Love (JB road diaries x Daughter)
Audio: Daughter – Love (Live on KEXP 2012) https://youtu.be/MwFTBgeslF0
Video: Jeff Buckley – Road Diaries by Merri Cyr https://vimeo.com/3755575
LYRICS
I can't forget it Though I've tried I know you regret it, love You told me so many times
But I still wonder Why You left with her And left me behind
Take your hands off him 'Cause he's the only one that I have ever loved And please don't find her skin When you turn the lights off
I can't erase it From my mind I just replay it, love Think of it all of the time But I don't want to imagine Words you spoke to her that night Naked bodies look like porcelain You both knew I'd be bleeding inside
Did she make your heart beat faster than I could? Did she give you what you hoped for? Oh nights of loveless love, I hope it made you feel good Knowing how much I adored you (You're making me sick, love)
6 Music Artist Collection | Jeff Buckley Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGk4K-xOaT4
Merri Cyr
39:54 – ...just gave me such a feeling of his vulnerability and I just felt like I just wanted to protect him so much, I mean that's the feeling he evoked from me . . . I don't know, thinking of about it is kind of making me tear up he just felt like he needed protection.
1:11:49 – I increasingly felt like, as I knew him, that his origin story overwhelmed his current life to certain degree that he was kind of living out a predestined existence...
1:12:47 – He was always insecure, he was always angry about that abandonment from his father. You know, Jeff lived in a state of perpetually feeling he was unloved ...and it was awful to see that. It didn't matter how much you loved him or whether you fell in love with him or tried to love him.
He leaned forward, looking pained. “Are you going to die on me?” he asked, choking up. And then he asked me what he really wanted to know: “Are you going to leave me like everybody does?”
What Jeff wanted and what he needed were two different things. On one level he had to control everybody; on another he didn’t respect you if you didn’t stand up to him and fight back when he bullied you.
He kissed her goodbye, and I saw a look on her face I would come to recognize on the faces of people who had an intimate encounter with Jeff—a look both besotted and bereft as he walked out of their lives. I bundled him into his room. I was furious.
When you’re intimate with somebody, you can only really know yourself through them. If there’s some kind of malice in the eyes through which you know yourself, if there’s something unresolved, that can be painful.”
“Well, there’s something he’d like to tell you,” she said. “He didn’t mean to do it, but he didn’t fight it. And he also says he’s happy, everything’s fine, he’s in a good place, and he doesn’t blame you for anything, and he wants you to move on.”
And, finally freed from the weight of my time with Jeff, I pondered why we had put ourselves through it all. A warm autumn rain started to fall on me, and I realized I already knew the answer. I heard Jeff saying it one last time: “It’s about the music, stupid.”
From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye
‘I felt sometimes he really could be suicidal; there were times when I wasn’t sure he was going to be OK, and he said, “No, I’m going to survive this.” So I felt OK, he was going to make it. When he died, whether it was an accident or not, I was so angry that he’d checked out. Who knows what he was thinking that day; maybe he’d had enough of this planet. I think people are on this planet as long as they want to be. To me, it was like, “You chicken”.’
He’d piss you off and you’d be like, “Fuck off, I’m not going to talk to you anymore, you dick”. That was how I felt about him at the time it came to shoot the Sin-E cover: “Ah, fuck that guy, he’s an arsehole”.’
It’s not surprising that Buckley displayed the many sides of his temperament to Cyr early on; the relationship between a ‘star’ and a photographer can be both intimate and highly volatile.
For several days, she’d come home to her apartment and find yet another message from Buckley on her answering machine: ‘Merri, Merri,’ he’d implore in a sing-songy voice, ‘you have to call me right away about this Sony thing on Monday.’ She was pissed off at Buckley at the time, but finally caved after he’d left something like 10 messages in a row, all with the same request: ‘Please come to Sin-E’
“It was a conflict for me, as I didn’t want to be perceived as a groupie. I wanted to be seen as a photographer,” says Merri. “When he tried to be openly affectionate with me in front of the other guys, it made me feel awkward. I was there to take pictures. I didn’t want to be his girlfriend if it diminished my professionalism.”
“He was only interested in making music. He turned down a lot of things. Every relationship he ever had, he undertook somehow with the music in mind. He’d make trouble so that he could write a song about it.
His life was Oedipal, losing and regaining the kingdom; he was living out a mythological existence.”
“As much as I wanted to kill him half the time, I did love him very much...He was my muse.”
“In tarot there’s a symbol for a magician; he’s holding up a wand and electricity is coming from the sky down through his body, and it’s something akin to being a conduit as opposed to being in control of energy. Jeff was the conduit for this energy, and then it would come out into this audience. I don’t think that’s how he saw it, but that’s how I saw him, as a conduit to an energy greater than himself. He felt he was the creator of whatever it was that was coming through him, more conjurer than conduit. But I definitely felt some kind of divine energy coming down as well, because it was bigger than him.”