When I heard of Lennon passing.

I was 29 years old, living alone in Knoxville Tennessee in a funky apartment. You know the kind, when someone takes a big old drafty house and chops it up into apartments – architecturally and feng shui-wise, it was all out of sorts. I was in my "living" room, which was really the old dining room. The central motif was this diamond shaped piece of frosted plexiglass in place of where at one time the probably beautiful stained glass window used to be. The thing was stupid looking, but I incorporated its stark diamond shape into my latest drawings.

I was broke, out of school and working part-time at a small bookstore, located in the last little half-vacant strip mall before the highway. It’s no wonder that during this time, I also developed the inability to fall asleep easily, a pattern that’s never left me.

The drawings were simple abstractions based on suggestive shapes, done with India Ink on opened paper bags and cardboard. Seriously I was beyond having no money during this time, but had just saved up enough to get 3 pints of latex house paint in goof colors: off white, blue and red-pinkish.  After Thanksgiving, I began a new series of paintings exploring shapes with these new colors.

Early December, what ‘emerged’ was a solid blue shape with this pink skin sheath thinly splayed out over it. I knew the blue was something having to do with a Man. But the pink: I kept thinking, it looks like (I know this is weird) a heart that’s exploded.

You know where this is going. On December 8, the moment I heard what happened to John, my favorite Beatle, it was super chilling because of that painting. How could I have picked up what was coming?

That night, my stupid apartment seemed lonelier than ever, so I went out in search of others to commiserate with. Which felt even more awkward since I wasn’t a bar maven nor did I belong to a church or a club. So it was come home to the idiotic diamond window and cry, cry, cry. Call my mother who didn’t quite understand. Cry, cry, cry. Cry all night for days, no sleep.