Dear Chris,

I grew up around music and the music industry for the formative years of my life - from rehearsal studios to tour buses, to backstage green rooms at the House of Blues in LA. Music has always meant a lot to me, and has been deeply engrained in my heart and soul - but never had anything awakened my true, profound love for it until I started learning "Like A Stone" on guitar.

Any time I heard the song (before learning how to play it), something about your voice and the way the guitar's slow accompaniment complimented it and matched your emotion tugged at something deep in my subconscious. I found myself feeling ecstatic whenever I heard those first couple bars, and then as I listened further, a strong, meditative feeling washed over me, and I would ride that throughout the rest of my day.

But when I decided to look up the chords, I was "forced" to read (and for the first time, really pay attention to) the lyrics. That was the first time I had really paid attention to the song, and wow, was I moved. Your words brought me to tears. The meditative sensation the song had always brought to me suddenly made so much more sense, and I felt my heart both swell with empathy and break with sympathy at the longing and yearning heard in your voice. This made me curious as to what the video looked like, so I looked that up, too, and I was in awe. I'm not sure whether the rumors are true, but I heard somewhere that it genuinely was just a band rehearsal where someone decided to record video. If that is true (which I've always taken it as truth), then... your face. The look on your face, throughout the song... just told me that you meant every syllable of every word in that song with every fiber of your being. Regardless of whether or not it was "just a band rehearsal", that emotion... I don't feel it can be faked. And seeing that level of truth from someone in the music industry was simply breathtaking for me.

You forever changed my perception of music, and the reasons that I love it as much as I do and in the way that I do. Ever since then, I've wanted to have the verse "for all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged - in dreams, until my death, I will wander on" for a tattoo. Maybe that sounds ridiculous to you, getting someone else's words forever written on my body. But they're already forever etched on my heart - a tattoo would just be a physical manifestation of it.

I regret that I never got to see you perform, and - as unlikely as it may have been - that I never got to meet you. Although we never knew each other, your loss will be profoundly felt by me for many, many years to come; I feel like I've lost someone very close to me.

May your wandering be done, and may you be at peace.

Love,

Jaden