Time

To understand someone is the deepest intimacy, to not believe in them leaves the deepest loneliness.

A few things have happened lately that are weighing heavily. A man posted recently on Facebook that he had attended Justin’s US fall 24 concert, that it was magical as always but the group had placed extra emphasis on “You and Me”.

In it are the lyrics “you and me just cannot fail if we never, ever stop.”

Of course this has meaning for everyone who cares for the earth, cares for humanity, but for Justin it is much more personal. Apart from his love of performing, it’s the reason he is still touring at 78 years old. If you have read all my previous posts, you will understand.

“You’re an ocean full of faces, and you know that we believe. We’re just a wave that drifts around you, singing all our hopes and dreams.”

Of course this was sung when the Moodies were still together, when they still believed that Justin would show the world that love survives death, and that they, by extension would be graced as well.

But the fact that Justin emphasized it shows that he has still not given up, but that time is a great weight hanging over him. It is frightening to think of, but three of the five members of the Moody Blues are dead. We could lose Justin too.

There was a very good interview also recently posted on GuitarPlayer.com by Glenn Shapiro (thank you Glenn). In it Justin addresses the sometimes strange and otherworldly lyrics that only fit our situation, but that he is, sadly, not prepared to be candid about.

“The Voice” is another song that means a lot to me, every word. But don’t ask me to explain it, please. It just means a lot.”

Regarding Nights: “Every word in that song makes perfect sense to me, but trying to explain it to someone is difficult. I mean, I lived every one of the lines in that song.”

I urge you to watch Sammy Sultan’s interview again, when Justin is asked “Why ‘In your Blue Eyes’?”

I urge you to listen with your heart so that you can truly understand the man, not from your life’s perspective, but from his.

Watching and Waiting

The truth is often the body that floats to the surface, long after the searchers are gone.

It’s a new year, and like the others before it, it brings with it hope. The failed outcomes of the year before fall into the “should have been” file, and we move forward, all of us, toward the dreams yet unfulfilled.

With Graeme’s passing in November of last year, Justin lost not only a dear friend and lifelong colleague, he lost the redemption he’s been waiting for since his early twenties. He lost the opportunity to say to his friend “See? I’m not crazy. All the dedication you put into our music on my behalf has now paid off. We – you, John, Mike, Ray and me – we’ve done it. We’ve proven to the world that death is not the end but instead the open door to the resting place, the learning place, where we all assess and absorb, ready to make our next entrance into the world as better people than we were before.”

I know that the losses of Ray and then Graeme have brought him great sadness, and even more frustration than before.

We can only hope that with death comes greater understanding, and with that some divine help.

And thinking about that I wonder what control we all have over our lives. Both Justin and I remember the purpose with which we were sent into this life, and yet we, despite years of effort, have not fully realized it. How much does free will count for? How much is decided before we’re born? What is our fate to be?

It may be a moot point, in that Justin did receive my note July 4th, 2010, albeit too late for us to meet. He did produce Spirits quickly thereafter and stress over and over that it was a labour of love, that those things needed to be said. “Other restless spirits cry for the dreams that pass them by, but we were mortal – you and I – we were going down. As I loved you then I knew I had lost you – I’d lost you, like the crystal mountain dew in the sunshine. Cos I remember the days when we swore we would always be true. What on earth am I supposed to do?”.

“I would have given you the world to stay. If I’d only known what I know today.” What forces were at play that evening when I’d arranged with the stage manager to meet with Justin? When he came to look for me as I drove away? To talk with him about our past.

That’s all I want to do.

I don’t want to disrupt his life. I wouldn’t hurt his family for the world. I don’t need his money. I am comfortably well off on my own, well loved and surrounded by a cherished family. And his fame has never been something I sought. Ironically it is the thing that brought him back to me and yet still holds us apart.

I know I should be content with the fact that I know and he knows, but the spirit of the Guardian, that glowing, loving but authoritative figure (that I think we all see but can’t remember) still pushes me to make it known to the world. And so I continue to bear disbelief and even abuse, because I know it to be true.

(If none of this makes any sense to you, dear reader, scroll down to the bottom and make your way back up. To those loyal followers, thank you. Together we will see its fruition, someday.)

Nostradamus

In order to understand how Nostradamus and Justin Hayward are connected, you must first understand that his plight, his motivation, could not remain secret no matter how much he wished it to be so.

The other members of the Moody Blues learned of it early, and before long were contributing to the effort with their own songwriting. There are too many examples to list here, but some that you will recognize immediately are Candle of Life with John collaborating, his Isn’t Life Strange, and It May be a Fire, Ray Thomas’s For My Lady, Graeme Edge’s After You Came, Mike Pinder’s One Step Into the Light.

The British music scene was tight, with bands meeting at The Bag o’ Nails and other pubs as well as flowing in and out of each others’ recording studios. And so Justin’s strange story became known.

Songwriters are feeling people. Their success depends on it. And so it was natural that some of those more intuitive and compassionate writers and performers took on his quest and made it their own through their music. It’s my belief that Peter Gabriel wrote In Your Eyes and Mercy Street with Justin’s story in mind, and later, in 1992 released US with its evocative cover of a man (Gabriel) chasing the ghostly figure of a woman. On it are Steam, Come Talk to Me, and Kiss That Frog. Give them a listen.

