My Semicolon Life: Never ever getting back with cancer

My recovery must be complete: I’m back to doing interviews.

• COLUMN: Last week’s installment

• MORE: Follow Brian on Twitter

• MORE: ‘Music that makes me want to live’ playlist

As long as I’ve got a laptop, I can do what I do lying flat on my back. So I started posting on Facebook and Twitter from my hospital bed in July and writing album reviews a week later. I’ve been working full time for nearly a month now, though I try to avoid the kind of 12- and 14-hour days that occur during American Idol season.

Six weeks and a day after my surgery, I went out to talk with Taylor Swift about her upcoming album, Red.

It was fitting, I suppose, since Swift was the first artist I heard from after my diagnosis. I got calls, letters and tweets from several other musicians, too, but she reached out after hearing about my illness, even before I went public with it.

Singer Taylor Swift will perform on “Stand Up to Cancer,” a televised fundraising special.

Seven years ago, before Swift released her first single, we got seated next to each other at a music industry dinner, and I’m still kicking myself for not introducing her to Little Richard, who sat behind us that night. In the Swift region of the Twitterverse, I’m a minor celebrity — or at least the answer to a trivia question — since I was the first person she followed on Twitter. Probably that’s because I was the only person in Swift’s e-mail address book that had a Twitter account before she did, but among her fans, it seems to count for something.

When she saw me, she gave me a big smile and a hug and said, “You look great!”

I should just say thank you, I know I should. But this particular compliment I haven’t learned to accept graciously. I’m thrilled to have lost the extra chin; I love wearing clothes that wouldn’t have fit me any other time in this century. But, for some reason, I want people to acknowledge why I look the way I do. Even if it creates an awkward moment.

So I said, “It’s amazing how much weight you lose with major surgery,” and watched her smile briefly go flat. She covered the moment quickly and with more charm than I had shown, replying, “Leave it to you to beat this faster than anybody thought possible.”

She’ll be a featured musical performer Friday on Stand Up to Cancer, a nationally televised fundraising special. Last spring, she invited Kevin McGuire, a New Jersey teen with leukemia, to attend the Academy of Country Music Awards as her date. He was too ill to attend, but Swift still keeps tabs on his progress.

She hopes Stand Up to Cancer will motivate fans to “remember somebody they lost, or inspire them to send flowers to somebody they know who’s going through it.”

As our conversation shifts from cancer to Red, I realize that writing this column has made me think of cancer much the way Swift does boyfriends, as rich sources of material that teach hard life lessons. The good that we get out of them — her songs, my stories — helps balance the trouble they cause.

If I had to pick one of Taylor’s boyfriends to represent my cancer, it’d be the self-obsessed bad-mouther of Picture to Burn, the kind you’d like to remove from your life with the strike of a match, or, in my case, the slice of a scalpel. “State the obvious, I didn’t get my perfect fantasy,” Swift sings. “I realize you love yourself more than you could ever love me.” Yeah, that’s pretty much cancer, which does nothing but reproduce itself until it kills its host, to a T.

But maybe my cancer’s going to be the guy in Swift’s latest single: Get rid of him once, he comes back again, and he just won’t get the message. I’d like to think I’ll be rid of him forever, but, right now, I can’t quite share Swift’s insouciant confidence as she tells him off. Believe me, though, there’s nothing I’d like to tell cancer more than We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.

Like, ever.

Music that makes me want to live

Cancer has changed the way I hear music, more than any other life event except my marriage. Songs I once appreciated only on a surface level now strike deep at the core of my soul. Some inspire me; some terrify me. Others that I might have liked before, I’ve got no use for now. I’ve also got more time to listen, whether it’s during my morning exercise time or while lying in a hospital bed. These songs form part of the soundtrack to my cancer story.

1. Make Me New, Rhett Walker Band

2. Empathy, Alanis Morissette

3. Blind Sighted Faith, The Dunwells

4. Give Me Love, Ed Sheeran

5. A Piece of Peace, Dan DeChellis Trio

Next week: Setting new goals