Neal Casal: Bird With No Name

Liquid gold, his voice. Listening now, it brings you to your knees, makes you bow your head and and inhale deeply. The music he wrote, the lyrics he penned, the way he played…simply stunning.

I didn’t know the man, not personally. I was lucky enough to have had a few short conversations when he was setting up for a gigs, and to have watched him play in some of his various and prolific musical configurations over the years. I’m simply a fan, not really qualified to talk about what a kind, humble figure he was, beloved by the musical community at large, and what a friend he was to so many in the jam-psychedelic band community.

Strange to say was, since it feels very much like he still is. While the body, an entrusted vessel for the soul and spirit is no longer alive, I’m trying hard to believe that the light that was Neal Casal is now in a different kind of place, if you believe in that sort of thing, which I mostly do.

What is clear is that people with depression can’t see past whatever pain they’re living with, to have faith that one day it will be better. Depression is insidious and crippling because of the shame component involved. Like, you’re not supposed to be sad when you have so many blessings..and when so many people are counting on you. Sadness passes, depression, not so much. And we can only guess how much pain he must have been in to have wanted to turn off the faucet, permanently. I’ve seen good people express a lot of weird things about suicide over the past couple of days. People talk about being angry that someone chooses the “easy way out”, which I don’t get at all. There is nothing that strikes me as easy about actually putting an end to your life. Imagine what it takes to get you to that final moment, and that final act. Agonizing, and surely not easy. I have an advanced clinical degree in the field of mental health, and I won’t even pretend to understand suicide, other than what the literature tells us. I can only hope to be there fully for another human being at a moment when they have lost hope, and encourage others to have compassion instead of judgment.

Somehow, Neal Casal managed to join Oteil and Friends, and played with his band Circles Around the Sun at Lockn Festival just a few days ago, for what would be his final performances, leaving us in the wake of the flood.

Empty pages there before you,
Days go down into our history
All the ways you could have taken,
There was only one that meant to me

Long before you ever could have known
Things would come to be this way
Now you find yourself lying alone
Like a bird with no name
With no name, with no name, with no name

But time lies around you
As the dawn surrenders to another day
The world goes on without you,
There's a gift to bring, just a word without a page

There's no one left to let you down
You're holding on, but...
Of the all the things you could have found,
You ended up a bird with no name,
with no name, with no name

You made this promise to yourself
Was for you and no one else
Was no one knowing...
Your story to another...

Long before you ever could have known
Things would come to be this way
Now you find yourself lying alone
Like a bird with no name!
With no name, with no name, with no name!
A bird with no name
With no name