In that period of grace that I found myself in (see previous posts) – around 1992 through ’94, many such efforts came out. Whether Justin actually spoke to the artists I can’t say, but there seemed to be some collective consciousness, a subtle vibration that those sensitive people (including others not in the musical industry, like James Cameron who launched his epic effort to create his film Titanic) picked up on. Phil Collins was one of those.

I quote his notes on his album Both Sides: “This is the first time I’ve ever written sleeve notes for one of my albums. The reason I write them now is to give the listener a direction or to maybe explain what the songs are about. Songs are all things to all people but sometimes the wrong path is taken and the misinterpretation stays with you forever. This batch of songs crept up behind me during the last few months of ’92 and the first half of ’93.”

Precisely when the knowledge came to me.

Was he referencing Justin’s frustration and despair, so clearly painted on his face as he sang New Horizons at Red Rocks, September 9th, 1992?

Both Sides is filled with the story: Everyday, Can’t Turn Back the Years, Can’t Find My Way, but most notably, especially, in Survivors, where the printed lyrics read “No I never meant to cause you pain, no I never meant to hurt you” but he actually sings (listen closely) “No I never meant to cause you thaed” – which is death – backwards. He also says at one point “Survivors in THEIR night” as if making a nod to the fact that this was not his story, but Justin’s.

And We Fly So Close. In this song his empathy is so touching it tears at the heart.

In November 1993 a hauntingly beautiful album was launched by Andreas Vollenweider featuring Eliza Gilkyson, called Eolian Minstel. The name itself speaks volumes – eolian meaning borne by the wind – but the songs within it tell our tale from both sides of the story, with a mention in the notes of a person behind the scenes. It’s quite possible that, knowing how much I loved Andreas’s music, Justin spoke with him about the fact that he couldn’t reach me – in another attempt to overcome what he perceived was my misinterpretation of his songs, as Phil alluded to.

And then there’s Sting – with his evocative story telling skills. There are many examples but the one that speaks most clearly is Fields of Gold. “You’ll remember me when the west wind blows among the fields of barley…” He echoes Justin’s descriptions of heaven: the golden meadows and luminous light. In it he hopes the sight of golden fields here on earth will spark the memory. The “jealous sun” is our sun, jealous because it can’t compete with the light of heaven. It is an odd song among love songs, but it speaks directly to our strange situation and has given me much comfort.

Years later Sting wrote A Thousand Years. A mysterious song. Give it a listen.

There are more artists, possibly even the Beatles. Less crazy than you may think, given the fact that Mike Pinder was a frequent visitor to their studio. But I won’t labour the point.

How does this factor into any connection to Nostradamus beyond Justin’s song about him? Next post.

There are so many conspiracy theories out there right now I recognize the need for skepticism, but I do thank you for your open mind as I unwind this story.

Going Home

Welcome back, and thank you to those faithful followers who have checked back regularly (hello Germany, Finland, China and the others). I apologize for taking so long to continue – it has been a trying time for us all.

If you are joining me for the first time, be sure to scroll right down to the bottom – Justin’s story is there. Then work your way up to join us here.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Self-deception is the ego’s trip wire, and so in the weeks, months and years that followed I bought every Moody Blues album I could find and listened with a skeptic’s mind to disprove what my heart and soul acknowledged. But I found the opposite, as you might if you choose to do the same. Almost every song, written by Justin or the other members of the Moody Blues, confirmed it, albeit with some projecting forward to a successful outcome. If you’ve ever wondered about some of the mysteries in their music – some of the thoughts that are expressed that don’t quite make sense in the context of everyday life as most of us know it – you will know that I speak the truth.

I was struck by the extraordinary strength it took for Justin to persevere against all odds for all those years, and the love and loyalty that Mike, John, Graeme and Ray showed toward him.

A year went by. I kept my silence while I carried on with my life – caring for my husband and children – but I was exhausted by the effort it took to keep my two worlds separate and safe from each other.

But of course that was impossible. My husband demanded to know what was going on. I knew that once I began to speak nothing between us would ever be the same. He would never see me as the person he knew so well again. I would have to hurt the man who had done nothing but love me well since I was sixteen years old.

It was agonizing, as you might imagine. He reacted as anyone would but in the end he held me close and promised to help. If I could prove it he would change his thoughts about life, about love, about death.

If I died on the Titanic, then who was I? He wanted to know. He said I should know that, if reincarnation was real.

But I didn’t know for sure. I only had a vague notion that we had been on honeymoon. That I had chosen to stay with my husband. I was deathly afraid to think that I had had children – that they had drowned and I hadn’t been able to save them.

My husband, sons and I traveled to Halifax and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic where I donned white gloves and was ushered up into the freezing room where they keep the archives. A woman in a steely grey suit and sensible shoes chatted as we rode the elevator and made our way down the hallway. “Halifax of course played such a vital role in the Titanic disaster,” she said. “We sent the MacKay Bennett to retrieve the bodies and set up a morgue to receive and process them. Gruesome task. Some of them just babies. They say the tarpaulins over the bodies rose and flapped with the wind and the motion of the ship as she came back to the harbour. Made them seem to still be alive. A good many bodies are in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery here in Halifax, but I guess you already know that, as you’re doing research. Anyway, here we are.” She lay a large volume on the steel table, and looked at me sternly. “Here is the ship’s manifest. Handle it carefully. You have twenty minutes. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

As I scrolled down the list of passenger names – I felt sure we had been in second class and some references in the music suggested the same – my finger lit upon the name Benjamin Howard. I looked across at the point of origin – Swindon, Wiltshire. Justin was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, backing onto the tracks of the Great Western Railway. I looked at the profession listed. Mr. Howard worked for the GWR!

