Wednesday, January 18, 2012


At work, I started a sketch of John Frusciante on my yellow notepad. I took it home and finished it as I listened to his studio albums (minus "...Usually Just a T-Shirt") on random. I sat Adan next to me with a few markers and a doodle pad and he made his own drawings of a "car" (scribbles) and of an "opicus" (scribbles that he said was an octopus). 

I fell in love with John's music in 2006, after falling deeply in love with The Red Hot Chili Peppers' album "Stadium Arcadium" on an August day, during a long drive home from the sun-drenched dirt of Arizona. That dark winter, I discovered "To Record Only Water for Ten Days", one of John's solo albums. It was a discovery that transformed me in an artistic powerhouse, and confused my hypersensitive heart, for I had discovered that it wasn't the Chili Peppers and Anthony Kiedis's dodgy lyrics that had captured me, but it was John. It was all John. 

From that moment on I worked on collecting all of John's music that I could. The wailing guitars and siren, gruff  voice seemed to personify what I felt, and define in music who I was. The harmonies would sometimes bring me to tears. His vocal relationship to Josh Klinghoffer on songs like "Omission" with make my chest swell. 

Lately, John has been pulling me in again. I felt anxious and desperate because I had to back up my computer in the cloud and re-install the operating system and have a tech go through and clean out the hard drive. I had to live without music for a few days. I had to live without John.

The depressing part is that I have floor seats to a Chili Peppers concert in August. John will not be there. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to experience John live, and in person. Ever. 

"When You Can't Function, Someone Decides Who You Are."
Tell me about it, John.





1 comment:

  1. Hi Monica,

    I love your drawing of John. Would you allow me to exhibit it in a fan/art gallery? You have my contact address in my Blogger profile and the link to the fanart section of the site is below.

    (http://invisible-movement.net/v/fanart)

    ReplyDelete