"I'm only here for this moment"

Last week -- Tuesday, to be precise -- marked the 10th anniversary of Jeff Buckley's death.

If you know who he is then maybe you'll get some of this. If you don't, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll still read on and maybe, sometime, give him a listen.

If you're in the later category, here's a little something to get you started, from his website:

Jeff Buckley was born in California's Orange County in 1966 and died in a tragic drowning accident in Memphis on May 29, 1997. He had emerged in New York City's avant-garde club scene in the 1990's as one of the most remarkable musical artists of his generation, acclaimed by audiences, critics, and fellow musicians alike.

Before we begin, yes, I realize just about everything that could be said about the man has already been committed to print or pixel. You can read plenty of those - from more eloquent, more insightful, more informed folks - here. Some of the bloggers who have been writing this week were even fortunate enough to have seen him perform live. (Lucky bastards.) And NPR had some good stuff timed to the anniversary that's worth a listen here.

All that said, bear with me.

I'd planned to write about this earlier. Then life got away from me - it's doing that a lot lately - and I figured the moment had passed. I figured I had nothing to add to the discussion, and, I'm still not sure I do. But this afternoon over beers and babies in the Hovdes' backyard, they mentioned their short stint in Memphis back in the mid '90s. And just like that, Buckley was back in my mind.

Now, with that introduction out of the way, I have to say the brief bio doesn't really begin to do him justice. But it'll serve as our point of departure nonetheless. And, yes, I'll be the first to say I'm sure I'm romanticizing the guy. (But really, isn't that what happens to all dead rock stars?)

For a variety of reasons, I've thought a lot about the anniversary's approach the past few months and its recent arrival. Part of it's what his music means to me - how I found it, who was in my life at the time, where my life was headed, where I am now and how his songs have been a constant through it all. Part of it is the mystique of the man himself - that voice, the ethereal range of "Hallelujah", and that guitar, from those entrancing first notes of "Last Goodbye", undoubtedly. But part of it is also his passion and what would seem to be his pain. And, no doubt, part of it is his death, both for when (at age 30, which I'll begrudgingly turn one week from today) and how (a drowning, like my uncle) it came. But, most of all, I think, it is the spirit that seems to bleed out of what he created - one epic studio album released in his life, and a ton of live and unfinished studio material, released after his death.

For my money or downloading time, there's an unmatched energy in all Buckley's music to create, and in that act of creation to stretch until hitting that spot where all self-consciousness is lost and an innate gut instinct kicks in. It's in that flicker of time that Buckley (and each of us, in those rare moments in whatever may be the pursuits of our own lives) comes utterly unhinged and sweeps himself and everyone around him away in the ecstasy of the moment that is now.

It's just gorgeous and beautiful and, for me, the epitome of the transporting powers of music. Some of the notes that man pushed himself past all natural limits to hit still give me goosebumps even as I listen to it all again tonight for the millionth time. I burned up I-35 between Wichita and Norman in late summer 1999, damn near wearing out my copy of "Grace," windows down in an old Cougar sans A/C. The wind-whipped roar of the Plains was never any match for Buckley's howl and cry as "Last Goodbye" gave way to "Hallelujah," which in turn gave way "Eternal Life" as I fled the remains of one relationship, pulled back into town and quickly found myself falling into the one - the love with Amy - that would lead to our marriage.

To hear people who saw him live tell it, he'd often stop shows and restart songs because they didn't feel right. Because, in essence, although everyone else in the building might have thought he was spot on, he knew within himself that he wasn't quite in that place that he needed to reach to create the moment he wanted to share.

For those who've been lucky enough to have even one of those moments in our life, I think the simple hope for another one is one of the things that keeps us going. I remember as a kid I'd sometimes get so deeply into whatever I was doing that I would get this tingling feeling, this rippling buzz of energy that would just wash over me at those rare instances, those most graceful and fleeting of gifts life occasionally gives us.

It's rarer still, I think, to see one captured on film. That's why I keep this - from the liner notes of the appropriately named "Grace", Buckley's one studio album released while he was still alive - on my desk wherever I work.

I love that picture. His head is thrown back, his eyes are shut, he's bathed in the light, the rhythm guitar player on the far left is following his lead and the drummer on the right is poised for the next cue Buckley would deliver by the simple nod of his head. He's creating, he's guiding, he's magnetic. He's a force in and of himself. And, beneath it all, rests the image of a clock, ticking ever forward, toward whatever end may await us all, someday, somewhere, sometime, as a reminder to do it - whatever it may be for each of us - now.

Those moments seem harder to come by as I get older. But they're every bit as electric and heavenly, if you will, when they do present themselves. (Whoever created this, which I love, apparently sees a little otherworldliness in Buckley, too.)

All this from the man who wrote, as that NPR piece mentions, what might as well have been his own epitaph, from "So Real."

I couldn't awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under

But it's also the man who sang - as fittingly closes disc two of the posthumously released "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk" - "Satisfied Mind."

When my life is over and my time has run out,
my friends and my loved ones, I will leave there's no doubt.
But one thing's for certain, when it comes my time,
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.

May we all be so lucky.