My mind leapt to the possibility of a grand design. What if Justin had been reborn right back where he had lived before? What if the familiarity of the surroundings were designed to help him bring the possibility of reincarnation to the world?

Some time later I flew to England and drove to the Maritime Museum in Southhampton. The Titanic left from that port in 1912 and the museum there had a large exhibit. It was there that I found out that Benjamin Howard’s wife’s maiden name was Truelove. Ellen Truelove. Surely this was the universe telling it’s story.

I was seduced by the simplicity and beauty of this answer for many years, but all the while I felt unsettled. I let all sorts of fantasies cloud my own feelings – (the common letters in both Benjamin Howard and Justin Hayward are “in” and “ward” – surely the word “inward” was significant – and other things of that ilk.)

And that left me to relive all the deaths of the people on that passenger list. Had I been Augusta Goodwin, scrambling to gather all her six children to her as the crowd pressed against the cages that kept them locked in steerage? “Frederick, for God’s sake make them open the gates! Let us out! Don’t be afraid my darlings, Mother’s here. Frederick!” Had I held Sidney, my infant son out of the freezing water as long as I could? Did I fear that I might die first and drop his tiny body in the sea?

Or was I Bess Allison, holding my five year old daughter’s hand and frantically searching for my little son, Trevor. “Come out of the boat, Lorraine. Yes, out of the lifeboat. We must find your father and that blasted nurse. She has your brother and I don’t know where she’s taken him! Hudson! Hudson! Trevor!”

Over 1,500 people died that night on the flat stillness of the north Atlantic, under a sky studded with stars. Justin and I had been two of them, I felt sure of that. But who?

In Saved by the Music by Justin and John on Blue Jays they sing “This time I’m saved by the music – saved by the song we can sing – the song that you bring.” The band played well on until they could stand on the slanting deck no longer on that fateful night in 1912, but could save no one. Of course no one ever figured that the Titanic would be found, as Justin mentioned in You – again on Blue Jays. “I- I believe what is lost forever has brought the change in me.”

But Dr. Robert Ballard did find the ship, and by some strange cosmic alignment, James Cameron at precisely that time made a film about it. I slipped away while the boys were in school and my husband was at work and sat, shivering in an icy cold theater watching the frigid water race down the hallways. Watched the bodies float by the Grand Staircase. Watched the ship stand on end and then plummet to the sea. Still I felt like I had amnesia.

It was years later as I drove to Cornwall, Ontario to lay the ashes of my mother-in-law that the answer came to me. Her name – Isabelle Sarah – had always haunted me. Sarah. And I remembered how I’d felt in another Cornwall all those years ago when I’d first stepped onto English soil in this life. A sense of coming home.

And then I knew. I was Sarah Elizabeth Lawry, lately married to John Chapman. We had lived in St. Neot, Cornwall. It made sense. As a child I had named my doll Elizabeth. I called the statue in the garden Elizabeth. I had been Sarah Elizabeth Chapman. John had always called me Lizzie.

I finally felt settled.

It seems that John and I had stood by the rail that night and watched the lifeboats being loaded. But when it came my turn to step in I turned back, saying “If John can’t go, I won’t either.”

So many questions. Was I really that brave? Or had I felt safer on the ship with him than in the lifeboat? Had he cajoled me into staying? I sometimes think that he believes that, and that this demand put upon us, this dedicating his life to finding me is somehow, in his mind, karma. A life for a life.

I don’t feel that way. I hope someday to tell him so.

Until next time…. thank you for joining me.

And Now, The Other Side

(Please view my previous posts if you are just joining me and have not read the first side of this saga.)

As I walked toward the tombstone on that summer day the matted grasses that covered the graves felt spongy beneath my feet, and with each step a smell like hot hay wafted upward. My mother stood beside me, her fist pressed hard against her mouth. “So you think that this was you?” she asked, as I traced the lichen encrusted letters of our names with my finger. I nodded, though I knew our bodies weren’t there. My husband’s was buried an ocean away, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mine had been swallowed by the sea.

It had taken me nearly a century to come home to this small village in Cornwall, England. It was a journey undertaken with no roadmap or chart to guide me. Nothing, except vague memories, and a voice.

This is my truth.

——————–

Justin once quoted Emily Dickinson, who said “the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind.” That was certainly the case in my life.

Sometime before I was born, I was summoned. I was filled with anticipation as I appeared before the being of light, who I have always called the Guardian. We were at a great height I sensed was characterized by knowledge and not necessarily physical altitude. He glowed with an effervescent love and authority as he mapped out the life that lay ahead of me in thoughts without words.

But it wasn’t the one I had anticipated.

I resisted, pleaded, but his authority was absolute. Finally I acquiesced. He then gave me a sense of compensation, and then images: pumpkins and a rail fence, and a house within a copse of trees at the end of a sloping drive.

