To The Tooth…A Requiem for Noodles
Lisa “Noodles on Jupiter” Hayden
I’m watching a flatbed tow truck drive away, piggybacking my friend’s mud caked and dripping wet car, her lifeless and decomposing body slumped inside. It’s an overcast Fort Lauderdale afternoon, and I’m in saddened disbelief. Not because I had held out hope that after nearly five weeks she would be found alive, but because another of my brilliant and talented friends is gone in a senseless way.
Anybody who knew Noodles well likely had a complicated relationship with her. She had a chaotic nature that could veer in just about any direction at just about any time. She was combustible.
When I met her in 1993, she had just been kicked out of a band. I had a band that was getting pretty popular, and I was collecting talented and outrageous misfits to make it as compelling as I could. Noodles fit right in. I didn’t even need to hear her play. I knew she would be imperfectly perfect.
Perhaps that is the best way to describe Noodles: imperfectly perfect.
This was many years before the glitter and fairy wings, before she had reinvented herself as Noodles On Jupiter (and later as Miss Noodles, the piano teacher). This was when she was known onstage as Nasty Fucking Noodles.
One of the highlights of our shows was when she would recite her poem, “Fuck” or sing her perverse Broadway-esque ballad, “You Make Me Feel Like Dogshit.”
Both brought down the house every time.
Lisa and Adam
Bands come and go, and after I left that band, I found myself booking a popular nightclub. I started a concert series that featured female singer/songwriters in South Florida. When I didn’t include Noodles in the first edition, she was more than a little upset.
She burst into the club one night demanding an answer to why she wasn’t part of the show. Being slightly combustible myself, I informed her that I picked the five best artists I could and she wasn’t one of them. She spit on me. For real. Noodles on Jupiter, the fairy princess, hocked a loogie on me.
She apologized later, of course.
And, of course, I forgave her.
I had many odd, infuriating, interesting and out-of-left field experiences with Noodles. When you are in a band with someone, you are artistically married. There are hours and hours of loud warehouse rehearsals, attempting to craft songs that somehow manage to speak to (and for) the many people in the band. There are times of soulful expression and connection, as well as times of deep insecurity and dysfunction (this is especially true when you are young). You get to know your bandmates in ways that you never could otherwise.
For better or worse, you are family.
There is no experience quite like performing onstage with another person. You make eye contact in mid-performance, knowing that you are out on the high wire together with no net. There’s no amount of money that can buy that kind of exhilaration. It gets in your blood. And the people with whom you do it become your blood relatives.
Noodles and I shared many moments like that. She was my sister, my friend. We fought and loved and laughed and yelled and danced and lived like lunatics, literally howling at the moon onstage!
Credit: Teajay Smith, TeaJayPhoto
In the weeks that she was missing, I had a few weird experiences that felt at the time (and still do) like she was communicating with me. I’m not the most metaphysical type, but one morning my dog dragged me out to where my car was parked and there was purple glitter everywhere.
It was in that moment I was certain she was gone.
The night before I watched the flatbed tow truck slide past like a hearse, I was overwhelmed by a sickness that caused me to vomit and feel like I was having symptoms of a heart attack, even though I am in good physical condition. My entire body ached, and I considered going to the hospital.
Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” popped into my head and I lay in bed wondering whether I was dying.
I know now what it really was…
When I received the tip the next morning that they were pulling Noodles’ car from the river, I left work to be there. I wasn’t alone. Some of her best friends in the world were there. These were the people who devoted almost every waking moment since she disappeared to finding their friend. Being with them in that boat launch parking lot was one of those sad-beyond-description experiences, but there was also beauty in it.
I’m glad I was there, but also wish I hadn’t been. I’ll never lose the memory of staring at Noodles’ putrid smelling car for more than hour, knowing that her body was inside. It sucked. There’s no other way to describe it.
Credit: Teajay Smith, TeaJayPhoto
But there we were for each other: crying, laughing, hugging, trying to communicate what was happening via smart phones to those who could not be there, while the media, police and divers were there doing their thankless jobs during a tragedy they couldn’t connect with personally. Most of the media were respectful to those of us in mournful disbelief and the police exhibited a sensitivity you don’t get to see all that often anymore.
And then it was over. We poured some glitter into the water from where Noodles’ car was pulled and watched it float out with the current. I stood looking at the river trying to understand what could have happened that night to my friend, but I couldn’t (and can’t) get my mind around it.
It makes no sense. There’s simply no logic…
As we get older, it’s inevitable that death will become more a part of our lives. Can’t escape that. But when somebody we love leaves too soon – which has been far too often the case in the past couple of years – it’s as if we are left stranded in the spaces between the dots of their ellipsis…
Today, as I write this, I’m numb. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to feel better…
Likely, I’ll keep doing and loving the best I can, keep moving along, keep making music, keep creating, keep living out loud. Those of us who live that way are kin. We exist for moments of creation, for moments of profound existence, for connection…
Goodbye Nasty Noodles…Goodbye Noodles On Jupiter…Goodbye Miss Noodles…
Goodbye Lisa…we are going to miss you.
~Adam Matza
FROM THE MISSING LISA HAYDEN PAGE ON FACEBOOK
“As we sit here… Suzy Hayden O’Leary and Tara Anne Hayden Cloe Jim Hayden trying to decide what to write to all of Lisa’s beautiful friends…trying to say just the right thing…trying to cope with the loss of our sister and daughter….looking around her home surrounded by her colorful walls….thank you thank you thank you for loving our sister. Thank you for being her other family.
This Thursday, March 5th at 6pm we are going to celebrate her life. Please join us at the Unitarian Universalist church of ft. Lauderdale 3970 NW 21st Ave Oakland Park, FL 33309. Our family will be arriving from out of town and are blessed to meet her family here in town
Keep checking our posts to see updates as we plan for the evening.
love, smiles and Glitter.
