Tragedy

I'm saddened to learn that last evening in Saratoga, California, a man jumped to his death during a concert by The Swell Season, landing on an on-stage speaker just a few feet from singer Glen Hansard. Oddly, the night before at Jones Beach in New York, a man jumped from the mezzanine during a Phish concert, surviving the fall onto the seats below and fortunately missing any other concert-goers (he's listed as being in "critical but stable condition").

On his Twitter account, Hansard wrote,

"We can't really say too much about it, because we don't even know his name, or whether his family have been informed, it was a terrible shock. To everyone at the concert, my sympathies are with his family and friends and specially to the children and adults in the audience who had to witness such a tragic thing. Thankfully nobody else got hurt. We will let you know more when we do. We will play our concert tonight, and hopefully move on and continue our tour. This was a deeply tragic event that we and all who were there last night will remember forever. But ultimately, we have to move on. We're all ok. We talked all night and decided we must go on. If this was a suicide, then we can only send him light and move on. . . Our deepest sympathies go to him and all who witnessed this. Glen"

The band is scheduled to play at the Portland Zoo Amphitheater tonight, and then at the aptly named "No Depression Festival" in Redmond, Washington on Saturday.

There's always been a bittersweet aspect to The Swell Season's music. Part of the group's appeal was the romantic chemistry between Hansard and co-founder Markéta Irglová, documented in the semi-biographical film, Once. Although they split up as a couple in January 2009, they decided to still continue to perform together in the band, producing a poignant yet mature cycle of songs exploring love and its aftermath. After last night's tragedy, it remains to be seen how this sad event will affect them and their music, and how much a part it will be in their on-going story.

We can only speculate about what the jumper's motives were and if he was influenced by the Jones Beach incident of the night before.

In 1854, days before he died at the age of 59, the Japanese poet Ichimu wrote:

A broken dream -
where do they go
the butterflies?