Don't you be blue

Music brought us together.

I remember pecking out the cords from "We're all alone" and singing the words quietly in the practice room. You picked up a guitar and joined me. You had a warm smile and deep dark eyes. We liked you instantly and invited you to our home. We played music together. You and my husband strumming while I sang. There was joy and companionship and we all laughed so easily.

You had a dream of building a recording studio in your garage. My husband had a dream of being a recording engineer. You realized those dreams together. I was the model for your marketing, a stark contrast shot showing my curls framing a white face, eyes closed, mouth open next to a bulbous microphone. Brainstorm Studios we called that small wooden walled space. At the time, you were our best friend - we were so new to California - so green - so open.

We met your girlfriend, your mistress and everyone else that was in orbit around you. We had front row seats as you dove headfirst into drugs and sex. You were almost satisfied, but the high you sought seems always just out of your reach. The songs you wrote were disjointed and depressing. You wanted fame. You wanted to be the center. But you were like a spinning top as begins to wobble and then lurch before finally falling on its side in a slow final spin.

It became a joke, your coming on to me - begging me to have sex with you. But I'd seen the others that had. You spared nothing in your descriptions of the intimate and often perverted details that you kept from your girlfriend. Cheating was just another high for you. Did you really think that you were hiding anything? The Vaseline covered mirror...the naked women napping in your guest room...Qualludes, mushrooms, pot, speed, cocaine... your growing fascination with death coupled with your growing need for the ultimate high - the ultimate sex - the ultimate look inside yourself.

I was young - I took your mistress from you and made her my own. You never knew we were together, but we knew your fantasy to have sex with both of us. You'd told us so when you'd introduced us.

Your girlfriend left when you moved into the new recording studio. You took up residence in an attic space you created for yourself and your fantasies. No longer was anyone policing your desires. You painted sky on the ceiling of your "bed" room and piped in the sound of the ocean. You created a "red" room where you sampled drugs and seemed to disappear into the flashing red lights and walls.

Life went on below you. The studio was always busy with musicians and artists coming and going. I recorded my song "Don't you be blue" there.

Don't you be blue
Just bubble up all that is hiding inside of you
Cuz whenever you're blue baby you know
I be blue too... with you
And don't you be sad
No matter how bad it may be you can always be glad that
Whenever you're blue baby you know
I be blue too

I hear there's sunshine outside
Though clouds are forming around your head
Don't let those blues close your mind
You better be silly willy instead

Don't you be blue
Just bubble up all that is hiding inside of you
Cuz whenever you're blue baby you know
I be blue too
Oh yeah whenever you're blue baby you know
I be blue too

It was a magical time in a magical place. We made beautiful music and partied with friends. It was the best time of our lives until you started seeing the psychic. Your constant searching, she said, was because the love of your life had passed before you met her. She told you how you would meet her on the other side - that she was waiting for you to join her. You spoke to this "love" through the psychic and she became the focus of your life. There was a date on your calendar circled in red - you told all of us that on that day you would die and be with your love forever. The day came and went. You lived.

You were a shell, a hulk of flesh - hollowed eyes, stumbling about - a ruined man. We all tried to connect with you, but you let none of us in. The refuge you created above the studio became your cell and you paced it like a wild animal.

You were on the phone with your ex-girlfriend when it ended. The psychic had told you the window to meet the love of your life was closing. She would be reborn without you. You had to catch up. It was sick - what she filled your head with. Even sicker what you filled your own head with. What was left of it was found on the floor near your body and the shotgun you'd used. Your bloody mess was one with the red spinning lights in the red room.

I will never forget the grit of your bones and ash in my hand as we tossed you to the wind.