Jesus the Booking Agent – Part 16: The All Over & the Not Yet (Part 3)

Mike Hall has been immersed in music for over 20 years, touring the country ‘til he cried and playing in too many bands. He is currently incubating his sonic baby, the Fire and the Sigh.

Part 16:  The All Over & the Not Yet  (Part 3)

Deep within the Comcast compound the huge cameraman lay on the floor while his friends scurried around him like frantic honeybees. The back of his head laid in a small pool of blood, but as I watched the huge man’s unmovable barrel-chest … caught in a frozen frame like a movie-picture on pause … I realized a bigger problem.

“Hey guys, he’s not breathing! Someone call 9-1-1.” As a fellow cameraman raced off the scene, my old CPR-class nightmares bubbled to the surface of my brain. Most of them featured “Resusit-Annie” and her completely unkissable, prophylactic face. “Annie” is the creepy plastic make-out mannequin on the floor of the classroom so you can practice your CPR moves, but as I pictured myself attempting to save the life of this priceless stranger, I nervously realized it had been many years since rubber-Annie and I had gotten to first base. “Does anybody here know CPR?” I yelled. (“Better than me?” I said under my breath.)

I sighed deeply as a big-hearted friend of mine, Mr. Tom Moore, quickly stepped up to the plate, followed closely by his sister. The two of them descended upon the man and began their systematic rhythm of chest-pumping, head-tilting, and face-breathing. Like the pulse of a well-orchestrated machine, they tried desperately to re-animate this fellow human being as their hands and faces moved flawlessly together, just how I’d imagine a brother-sister team should look like.

But even with all their exhausting, well-timed efforts, the two began to tire as the man’s mountain chest failed to rise on its own. While closely watching the rhythm of Tom and his sister my confidence began to bolster and I took a deep breath, stepped in, and attempted to breathe for this human soul I had never met before. Amidst pleadings from Tom, myself, and his friends surrounding him, the man finally inhaled an enormous, creaky gasp that suddenly flushed everyone with a newfound hope.

While this huge, rattled inhale inspired Tom and me to work with even more passion, I began to realize with increasing sobriety that the head I was holding, the face I was engaging, was slowly becoming cold. The eternal idealist in me was reluctantly facing the fact that this human being, this beautiful person that had been filming Born in the Flood just moments before, was now slipping into the next world.

I write these words with tears. With grave faces, Tom and I surrendered our places to paramedics with equally dismal expressions. As the white sheet of finality was cast, I leaned against a wall and cried. I mumbled something like: “Life is short … we are not long for this world.”

In memory of Gunnar Blanke.

Category: The Post