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Outstretched on a rock and under an empty moon I lay, mesmerized in the multitude of stars that whitewashed the night sky from end to end. In the passing of satellites overhead I could hear pieces of Mike Watt's version of "Walking the Cow." "...and the stars...in your eyes..." Gibran danced on the periphery. As I closed my eyes to trace the constellations on the back of my eyelids, Time slowly began to unravel. And inside that brief moment I caught the irony unfolding and struggled desperately to hold onto it as best I could.

For too long I'd fought to find reason and the means to hate those and that which I could never change instead of seeking reconciliation--not with them, but with myself. For too long I'd banged my head against the wall like some mad bugger, hoping for enlightenment when all I really got out of it was splitting heartache. The truth was that I still cared very deeply, and that feeling would never change. In recognizing the paradox I could find forgiveness--not for her, but for myself.

I opened my eyes and Watt was still twirling in my head. "...and the stars...in your eyes..." I left the desert a stronger person--or so I thought.

"In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands and ate of it. I said: 'Is it good, friend?' 'It is bitter-bitter,' he answered; 'But I like it. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.'" --Stephen Crane.

That transition and acceptance ultimately made the death of my second friend a bit more bearable when her time came. For the next year I focused on this magazine, and for the first time in a long while I felt at peace with myself. I'd been shown passion. More importantly, I'd been shown how much it can hurt and how much it can heal. In the spaces between I thought often of my former lover; the love I'd had and the love I still felt. I didn't pine for her, nor did I seek her out, but quietly wished her well; wished her happiness and wished her the strength to find forgiveness for herself. When we were together I used to make her tapes of all types of music, and now when I found myself confronted by a jukebox at a bar I picked out something in her memory. Always with a bit of snideness couched in a whole lot of heart, it usually ended up being (where possible) Sugar's "A Good Idea." Later I would find out that she had been playing songs herself--her choice being PJ Harvey's "Water." Time moved forward and I moved on, and as best I could I tried to make each step a leaning into the light; each goodbye a hello.

Then in July of '99 while attending WOMAD USA I received another phone call, this one from my father. His father, my grandfather, had passed away. I was speechless. At 92 and with health in decline for several years now, Death's final move on the chess board came as no surprise really. What was difficult was the fact that my grandfather was such a legendary figure, not only in the family, but in the hearts of those who toiled in the surrounding fields of southern Idaho where he had grown up and grown old. His absence was noticeably felt in a void of the heart that I cannot describe with words. His influence and his example are inextricably linked to my family's heritage, and his noble spirit defined my father's character. In eulogy, I wrote: "Never was there a more chivalrous knight who wore a cowboy hat. His word was his honor and his honor was his life. The stories of his hard work ethic and indomitable character are legendary, having been passed down from father to son by example. Journey in peace and may your memory live on in the deeds of those who follow."

My last memory of my grandfather was of him holding a black and white picture--taken almost sixty years previously--of he and my grandmother standing in front of a rosebush outside their small house. "This picture means more to me than anything else in the world," he said, hands trembling and voice choked with emotion. "More than anything." Unable to find words to console my father, the last words he spoke to me before hanging up the phone were, "I never said goodbye."

"You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?" --Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.

Trying to find some emotional and mental space to sift through my thoughts, I stepped into a tent on the festival grounds, sat down and let my heart wander inside the sounds of Djivan Gasparyan. One of Armenia's greatest musicians, Gasparyan is a master of the "doudouk," an oboe-like instrument whose range, while only one octave, still requires considerable mastery to play. Its beautiful sound is one of utter lament, and in the hands of a master I let myself go in its music and silently mourned my grandfather.

As Earpollution's wordsmith Mark Teppo mentioned in "The Hour of Seduction," Peter Gabriel's Passion is an emotional work of art whose effect on mood and love can only be described as "masterful." Drawing from a deep well of ethnic music and expanding on the musical themes raised in the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, the sounds Gabriel surrounded himself with tug on every heartstring. But as much as it is a love album, Passion is also an album of mourning. As I struggled to find peace for my grandfather I delved deeper, past Passion and to the sources that inspired Gabriel's work.

"Song of Complaint" is an instrumental adaptation of "The Song of the Emigrant," a song of sorrow describing the forced emigration of a peasant on account of his poverty. The theme and the music's mournful doudouk reminded of the stories my grandfather used to tell regarding his grandparents' pilgrimage by handcart across the plains to the rolling foothills of Idaho. The other song I chose in his memory was Patti Page's rendition of "The Tennessee Waltz." The timbre of this particular recording, fused with the fact that it fairly well reflects the story of how my grandfather met my grandmother so many years before, made it a magic whose heartbreak I couldn't pass up.

As I left the music of Djivan Gasparyan my thoughts followed me. Inside the beer garden trying to unwind from several days of covering WOMAD, consumed with the death of my grandfather and with several beers coursing through my body, I looked up from a conversation I was only half paying attention to and saw, sitting several tables away, the woman whom I'd loved so dearly and whom I'd not seen or spoken to in over two years. My dyslexic heart beat so fervently that I thought the whole world could hear the sound of its massive drumming.

"I need more / to talk to you so bad / so bad I could cry again, just like last time / Don't cry anymore / don't cry anymore / I don't think so anymore / You'll do it again / I don't mind / it's a waste of time." --Bob Mould, "Anymore Time Between."

The encounter at the beer garden was mere chance. It took a carrier pigeon with a poem wrapped 'round its ankle and then another three weeks before we both came around, sat down and talked to one another. And even though we spoke of what had happened between us, there were no apologies; none seemed necessary anymore. We both had come to terms and we both had moved on. Now there was just a genuine happiness at seeing the other, and seeing the other doing well. We talked, we laughed, and we shared the unspoken intimacy that had brought us together in the first place so long ago.

