I'll Be Your Muse

Merri Cyr

I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks

Jeff Buckley was the purity that the music industry needed in the early 90's . He was raw, emotional, talented and vulnerable. For those lucky ones to have seen him perform at Sin-e, it must have been magic. He was a perfectionist - keeping so many recordings to himself only to be found after his untimely passing 17 years ago . All of those recordings remastered by others - would they have been good enough for him?

Jeff was becoming a star - much probably to his dismay. His desire was to be an artist. However, this artist was being talked about by those he called inspirations - Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page.

Where would he be today? With the world in such disarray - misconstrued values and the state of music in an odd place - would he be at the forefront of the few who have their own ideas and visions of sound?

Yes - Jeff haunted me in my dreams - and he is welcome back at any time - for Jeff has a place in my life. Albeit, this time you don't have to live under my bed. When I listen to his music, I am taken back to the shores of Australia. I can taste the bitter heartbreak of a naive love, smell the eucalyptus in the early morning, and feel the hot sun on those salty ocean days. He transports me to a memory and a time when YouTube didn't exist and visions are captured only in my mind.

On May 29, 1997 the Mississippi took the soul of a musician and offered his body to the shore at Beale Street - as a last testament to the musician he had become maybe. When I walk past St. Anne's in the morning, I imagine Jeff singing at the memorial for his father all those years ago. Jeff was a Wished for Song.

You're song

A Wished for Song

Go through the ear to the center

where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout

where you do your work.

~Jelaluddin Rumi