I was sent to the Forgetting.

But I didn’t forget.

Somewhere, down deep, I remembered.

—————-

I was born on February 22nd, 1954, in Toronto. I was a sensitive child who imagined I could feel the vibrations of the rocks and the trees. I was sometimes overwhelmed by an inexplicable sadness, which mystified my parents as I was born into a privileged, loving home. I spent my summers on Georgian Bay – a huge inland sea – and that great expanse of water both enthralled and challenged me.

My father was a highly intelligent entrepreneur, and an atheist. Unlike in Justin’s family, in our household there was no place for religion, as my father held that doctrine was created by man to control man, and any self-respecting person would not be led by the nose to believe such nonsense. So despite his encouragement of free thought, there was no place for a shy, sensitive girl like me to admit to my own feelings.

It seemed to me that I was at odds with all the other children and adults in my world, who appeared to live on the surface of life. But when I was twelve, while at a pajama party in the basement of my friend’s house the ouija flew under my hands towards the ceiling and I knew then that there were forces beyond those that we could see. Still, I kept my feelings secret.

I was still very young when I first heard the Moody Blues. But the depth of the sound, the complexity of the music touched a chord, as it did so many of you. These were people who looked deeper, I thought. But I soon realized that I was straining to hear one particular voice – Justin Hayward’s.

Hearing that sound – the particular vibration of his voice – was like being in a deep dream, with someone whispering to me to wake up. There was a strange comfort in that sound, and yet angst. And something more: a deep, mature love.

I’d been kissed before. By boys whose tongues in my mouth felt like eels trapped in a bucket. But I’d never experienced the passion I felt when I heard that one voice.

I remember staring at the album cover at a man I didn’t recognize. He was a man, I was only a girl, and his maturity and fame frightened me. We were worlds apart in every sense. Still, I struggled with the feelings that surged inside.

I felt like I had amnesia. There was something back there that I couldn’t remember and his words were torture.

“Don’t deny the feeling that is steeling through your heart, Every happy ending needs to have its start.”

“High above the forest lie the pastures of the sun, Where the two that learned the secret now are one.”

“Weep no more for treasures we’ve been searching for in vain, ‘Cause the truth is gently falling like the rain.”

Vague memories of the Guardian and his light flickered but were never fully realized. I was aware how ridiculous it would sound to anyone I might confess these strange feelings to. I wasn’t the type to hero worship. There were no posters on my walls. So what was happening to me?

When I was sixteen the young man who would become my husband twelve years later kissed me for the first time. In a flash of certainty I knew – I knew – that he and I had been together before, that we would be together a long time, but that there was a turning in our future. A turning. I fell in love with him in the certainty that it was meant to be. Whatever the turning was, it was meant to be too.

But I was more confused than ever when the vague shadows of the past still haunted me.

I yearned for England. I studied art and design at the University of Western Ontario because it was in London, and the fact that my residence room overlooked the Thames River – not the River Thames but a facsimile – satisfied some need. Art history gave me a chance to delve into the past in search of something I couldn’t identify.

Because despite all, the feeling that Justin Hayward and I were connected somehow continued. As you all know though, events in our lives can trample our loftiest dreams. My parent’s divorce and the tragic death of my younger sister forced me back to earth. I remember well the last moments when the dream of eternal life and love faded away. I was listening to Blue Jays. Justin sang “somewhere, on this crazy island, a familiar stranger sleeps so far away.”

It struck me that I’d been stupid, naive, to imagine a connection. Of course it wasn’t possible. He was referring to England, not the world, as an island. I was a person of no consequence. I couldn’t be the recipient of so strong a love. Why would I be?

A switch had been turned off. Looking back, I think it was always meant to be so.

————————

Though Justin was gone, the feeling of a connection to the past never faded, and on my first trip to England I knew I’d come home. I searched for the house within a copse of trees at the end of a sloping drive, without remembering why. My Canadian accent kept slipping into an English one, despite my struggle to stop it.

Over the ensuing years two other past lives came back to me – one in the thirteenth or fourteenth century in a Celtic land, the other in eighteenth century France. To those who maintain that these types of memories are just fantasies, I say this: You conjure a fantasy like a story; you re-live a memory. You are in it, experiencing the emotion directly.

Years later I learned that, if I’m correct in all of this, those lives had direct connections to our present ones.

My husband and I were married in a half timbered church (hard to find in Toronto) on December 28th, 1982. Justin and his wife Marie were married on December 19th, 1970. I believe that in our former lives we were married December 25th, 1911 and I’ve wondered if somehow that winter wedding begged to be re-enacted in both our minds. Or was it just a year end tax break?

Our wedding allowed me to play out the past that still eluded me. I designed and sewed my gown to mirror the Edwardian period (still a mystery to me) and eighteenth century France.

But I married my husband with my heart full of love for him, a love that would endure despite all.

When our children were born I had no time to contemplate anything other than the pile of clothes to be washed and the toys to be put away. If my father had known of my prior feelings he would have said “It’s about time. I thought you were smarter than that.” But he never knew. I was afraid to admit who I was.