And then, almost without notice, Time seemed to hiccup. Neither of us had intended it, but there was an undeniable fire of passion that still burned between us. As much as I longed for her in the days between I never seriously thought we would find ourselves back together. But in the space it took for my senses to reel at her sweet beauty, and a small sigh of exasperation to escape her delicate lips, we were back in the comfort of each other's arms as if we'd never parted; as if it were the most perfect thing in an imperfect world.

"If anything is imperfect in this world...Love is perfect in its imperfection." --Squire Jons, The Seventh Seal.

Life was beautiful. I felt both happy and whole and completely intoxicated by the fact that Gibran's poem on beauty being the path, not a destination, had led me back to her. Anything and everything seemed possible again. I wrote poetry in her dreams and she danced for me in the stars, each one twinkling as she delicately tiptoed across the night sky, floating gently down to rest her head against the boom-boom-boom of my heart. I couldn't explain to friends why we were back together. How would I? When you can forgive the person that hurt you most, when you can run your fingers across that scar on your soul that marks their passing and smile with honesty, words defy explanation.

And then, one morning after several months of being together, I awoke from my dream to find Time once again moving mercilessly forward with its cold and emotionless precision. I recognized too late the chess board I had been seated in front of, and sadly realized the inevitable outcome I was playing against.

"The world was not destroyed by fire, nor by ice. But by the weight of a billion dishonesties. Some small, some insufferably great." --Author unknown.

She was gone. Where I once traced her beautiful form I now ran my fingers over a second scar she'd left on my soul. We'd admittedly been in decline for some time, but while I struggled to hold onto what we had in the belief things could be better, she struggled to release herself from something that admittedly meant too much to her; something she was unsure she was prepared for. As with the first time, I instinctively responded by pushing harder, vainly thinking that my effort could, as well, double for hers. In the process she cut me the only way she knew how: with dishonesty and with indifference. I reeled and railed and refused to accept that Love could have so much potential and still, of all the ways it could end, be relinquished in the name of self-protection, which, as before, came disguised as selfishness. I found the words of writer Gene Wolfe turning over and again in my head: "That which we are capable only of being remains our unforgivable sin." The stars came tumbling out of the heavens and the sky fell on me.

"How the sea looked like lead / Flat as the sky and just as dead--when everything we loved came to an end / But there's no consolation anyone can possibly give / You must have done something right / I'll be damned if I know what it is / But that's how you win...that's how you win." --Juno, "The Sea Looked Like Lead."

I struggled to find peace. And in the process began looking back on where life had taken me since she and I had first met. As I stepped through the lives of these four people who had never met and marveled at how their paths had intertwined through one another, and as I meditated on the memory and influence of each, I began to understand what sacrifice really meant and slowly realized that it was not enough to simply grasp the irony and accept it. The true measure of a person comes in living that paradox out with unrequited love; making one's actions--one's life--"a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

I admitted to myself what I was most afraid of: that I still loved her. That if I were to stand again at the crossroads where our lives and hearts first touched, I would do it all over again and without hesitation, knowing full well the jagged and unforgiving cliffs that course might lead to. I had walked though Hell (both externally and internally) for her love, and such was its beauty that I would do so again. Why? Because there are those whose lives touch you so deeply and in such a way that you would take a bullet for them, even if they were the one holding the gun. And so, realizing that I was Pagliacci, I turned and began to heal myself, and in doing so turned her last goodbye into a hello.

"When you pass through humble, when you pass through sickly / When you pass through I'm better than you all / When you pass through anger and self deprecation, and have the strength to acknowledge it all / When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic that let you survive your own war / You find that that fire is passion, and there's a door up ahead not a wall." --Lou Reed, "Magic and Loss (The Summation)."

And so in putting together this difficult soundtrack it became important that it not be a lament, but instead a requiem. These four people who have touched my life so dearly deserve such unrequited love, and these words and music are in honor of that spirit. My life and my stories are no different than anyone else's. I don't pretend to have the answers and I'm not sure any longer if that's what I'm really searching for. Kahlil Gibran's words on beauty being your way and your guide reaffirm that faith in me daily.

What I do know is that loss in a myriad of forms is an inevitability we all will face at different times and for different reasons. While it's not something to look forward to or embrace, what we take from it and how we better ourselves because of it is important. Because it is upon that love that we will find the magic in loss, and ultimately the strength to make our life, in the face of such contradiction, a worthy expression of leaning into the light. What's good? Life's good--but not fair at all. Because there's a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out.

"Better than a hundred years of ignorance
Is one day spent in reflection
Better than a hundred years of idleness
Is one day spent in determination
Better to live one day wondering
How all things arise and pass away
Better to live one hour seeing
The one life beyond the way."
--The Buddha

The Hour of Magic and Loss
         (for Agnis--The Spirit)

"Dorita (The Spirit)"  Lou Reed  Magic and Loss
"What's Good (The Thesis)"  Lou Reed  Magic and Loss
"CODY"  Mogwai  Come On Die Young
"January Arms"  Juno  This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes
"Damage"  Yo La Tengo  I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
"Message Personnel"  Dot Allison  Afterglow
"Hallelujah"  Jeff Buckley  Grace
"Song of Complaint"  Antranik Askarian/Khatchadour Khatchaturian  Passion Sources
"Tennessee Waltz"  Patti Page  Tennessee Waltz
"Walking the Cow"  fIREHOSE  Flyin' the Flannel
"Desert Days"  Les Thugs  As Happy As Possible
"The Sea Looked Like Lead"  Juno  This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes
"Eventually"  Kill, Switch...Klick  deGENERATE
"Anymore Time Between"  Bob Mould  Bob Mould
Lyrics from "Magic and Loss (The Summation)"  Lou Reed  Magic and Loss

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