nobody looks when eternity's dying

"Somebody laughs again,
somebody's hurt again,
somebody's stranded or just breaking down
and you in you're bubble,
you're offshore in your bubble
and rolling away"
-- Nailbiters, "Someone Else"

This has been a week of mourning for Mike O'Neill, the astonishingly gifted songwriter, guitarist and singer who led some of the greatest bands ever to come from Tampa Bay -- Monday Mornings, Nailbiters and The Unrequited Loves. Others have spoken of this more eloquently than I ever could, but this is a huge, huge loss for those who love independent music in Florida. He was our Paul Westerberg and our Elliott Smith, a songwriter whose music was tortured, heartfelt and painful, and usually buried under a chaotic shroud of twangy, roaring guitars.

Mike was 41 and by all accounts (bolstered by years of his own lyrics) had suffered for a long time from depression. On Monday, July 17, at either 6:52 p.m. or 6:48 p.m., he drove from St. Petersburg toward Bradenton, parked on the center span of the 200-foot-high Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and jumped to his death into Tampa Bay. It probably took him 3.5 seconds to fall. It looks as though he'd updated the Unrequited Loves' MySpace page earlier that day.

His friends have set up a MySpace page to post memories, condolences, photos and a rotating collection of his songs. It's become the electronic hearth where people have gathered to share their sorrow. So has Jenny's wonderful Internet radio show, which aired a 3-hour tribute to him last Sunday (the podcasts are available here, and she's also posted some anguished thoughts on her blog).

Another tribute page is up at Tampa Bay Muse, co-proprietors of the web radio station Strange Agents Radio, where Mike hosted 10 episodes last year of a show called "The Loneliest Person" -- you can see his setlists here.

His passing is being noted on more websites and news articles and columns than I can count or link to. OK, here are a few more -- and here, here, here, here, here and here -- not to mention some collections of photos that a friend of Mike's has posted. And here's another photo. So I'll leave out the handful of sites that are being marred by ignorance, hate and all-around asshattery (what is it about depression that makes people unable to recognize the fact that it's a disease?). This is what some of those who knew him had to say:

• "I want you all to know that Mike visited me nearly every day after work when I was in the hospital. He would call ahead to tell me if his shedule that day was too hectic and give me a phoner pep talk. I'm not telling you this to let you guys know how 'close' we were, I am telling you to show what an extraordinary boy this was. By far, this was his worst year (mine too: lots of parallels with our lives, jobs, etc) , and yet, he still made time to be of service to people. He was in so much pain, and he would put it aside to come sit with me. And believe me, I knew it. I realized the irony that I was fighting for life and he was fighting it." -- Gina Vivinetto, on that MySpace page (where she also posted a song or poem she wrote for him)


• "you were something special, in so many ways. always a kind soul and a wonderful song writer. you were truly meant for the stage. never before have i seen someone walk into a gig 5 minutes before they had to play, looking like you just woke up, aimlessly wandering around while setting up, making it look like the show was about to be a complete disaster. but then, like clark kent, the mild mannered mike would just explode with life. gone were the sleepy eyes, replaced with fire. the words and twang effortlessly flowing from the stage with such a passion. and when the set was over, he was back in disguise until the next gig." -- Gabe, on the same site


• "I never knew Mike O'Neill suffered so inside. And it makes me think...and wonder...if he truly had any idea how much people loved him. How much he mattered to people. How much his sometimes nonsensical conversations stuck with people and made them think and smile and question. And we all wish Mike would have reached out and asked us...if we cared. Because we all would have said yes. Yes Yes Yes Yes Goddamnit Yes. Stay with us. Sing your songs to us some more. Tell us your stories. Try harder." -- Jeremy Gloff

Mike had been a big part of Tampa Bay's music scene for a long time. Monday Mornings, which included Mike and his then-girlfriend Karen Collins, might have been the best band that ever took root in that area, although Nailbiters would be extremely close competition, as would Rosewater Elizabeth, Clang, Bullwinkle, Home and of course Pee Shy, along with other bands I'm probably being criminally negligent in forgetting to mention now. What an astonishing collection of talent that area produced in a few short years.

Monday Mornings could be overpowering live (even more than one can really tell from the unfortunate vocals-to-the-front production on their lone CD, despise our world?, which they objected to at the time), but they also played the occasional acoustic show in 1990-91 at Three Birds, the bookstore that Cindy co-owned on East Seventh Avenue. That album has always struck me as having interesting parallels with Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, with Karen playing the Kendra Smith role. Nailbiters' two albums, Unsorted and Every Wasted Second Gone, always had me imagining the path R.E.M. might have taken had they stuck closer to their garagey pre-1983 roots, maybe with some of GBV's dark energy thrown in. (The first album also inspired an especially odd review from the St. Pete Times, which wrote that "the only obvious problem here is the strong R.E.M. influence that colors much of the Nailbiters' work." Um, why was that a problem?) The Unrequited Loves seemed to have a stronger Sixties vibe. And who knows else might have come?

I never knew Mike O'Neill, and I feel like kind of a fraud mourning at such length here. I only knew the words, which frequently dwelt on some of the ugliest emotions humans can harbor, and the music, which exploded with so much life the songs almost couldn't contain them. Listen to the sung words spilling on top of each other in "Unsorted," or the soaring chorus of "Unsurreal," or the way the guitars fly apart in the final verse of "Drillinstructor." Or, for that matter, the "it's Disney magic!" soundbite that comes just before "That's Just Dumb." Just listen to them all. How sad that their creator somehow became so convinced that his place in the world was under the ground.

Rest in peace.

"And a dream came true for someone that afternoon
Then split down the middle
I shook at the sorrow of it
I stepped out of line
I stepped over the line and finally stepped out of myself
Nobody notices eternity's dying out"
-- Monday Mornings, "The Eternal Afternoon"