Life continued like that until one day in late October 1992 when everything started to change. It had been a rough year with many deaths in the family. But my young sons and I set out for a nearby farm to choose Halloween pumpkins. The day was overcast and cold – the fields were soggy from relentless rain but as we were about to leave, arms loaded with half rotten pumpkins, a sparkling sun broke through and lit up the bales of hay and pumpkins the farmer had stacked against the rail fence which circled the field. My little sons clamoured up onto the fence and I took a mental picture of them among the bright orange pumpkins. I remember it vividly – more so because of what happened next.

When I reached home my husband handed me the phone. It was my old friend telling me there was a Moody Blues concert at Massey Hall in Toronto on the 6th of November. They’d bought tickets, but if we could get some, would we like to join them?

I’d never seen the group in person and it had been years since I’d thought of them, but a curious excitement passed through me. I called Ticketmaster. “I’m sorry,” the agent said, “but that concert’s sold out.” I was shocked at my disappointment. Reluctant to hang up, I engaged her in conversation, expressing surprise that they were still touring. Then I heard the tap of keys. “Hold on,” she said, “two tickets just came up in the balcony. Do you want them?”

When we entered Massey Hall we passed under the shield shaped sign over the door and I noted that the shield was the ancient protector of the heart. Odd, I thought, that I should think that. We expected to be seated far from our friends, but as my husband and I inched along towards our seats I heard a familiar laugh. Among the 2,765 people in the audience, we were seated right beside our friends.

Something else happened that night. I couldn’t sit back in my seat. My eyes were riveted on the man in the hawaiian shirt in the middle of the stage. Ugly shirt, I thought. It didn’t suit his complexion. But I knew he was deeply troubled. I could feel it.

I did everything possible to stay in the theatre when the concert ended. I stood staring at the empty stage, mystified by the intensity I felt. That night I lay in bed trying to recall his name. At two in the morning I found myself on my knees on the cold basement floor, leafing through the old albums. Justin. His name was Justin Hayward.

The next day my husband brought me home a gift: The Moody Blues Greatest Hits. I played it incessantly over the next months.

Strange things began to happen. My father called to tell me that the Moody Blues were on PBS – “At Red Rocks. I remembered you liked them so I thought I’d just let you know.” My father never called. He hated talking on the phone.

My eldest son, a real truck sort of guy, while I was selling the jewelry that I made at a local church bizarre, insisted that I buy him a pewter pin of a transatlantic ocean liner – the old fashioned kind with the huge funnels. “Why would you want that?” I asked. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I just do.” I said no but my mother relented. That pin was never seen again until a crucial moment some weeks later.

It was April 14th, 1993, just before midnight that I sat in the darkness with my head draped over a steamer, feeling overcome by allergies. I had earphones in my ears. I was listening to the tape my husband had given me. “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” was playing.

They’re looking for someone, I thought. And then, in a flash that felt like lightening streaking through my brain, the words “It’s me.”

IT”S ME.

In the next shivering moments everything began to fall into place, like a giant jigsaw puzzle being pulled together of its own accord. Thoughts, memories, tumbled over each other to settle into their slot. The Guardian reappeared in my mind, as if the memory had never been shadowed.

And then it struck me: the rail fence and the pumpkins, like the picture given to me. When I came home, the phone call about the concert. No tickets and then there were two. The miracle of sitting right next to our friends. The angst I felt watching Justin Hayward, the sense that I could tell what he was feeling.

It had started again, just as it was meant to. I shuddered with cold and heat and confusion and certainty.

But mostly I felt awe.

——————

I was raised to believe that there was no God, no heaven, no afterlife – just space and science. In the days, weeks and years that followed I knew there was more. I felt a state of grace, as if a hand was guiding me.

The full sorrow that had been suppressed all those years now came out in torrents. I hid in my car and in the garage to conceal the outpouring of grief that I seemed to have no control over. I still didn’t know how we had died in that previous life, but I felt sure it had been traumatic and I was just now letting that sorrow out. I wondered about the sudden onset of the allergies. I’d heard it said that allergies are the manifestation of unshed tears – a bit of a stretch I know but the thought did come to mind.

Then one day I stood in the kitchen while cartoons blazed in the family room adjacent, and in sudden frustration, cried out in my head “What happened to us?” In a voice that wasn’t mine the answer shot through my mind. “Titanic.”

For a second it all seemed right, until my heart sank. The Titanic. The subject of tabloid fantasies. Who would believe me now?

At that moment the blare of cartoons ceased and a news reporter broke in. “Breaking news. At this time a passenger ferry is foundering in the China Sea. Passengers are being put into lifeboats.”

I looked down and there on the island counter was the pin my son had wanted so desperately and promptly lost. A transatlantic ship. The funnels. The prow. All those portholes.

My first thought was that we’d been on our honeymoon. A feeling had passed over me years before while I embroidered my initials on a pillow slip. I’d done the same for a trousseau.

Shortly after that I looked out the window while I tucked my youngest son into bed, and there, framed by the window casing was a sepia portrait of a man smiling at me. He was in Edwardian dress, and the British flag hung behind him. A moment later he was gone, and I was staring at the leaves of the crab apple tree.

I went to read my son his bedtime story and there on the pile of library books was one I’d never seen before. “Did you choose this book?” I asked my little boy. He shook his head no. I read the strange story of a Japanese man who was thrown from his boat into the frigid water, and who swam among the icebergs, trying to be rescued.

