I wrote this two years ago in memory of a very dear person who left this place too soon. She left with me many gifts, sweet memories and a broken heart on more than one occasion. I still wonder if she was my one shot at true love. I now repost this every year to remember one of the most incredibly special people to ever have graced me with their friendship and love...this is dedicated to your memory Nikki.


My Dear Friend Nikki, Rest in Peace...

In March, 1989, I was a 19-year-old living in South beach. I was (and still am) a fledgling singer and songwriter. At that time I was performing acoustic songs and my own originals with a partner in a few bars around the beach, nominally enrolled in university classes during the day. Nikki introduced herself one evening after I'd finished my set and asked if I'd like to get together to play some songs. Among the songs I played for her was one of my own called Smokin'. I couldn't have known then that I would one day hear her voice singing it back to me, long after she was dead.

Nikki would appear at odd hours of the night at the door of my place. I'd let her in and we'd pass the time playing songs for each other. She stared at the wall or the floor or into the fire place. So did I. It was always nighttime, always twilight in the room with the gas fire. These are my memories.

Nikki never sang any of her own songs. I doubt that she had written any at that time, or if she had, she didn't feel confident about playing them yet. She was singing songs by Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch, Joni Mitchell, Natalie Merchant, the songs we all covered. There was a Phil Ochs song I used to play that she liked called Changes. It's a beautiful song with a haunting melody, I think I hear traces of it in Nikki's songs. It wouldn't surprise me; I got the feeling she was absorbing everything around her - music, lyrics, ideas, emotions - quietly taking it all in.

We knew each other for only a short time. I'm still not sure who I met; but then, that's what everyone said about her. Yet, for someone who was so elusive, she had an unmistakable presence that drew people to her. To put it bluntly, falling in love with Nikki was a no-brainer and I promptly did; not that I ever let on, mind you. She was extraordinarily attractive and that, plus her natural quietness, made it easy to weave a web of fantasies around her. I was quite good at imagining myself to be all kinds of people I wasn't and she loved my outrageous antics and irreverent "rebellious" behavior. Within a few weeks, she left for Morocco and I went to spend a few weeks in the Bahamas. I never saw her again. But she was not out of my life, not out of my life at all.

I wonder about coincidences. I have not been able to determine if they are just the dumb accidents they seem to be or something we should be more suspicious of. I spent the summer of 1989 in Key west with my dear friend John Martin, listening to Jorma and the Incredible String Band, watching John learn to play sitar in about ten minutes, living on toast and Mango tea. I could not get Nikki out of my mind all summer and tried desperately, to no avail, to locate her again. No one seemed to know what happened to her, she just seemed to vanish into the air like a bright shooting star that burns out in the night sky. A few years later I got a package postmarked from Nice, France, containing two things: A five page letter describing her experiences traveling the world and a cassette tape. The letter was energetic and beautiful, she said she thought of me often and was returning to the states and wanted more than anything to see me again. I cried. The cassette was a compilation of 22 songs, many written by nikki, who was a genius of a musician and a talented songwriter by now. She also reworked several of the songs we had played together and recorded two of my own. I cried again.

A month later I got a phone call from her. We told each other stories of our adventures and quickly made plans to meet in Atlanta in a few days. The next call I got from her was to say that she had to go to a funeral in upstate New York and that we had to delay our meeting for a while. I never heard from Nikki again.

I found out tonight that this past weekend Nikki and some friends were partying on a sailboat in Jamaica, this was just like her- she was the most free person I had ever met. Somehow Nikki fell off the boat in the middle of the night and was swept away by the current, they never recovered her body.

I will never ever forget the short time we spent together, fleeting moments they were...such distant memories that have all but melted into a dream. I will always love you Nikki, you hold a special place in my heart and will until the end of my days my angel. You were a shooting star that burned out way to fast, I'm sorry I never found you- I know I would never have let you go. You were the love of my life and the inspiration for a lot of my adventures. Rest in peace angel.

Love always

~Justin