The following blog was stolen direct from my Myspace blog of the same name. I think it's much more at home here, though.
Sometimes you experience moments in life that are remarkable in their own context, and should only ever be remembered that way. You are about to fall asleep, cozy in your bed, and it begins to rain. The rain on your rooftop keeps you awake just long enough to let you consciously realize just how perfectly content you are right that second... then it lulls you to sleep. This is one example of the kind of moment I hope we've all had - if it's just me, then I finally have cause to feel sorry for all you suckers.
The late, great Mr. Jeff Buckley (God bless his soul) and his music exist wholly in these moments, as I discovered on the tram this morning. My magic music machine chanced upon the devastatingly sexy Everybody Here Wants You, a take from the tragically unfinished Sketches for "My Sweetheart The Drunk" with which Jeff was for some reason unhappy, and although I had heard the song dozens of times before, something about this time was very different. The second that beat kicked off, it was obvious. I was just now, in this moment, hearing what Jeff never felt he could create - the imperfectly perfect rendering of the passion of his soul.
In light of this, it becomes obvious what is magical about Buckley. What from most people comes from training and practice, thoughts and feelings and impulses and putting pen to paper and fingers to frets comes from somewhere else in this particular man. Those things all help him along the way, but what he makes, his art, is spilling from a place untouched by anything human or conscious or tangible. I think this is probably why he suffered from mental illness, alcoholism and died so heartbreakingly young - because something about his construct as a being didn't care for his welfare or life, only for his art. Buckley didn't make music; music made him.
I focus on him because he most recently and fervently took my breath and faith away, but he has not been the only of his kind. Beethoven, Coltrane, Hendrix have all shared very similar traits, ones which I might call spiritual if I believed in such things. Even Mayer, whose brilliance I couldn't overemphasize short of committing suicide out of an inability to coexist alongside it, simply doesn't have what Buckley had. He's built his brilliance, where Buckley had to build himself to express it.
Has anyone ever wondered why Buckley's lover never came over? I often do, when being around such a man must surely have been remarkable, if only on an appreciative level. I'm selfishly glad she didn't; without her absence, the world wouldn't have Buckley's masterpiece to bathe in. But she couldn't have known this, so what's more likely is she knew she was dealing with something that was more than a person, or even a genius, or even a messenger... and she was just too afraid within herself to brave the eternal and touch the face of God.
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