In one of the days that followed I went outside to see a clear blue sky, devoid of all clouds except one. It was in the perfect shape of England, complete with all its rivers.

I would say this was all just imagination were it not for the feeling I had throughout this period. It was as if I was living half in my life, and half in another world. I would be grocery shopping and pause. “Why are you stopping Mommy?” my eldest son would ask. “Oh, nothing sweetheart,” I’d answer. “What kind of cookies would you like?” I couldn’t tell him that I knew in the next two seconds that the song on the musak system would be one of the Moody Blues. How strange it was to act normally when my mind and heart were exploding with the possibilities.

When I went to the library to look up the sinking of the Titanic I learned that it had struck the iceberg twenty minutes before midnight on April 14th, precisely the same time and date the thought had hit me, eighty one years later.

Justin knew that there had been a change. His vibration came to me regularly. I can only describe that sensation as an effervescence that bubbled throughout my entire body and mind. I could feel it approach from inches away and then fill every cell with joy. Always these words came into my mind: I love you too. I can only believe that it was love in its purest form, the kind we all experience in the afterlife, and in those most precious, rare moments in this life.

Soon, our deaths and the struggle to be heard.

And Soon, The Other Side of the Story

If you’ve just joined us, please scroll down to the beginning of the journey, starting with Why You’re Here, and learn the truth behind the beauty and depth which is Justin Hayward.

I will be continuing with the other side of this epic, the part that makes what he has accomplished even more of a miracle, but it will have to wait a little while. Please check back often. Perhaps in August.

Until then, thanks for sharing this with me. I know you will treat it with the respect it deserves – both for Justin and his family, and all the members of the Moody Blues, past and present.

Sincerely,

Andrea McDonald

A Breakthrough

Welcome. As you know, the latest post is at the top, but this is near the end of the first half of the story. Please scroll right down to the bottom and start with Why You’re Here, then Something Happened That Changed Everything etc.

Something had to give. The MTV age had put the Moodies back on the map and they were in demand again, but still Justin was suffering personally.

The solution was to go to Red Rocks in Colorado with a full orchestra.

The significance of this site cannot be overlooked. Not only was it considered a sacred, spiritual place by the Ute tribe, it is bounded by Creation Rock, Ship Rock and Stage Rock. The significance of those names will become clear as I reach the second part of the story, as will the fact that the area of the amphitheatre in which they’d perform was called the Garden of the Angels, later renamed the Garden of the Titans – both meaningful references as you will learn. Those meanings were not lost on Justin.

The group came with high hopes for a breakthrough – especially Justin. His nervousness is evident in the video made that night – he sang the wrong words at one point – and his angst is clear when he sings New Horizons. He throws back his head numerous times to swallow the emotion that would threaten the delivery of the song, and his eyes are glassy.

The song itself – so rich with emotion – was written when Justin built his house on the sea in Cornwall, where he could look out to the west over the ocean to somewhere, someplace where she existed, unaware of his longing to find her.

He was paying a penance, he’d decided, for the circumstances of their death, and her refusal at that time to leave him. The weight of that thought sat so heavily within him and is so beautifully expressed in the song:

“Well I’ve had dreams enough for one, and I’ve got love enough for three.

I have my hopes to comfort me. I’ve got my new horizons out to sea.

But I’m never goin’ lose your precious gift – it will always be that way.

Cause I know I’m going to find my own peace of mind – someday.

Where is this place that we have found? Nobody knows where we are bound.

I long to hear, I need to see, cause I’ve shed tears too many for me.

On the wind, soaring free, spread your wings. I’m beginning to see.

Out of mind, far from view, beyond the reach of the nightmare come true.”

That moment proved how lonely a person can feel among the company of thousands. Ray glanced over with sympathy and concern before singing his own tribute to the situation – For My Lady. When Gordy Marshall, the group’s new supplemental drummer, smirked at Justin’s display of emotion, John shot him a look that quickly took it from his face.

But perhaps the most telling moment was when Justin introduced his song called Bless The Wings That Bring You Back. This is what he said:

“This was written for someone very special, who’s a long, long way away, but always in my heart.”

Was it a sacred place? Did forces come together to move things along?

Because they did. When the group continued their tour and played in a sudden cold snap that November 6th, 1992 in an ancient, elegant venue called Massey Hall in Toronto, a woman sat with her husband in the upper balcony. She strained forward, unable to sink back into her seat, listening, and wondering why her eyes would not leave the man in the middle of the stage.

It had begun again.

Desperate Measures…

As the blog format places the latter posts at the top, it’s important to scroll down to the bottom to read the story from the beginning, starting with Why You’re Here.

Meanwhile other musicians outside of the group – it is a tight community after all – heard of Justin’s search and the pressure increased. He shunned their offers of help but couldn’t escape the humiliation as year after year passed and he had to admit failure.

It was taking its toll on his psyche and testing his strength. Night after night performing before adoring audiences, applauded by millions, impressive record sales, awards – yet so mired in failure where his heart resided.

It seemed so unfair – to saddle him with such a responsibility and then not to provide a way forward. He felt left to the whims of fate. Or were they whims? Perhaps the trials were part of the requirements. Perhaps it was all part of the plan.

