Prequel

The first time they had met, she had picked him up as her Uber passenger. She was driving night shifts so she could support herself while growing The Love Story.

The voice, along with the accent was gentle, British. He played her a few of his tracks that he had just finished. It was the song, “Colorful Vibrations.” These car rides really are intimate moments. She discovered he tours around the country, playing for the rainforests, playing for the kids in Brazil, playing for the spirit of hope.

“Have you ever loved and lost Samuel?” she asks.

“I think, we all have at some point, loved and lost,” he replies.

“Do you write about it in your music?”

“I don’t really write songs that have to do with loss or death.”

He played her the “Colorful Vibrations” track.
https://soundcloud.com/samueljmusic/sets/colourfulvibration

While listening to it, she thought to call The Love Story, “the Spiritual Warrior series.”

The universe had them seeing each other again. This time at Full Circle Venice. He had invited her and she had offered to film. She kept running into Samuel J –at a mutual friend’s party, in line at Lightning in a Bottle, and again at Shadows of Light.

It was at Shadows of Light that she was really able to connect with him on a sister-brother level. For the first time at an outdoor event, Samuel J was not performing. He was just there for the retreat, and yet somehow, by twilight he was singing and performing in the middle of the campfire.

Fast forward, they are in the RV of his mobile studio. They are in the Topanga mountains. Nature was croaking, chirping, and gurgling.

MJ had asked him what his process of transforming emotions into music was.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Samuel answers sincerely.

How do you explain flow?

“Ultimately, acceptance is surrendering. Love is surrendering. Love is acceptance. Love is not resistance…That can also mean…ultimately lovign someone, which was my situation, you know, I had to let that person go cause I realized that I wasn’t able to serve them to be the best of themselves in their journey within their process of what they were living at in that moment in time any longer. It’s kind of tragic. You have all these feelings for someone but you just can’t ….if you’re in those cycles that are repeating, it’s much bigger than you.” -Samuel J

you were well aware that i requested no contact from you, yet you showed up at my house several times.
you continue to email me, sometimes saying hurtful things and then following up with an apology, all with no response from me. you go back and forth from hate speech to love and let go.
just look at your email history. it shows this is something you are generating.

i’m not blaming you for anything. it’s simply what is.

in your last email, you tell me to fuck off…

do you realize that you are saying this to a guy whose been telling you to leave him alone for months now?

maintaining no contact is difficult with someone you were in love with. it isn’t ez for me.

it pains me to put you off but it’s for my own health.

regardless, i owe no explanation to anyone how i chose to live my life.

i’m sorry you are having difficulty having to face the fact that i don’t massage you anymore.

in a perfect world, you would respect me for who i am and let me run my own life and we would be thriving together.

but sometimes we can’t have what we want and i have to sit with those feelings myself when i miss making love to you.

but instead of trying to track you down, manipulating you and lying about my name in order to penetrate your life against your will,

i simply sit with my feelings and learn from them.

i try my best not to react when they come up.

i cry, i pray for you and let it go and move into something more positive like my music.

this task isn’t so easy for you and we both know it.

we were intimate. we know each other’s difficulty. but it’s time we be responsible for ourselves.

on our own.

i still haven’t processed all of my feelings related to the loss of you.

why? because you haven’t left me alone.

i want you to move forward and prosper.
i’ve said soo many positive things to try to make this as graceful as possible but you continue to disrespect me.
your dishonest motives prove you know it’s wrong, that’s why you have to lie.

again, you can take this information as hurtful, abusive language, but it isn’t.

it’s reality and you project it on me.

it’s simply what your doing.. and dear god i wan’t you to resolve it and have peace in your life!

you can have that without me in it.
when you are attempting to re-frame all your faults by folding them into mine and pointing them out with the disguise of “standing” for me, you stress me out and i can’t eat, sleep or focus on my work.

i’m not scared of you. my nervousness comes from the simple fact alone, that i don’t know where or how you’ll try to navigate your way into my life again, or how you may try to sabotage it. and if you have no regulation when it comes to self-harm, whose to say you won’t try to harm me?

it’s nerve racking, regardless if you’re coming at me in a peaceful or malevolent manner.
you come into my work, acting like it’s no big deal with a smile on your face, when you know i’d be afraid if you came.
or you’ll send an emasculating email, telling me you met a “real man” who can handle a powerful woman like you.

how many times did i said you are powerful, and try to honor you for that?

it’s the condition that throws you off how you deliver that power.

you couldn’t even comprehend how stunned and upset i was when you called me about your last attempt.

when i wanted to talk about it, you wanted to hang up on me as if i was disrupting the peace in your parents home saying..

“i don’t have time for this negativity.”

i didn’t want the call! nor do i wanna hear that you tried killing yourself again.
you’re telling this to a man who had your number blocked.

you knew this too, hence your need to call from your parents line.
again, another manipulative attempt to bypass my boundaries.

you may fail to realize this and this whole email may be a waste of time but you may recall, i study trauma.

i aim to help people resolve theirs, as i’ve learned to do with myself. with that said…

you will never know how hard it is for a man to clearly see that the person he loves has a difficulty that he will never be able to resolve for her because any help, in the form of insight, he can give to her, she sees as a threat and claims it as abusive.

i want to be free of this negative loop you are sustaining.

i’m trying to detach, no matter how difficult.

Her back ached.

It was the same sweet spot that always ached. She thought about his hands on hers. Those healing hands. Loosening the knots. Caressing her to bed.

Now her heart aches.

It keeps re-looping.

When she was a teenager, she watched a movie of a bride ghost who replayed the same incident of waiting for her groom. Right before she would cascade down the 14 story castle, the scene would pan to her sobbing for the unrequited love. This would occur every night until the new bride occupied the castle to break the curse.

“What is the payoff?” Manal declared at The Landmark Forum.

“The payoff?” every inner voice in the room responded.

“The payoff is something you get to have if you hold onto this,” Manal continued. “There’s always a payoff for your being a certain way.”

What is your payoff MJ?

I get to be abandoned again.

so I can feel sorry for myself. 

I get to be rejected.

So I can become the underdog and live out my David and Goliath story. 

I get to feel bad.

So I can justify not taking risks anymore. 

“…if you’re in those cycles that are repeating, it’s much bigger than you.” -Samuel J

So this is what*Danny’s last letter was about.  It rolled out of Samuel J’s tongue. He spoke Danny’s words. Now that she is hearing it from another person’s soul, she has accepted this truth.