The Day Things Changed

Going back to September 13, 2003. “Carlyn Lindsey & Snake Doctor” had a lunchtime gig at a pocket park in downtown Bloomington. We hustled out the front door. I remember handing Scot a breakfast burrito I’d made for him to eat on the way in the car. Everything went as usual during set-up—the fun, bantering jokes—the technical finagling. I was sitting on a stone ring around the base of a tree—hiding from the sun—as the set began. The band started into their second or third song—“Bad Love & Misery”—by Luther Allison.

I noticed that Scot’s head was tipped back. A bee was circling over him. I could see his eyes doing these visual loop-de-loops, following the bee. A few seconds later, Scot’s bass playing began to disintegrate. It was very uncommon to hear a clinker from Scot. Something was clearly wrong, but none of us knew just how wrong. Seconds later, Scot slipped into a Grande Maul seizure. I remember screaming, “He’s not OK!!!!!!” I sprang up and ran full speed into the bike shop next door to call for an ambulance.

By the time I returned, Scot was blue. The seizure finally subsided. Unfortunately, there was always a period of confusion that follows such a seizure, which made Scot want to get up and run away! Unfortunately he had no balance and was kind of under the impression that we were the bad guys who hurt him. It was hard to hold him done. Finally the ambulance arrived and off we went to the hospital.

My friend Jane tells the story that she knew Scot was going to be all right when the doctor asked him was day it was, and he pointed to Jane and said, “Ask her, she knows.” They did run a CAT scan on him that afternoon. That’s when we first heard the words—“There’s something there—we don’t know what.” It took another seven weeks that Scot wore this hideous orthopedic device, due to the two dislocated shoulders he sustained during the seizure, before that something was given a name—“low-grade glioma”—BRAIN TUMOR.

Today’s artwork is a very washy wet-on wet painting. The wash represents all the tears that have been cried since that day.