“Is it just a game that we’re playing now? Were we born to win? Can we lose somehow?” he asks in Is It Just a Game.

The full force of this dichotomy blew out in 1981 when the Moodies recorded Long Distance Voyager. Think about that title. Justin speaks of his lost dream and humiliation in Meanwhile when he refers to the fact that he thought it would be easy, that he’d be a hero, and his jealousy. “Meanwhile and far away, as the night draws in, he’s holding her right now and I can feel it all begin.” Graeme Edge penned 22,000 Days, driving home the the fact that there was only so much time in anyone’s life and to “start the show and this time feel the flow and get it right!”

John must have determined that the failure lay in a choice of words, some lyric that turned her away. Justin carried this thought for years and it was, in fact, true. Hence Talking Out Of Turn. Nervous also reflected the level of anxiety at the time.

The Present in 1983 marked a major turning point – Justin whispered the name of his lost love three times and begged her to come home in Meet Me Halfway, perhaps only audible to the person it was directed to (as he’d hoped). In appealing to one, there is always the danger that you will appeal to millions and the message will be misconstrued and in turn, devalued. Having followed the story thus far, you will now appreciate that the title of the song holds two meanings. Justin is a master of the double entendre.

Two years later, with the admirable focus and perseverance that he’d developed over his life, he set off on his own to record Moving Mountains – a collection of beautiful songs dedicated to their mutual growth. In fact there isn’t a track on the original release (including The Best is Yet To Come, written by Clifford Ward) which isn’t. “Who Knows what the morning brings us,” he sings on the penultimate track, “the moment of truth, the power of love. I know where the future leads me. It’s leading me back to you, my love.”

When still she didn’t come forward the Moodies tried again. Though The Other Side of Life in 1986 has many tracks on it that deal with frustration, Your Wildest Dreams puts the truth out there. It is direct and to the point, as is I Know You’re Out There Somewhere which followed in ’88. Justin wrote them despite what it might do to his own personal security. But she didn’t make her way through the crowd as they’d portrayed in the video. She was, figuratively, left behind as Justin was swept away by his fame.

The album – Sur Le Mer (again, an evocative title to the one who knows) – is filled with longing. Want to Be With You. River of Endless Love. Miracle. Breaking Point was written to make her see past everyday life, to look deeper, to reach the breaking point where the past could crash through the protective wall of the present.

Many have interpreted Deep as being sexual. It may be that, but it is also a reference to the death that they now believed was too traumatic for her to recover to memory. At this point they were willing to try anything.

Justin turned to a sympathetic outsider – Mike Batt. Together they selected songs written by other artists that might say things too odd for the Moody Blues but that she would understand. Devotion – MacArthur Park, Scarborough Fair. The art that he could see that she created and the ability to see spirit in everything – Vincent. Death in The Whiter Shade of Pale and Bright Eyes. His double life in Tracks of My Tears. Heaven in God Only Knows and, as the finale, her central role in proving life after death in Stairway to Heaven. Justin’s voice married to the London Philharmonic carried a weight beyond the scope of the Moodies. Surely that would do it.

Nothing. No appearance, no psychic connection from her end. Only from his. Watching her at a distance.

With Triumph Comes Pain

Please scroll down and read the previous three posts in reverse order to start from the beginning. And remember – if you ever doubt that what I’m telling you is the truth, keep reading and listen to the music. Listen with your heart and your head as the puzzle pieces fall into place.

The Moody Blues’ first seven albums were produced in quick succession, with all members feeling that they were on the cusp of something big. For Justin the steady flow of love convinced him that they were on the right path, that glory would come to them as well as commercial success. “I thought I’d end up as the hero – thought that glory would be mine, but soon I was to find it wasn’t to be. Cause in this part I’ve got to play, it doesn’t quite turn out that way,” he sings in Meanwhile some years later.

It didn’t turn out that way because in the mid-seventies something happened. The psychic connection between himself and the young woman began to fade on her side, and then was gone. The sudden vacuum was devastating to him. His dreams – his expectations – of being reunited collapsed. Then the Moodies parted ways and he was left without an avenue to reach her at all.

John Lodge empathized and together they created Blue Jays to further the quest. Justin’s pain is evident in so many songs, but most notably in Nights, Winters, Years when he sings “Tell me – how can love be wrong, and feel so right?“

The haunting song I Dreamed Last Night expresses Justin’s realization that the woman he loved couldn’t bridge the gap between them. Despite the connection of souls, real life held her in its grip. Or maybe she didn’t understand. Maybe she was too frightened by the magnitude of the feelings. “And you told me we had the power. And you told me this was the hour. But you don’t know how. If I could show you now.”

“Like a bird on a far distant mountain. Like a ship on an uncharted sea. You are lost in the arms that have found you.” It was true. She was in the arms of another man. She was moving on without him.

If you doubt me at all, listen to Who Are You Now? In a heart-wrenching plea Justin sings “Who are you now, first love of mine? If you could see, you’d reach out for me.”

In that same song he sings “Goodbye to the fields and byways. I remember saying I don’t want to leave – cause you were all there was to know about me.” He’s speaking of their time together in the afterlife, which he remembered, and his departure for this life seven years before she was due to be born.

It is a sad fact that this beautiful, heartfelt song was a turning point for her that would add another seventeen years to their separation. It is these words that did it: “Somewhere on this crazy island a familiar stranger sleeps so far away.” I’ll explain this a little further along.

Justin decided to record a solo album and Songwriter was the result. It lays bare the range of emotions he was battling at the time. Songs like Tightrope and Doin’ Time express his frustrations. Others attempt to change his focus, to shake free of the whole quest. But he lapses back into pain and self admonishment in One Lonely Room. And the little known Heart of Steel vents some of his anger.

At this time he wrote a tribute to his wife Marie (of the same name), expressing his love of and support for her. The earthiness of it is a stark contrast to his other ballads.

The making of Octave in 1978 was difficult for all the band members (for various reasons) with a kind of desperation permeating the music. John Lodge wrote “Steppin’ in a Slide Zone” which alludes somewhat to the manner of Justin’s death in his former life, and Survival, almost as an arm supporting his friend. Mike Pinder wrote “One Step Into the Light” in the same effort, and I expect “I’m Your Man” was Ray Thomas’ gesture as well.

For his part Justin appealed directly to his lost love in Driftwood, urging her to come forward and alluding to her rebirth with these words: “Time waits for no one, no, not even you. You thought you’d seen it all before, you really thought you knew.” He dared to address the night of their death, fearful as he did that the horror of it might cause a further retraction in her mind, but hopeful that by addressing it, she might overcome any doubts that what lay between them could possibly be real. “I don’t remember what we said in the confusion that night. I only know what’s on my mind – what’s in the future, we will decide.”

The name “Mary” is whispered in that song. The significance of that I’ll reveal later.

In Had to Fall in Love Justin speaks of the place he’s in – unable to move forward, unable to let go, unable to escape the responsibility he’d been given. The Day We Meet Again is self-explanatory, but to the person on the other end, listening with a heart overwhelmed, the plea “Hold on. Don’t let go!” has a meaning that drives straight to the center of a long buried memory.

The Hope and the Burden

Please scroll down and read the previous posts – Why You’re Here and Something Happened That Changed Everything – to get the story from the beginning.

Mike, Ray, John and Graeme did become aware of all this early on and supported Justin. It gave them a direction for their music that jibed with the mood of the time. Mike’s mellotron provided the haunting background needed. And because Justin had successfully predicted events they accepted his premonitions and revelations. A new, much needed, direction for their music emerged.

The hippie movement gave Justin the cover he needed to write songs about heaven, eternity and rebirth. Soon the other Moodies – all so talented – were writing in a similar vein and the band became known for their cosmic sound. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Their audience also sensed their knowledge of things beyond the norm, and though they couldn’t identify what those insights were, many looked upon the Moodies as sages.

Justin’s contributions to the first seven albums were fueled by the need to reach the young woman he had seen so clearly in his mind. He’d even heard her voice – “The sound I have heard in your hello – oh darling, you’re almost part of me. Oh darling, you’re all I’ll ever see.” (The Actor.) And “Listen we’re trying to find you. Listen we think we can see you.” (Dawning is the Day) Later (Nearer to You) “I see you so clear in my mind.”

The most extraordinary aspect of this is that a flood of love was coming back to Justin from this young girl. It wasn’t the adulation of the teenage girls in the audience. It was a deep, mature love – an unconditional love. It was a love he couldn’t escape – one which he didn’t want to ever lose.

Because of this, he assumed that she knew what he knew and would find her way home to him. The mixed emotions brought by this were difficult to maneuver. Every night wondering if she was in the audience. The angst of that is apparent in Leave This Man Alone. He expressed the horror and confusion of their death in Gypsy (of a Strange and Distant Time). But mostly he was hopeful that she would come back to him and this wistfulness permeates his early songs – Candle of Life (with John Lodge), Watching and Waiting, Dawning is the Day and so many others.

But as the years went by and she failed to appear, disappointment crept into his music.

Meanwhile he was a man, with all the earthly needs for love, sex, companionship and family. He couldn’t wait for someone as elusive as a vision. He married Marie on the 19th of December 1970. She has given him a wonderful life full of love and the home base so needed by someone on the road so much of the time.

He loves her still as she does him. But he couldn’t tell her about his former wife and their long history over the centuries. That secret remained buried in his music. He kept his writing largely separate from his personal life – It’s like a secret room that no one else can enter, he has said – and as a rock star he was supposed to sing about love so he was safe, and so was she.

It must have been so trying – praying each night on stage that his former love, and one who still filled his heart, would come forward – while feeling the need to protect his wife from any such intrusion into their lives.

And when Doremi was born, he had his daughter to protect as well.

It would have been a relief to just forget the revelation, forget the one who lived across the sea. But he couldn’t do that. It’s impossible, for better or worse, to ignore a directive that seems to have come from heaven. Besides, the love had been returned. Surely she wouldn’t forsake so sacred a love.

It was clear to him that he had been given a mission – to prove that love survives death, that we survive death and are born again and again. Each life a new chance to better ourselves and the world.

The world needs to know this. It’s his duty to tell it. “It seems like the world has been waiting to show us a secret it’s kept for so long.” (Crazy Lovers), and “…the seed that the garden requires.” (When You Wake Up). If two people who have never met in this life share the same information about prior lives together, that would be proof. How could he walk away from that responsibility?