, training in music education was part of the culture because it wasn’t like there was an orchestra job you could win.) He was just observing, but he was already all-in. He offered my students access to his lived and professional experience—as an artist who’d premiered over a 100 new works for his instrument, as a fundraiser and grant writer, as a man juggling all the roles of artist, advocate, mentor, and more.
He offered me his friendship, too. So when Covid shut down the campus, it felt natural to suggest we co-teach our classes. His two sections and my three became our five. We showed up together. We showed up for the other if one of us was unwell. We called each other to rouse our energy before class, and to debrief and drink at the end of the night. We pooled out networks of artists and arts advocates and matched them one by one as mentors to our students. At the end of the semester, we threw a raucous Zoom party for our classes. There were trophies, prizes and certificates; testimonials, costume changes, and surprise breakout rooms that we filled with our rowdy free improvisations. He always insisted that it wasn’t a Zoom room, but a Zoom Mansion.
That summer, we kept showing up. It was his 40th birthday in June, and my 50th in July, and we planned the proper party we’d have one day when all this was over. A few days after his birthday, I picked him up at his apartment in Crown Heights and we drove across Brooklyn to my place in Red Hook.
It felt transgressive to be so close in my little Honda hatchback. We rolled all four windows all the way down to the warm wind, and I played him Jimmy Scott’s mournful-joyful-truthful cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U”. It was the first Ryan had heard Scott’s high, heartbreaking voice and he demanded I put the song on repeat. We sent Jimmy Scott out over Columbia Street and the shipping containers and the cranes and the Tesla dealership and the strange silence of the Covid city.
We drank Negronis on my roof of my building in the magic hour, and he insisted that we take these pictures.
That was the last time I saw him. That fall, Ryan left New York, his apartment, and practically everything he owned, and moved to Berlin. Live performances were still shut down, and he could stretch his part-time grant-writing salary into a living wage. Having enough money to live on was a new feeling, he texted me; a good feeling. He said it was hard to leave, but it was helpful to live someplace where people were being calm and reasonable about the pandemic, instead of feeding the culture war.
We always kept in touch. When I had brain surgery that winter he assured me he was only ever a one-way ticket away. He came back to New York more often as performances resumed, but we kept missing each other. Then last summer, in Berlin, he died. I don’t know the circumstances. I know that one can die just about anywhere, but when you love someone you want to be close to them and I’ll always think about how he had to leave to get to a place where he could live.
The new new normal
In red states across America, legislatures are passing laws that harm LGBTQ people.1 Queer people who have built beautiful lives and extraordinary communities are struggling with the decision whether they should stay or go. This is also the new normal. In a time where news is dominated by stories of queer tragedy, we need to hear more about the value of queer love, queer life, and queer joy.
It’s the vernal equinox tomorrow, the date when it’s as bright as it is dark. We lean towards the light, but we know the darkness in our blood and bones, and this is a good place to be if we want to see the truth.
I didn’t know Ryan very long, but I miss him every day. I consult him mentally because I know what he would have to say, and I still need to hear it. Here are few lessons he tells me about how to survive in the new new normal.
We are all teaching each other. Let’s teach each other well.
When things are bad, we support each other. When things are good, we celebrate.
Community is not a noun, it is a verb. It is something we do.
You are not defined by your circumstances. A Zoom room can be a Zoom mansion.
Joy is a choice in defense of life. Teaching joy can seed rebellion.
You keep making the effort—to communicate well, to show up, to speak the truth, to make music—because it matters; because we matter; and because that effort is the movement.
I was going to share those blog posts we wrote, but I think I’ll leave those for next week. Instead, here’s one more song; something Ryan sent me from Berlin. “I know you’ll miss me / I know you’ll miss me blind.” It’s a little on the nose, I know, but I’m dancing and laughing about it and I hope you are, too.
The ACLU is tracking 426 anti-LGBTQ laws right now. Source: https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights