Kris Kristofferson did it all! He wrote songs that made the best songwriters mutter “why do I bother”, smoldering with admiration and love.

 

Flush with details only a seer should know - not someone who’s only been on our planet a mere several decades - his words ritualistically lured you in anti-pop

 

Honesty, humanity, sensuality bolstered by

Everyday ordinary extravagant feelings so deep you could feel their molecular structure simmering beneath taut skin

 

He was the prototype - in the movies - for every bad boy motorcycle-riding rocker many a young girl fell for (including me) and my first love was essentially him with a Russian accent: poet, musician, lover, protector, biker, humble genius

 

I’ve watched innumerable videos of him performing his songs from a young age into his eighties and never not felt something deep while also being able to easily sing along

 

Isn’t that the point of existence? To remind each other that we are all mirrors of the most merciful aspects of ourselves curmudgeons can be lovable the violent can be redeemed with enough

 

Love and optimistic self-belief everyone had a different relationship to your handsomeness to some (Sinead) you must have seemed like a benevolent music-father to others Jim Morrison-esque; spiritual elegance Highwayman

 

Just out of reach the songs the songs the songs

The work ethic, ethical and strong arms holding so many peers and disciples up and up, inside and out you were the voice in some ways,

 

Of Americana if music was the sun -

R I S E

A lot of things happen when you’re on the road

That you don’t necessarily want to process fully until you know

You don’t have to take the stage and avoid falling completely apart

After all people pay good money to see and hear you

Perform confidently with hope and uplift, irrepressible

 

It’s hard, then, not to let tears fall finally when you know

You have time to acknowledge the loss of someone

So gifted, so extraordinary, so altogether

Undeniably transcendent as a human being and artist

Michaela DePrince has been on my mind these last few days

 

I’ve read the articles in the tour van I’ve scrolled

Through the never-enough praise the shock-waves

But I didn’t want to believe it or let it sink in

And the story of her mother passing just before

She could have heard of the loss of her precious daughter

 

It’s too much and now I can’t stop thinking

Why why why and remembering there is no logic

To this fleeting life we lead the most explosive

Things we feel are the ones that seem to bring

Us the most confusion how beauty and grace and inspiration

 

Can evaporate in a heartbeat leaving only remnants of

Commiseration loss is such a conundrum making us

Appreciate life and each other’s uniquely courageous experience

Just in time to remember we are enough until the next

Roller-coaster contrives to shake us with the sheer contradiction of being

 

So alive we feel each other’s hearts beating halfway

Around the world and tears turn us into well-springs of reverential sadness

To this she can attest with every fibre of her itinerant being

She may be the most resolute person you know, and if not then it consoles her

Imagining somewhere out there, plate-spinning, is a kind of doppelganger

 

Her life is rich with friends and neighbors, a loving family,

And a town she calls home transcending any sense of belonging

She ever had before happening upon it. Growing up she was

The only Jew in her class, the only bisexual she thought existed.

 

The only girl who left school early in pursuit of balletic perfection

At the expense of small talk, flirtations, shared hobbies, inebriation

Each train ride into the City was a kind of odyssey – the grownups around her

Oblivious that she was a child, by herself, and trusted to behave and be careful

---

Every day now she interacts with dozens of people

Some may be texting, others whatsapping; occasionally a voicemail or voice note

Breaks the natural barrier that has come to define her sense of truth:

She is a type of warrior and the only person who will defend her is her

 

A survivor of a tumor the "size of a plum" according to the head of oncology

At Mt. Sinai (who also warned her never to drink soy chai lattés again)

A survivor of assault in college like so many female friends - too numerous to count

A survivor of relationship abuse and keeper of too many secrets, too much shame

 

She eventually had to bust wide open, revealing gratitude's triumphant exhilaration

Revering and reviving a quintessential glittering resilience bonding her

Like mercury to a cavity, deep and dark and underneath

All her optimism and all her activism, is a hopeful yearning to be someone entirely free

 

So, you see: her life is almost never lonely

She wishes she could confess to craving to be entwined with someone vs. a hive

She may spin the unlikeliest tranquility you know, and at night it consoles her

Imagining somewhere out there, dream-shimmering, is a kind of soulmate