We have a winner! Congrats to Nichole S. She guessed a Les Paul. Many of you guessed Fender and Gibson. His first guitar was a Fender Stratocaster and he loved it. He loved his Gibson, too, but he had a connection to Les Paul, hence his beautiful guitars. They’re all still hanging on his bedroom wall. 

Time fro Celebrity Friday, Peeps. Actually I should call it “Sometimes Celebrity Friday” because I don’t always post these interviews on that day of the week.

 I’m posting this in two parts because he was a little longwinded. This first part is very poignant. It made me cry just reading it again. I hope you enjoy it.

Me: What about Ray Charles? I bet he’d be fascinating to talk to.

Jamie: Ray Charles? Why did I think he was still alive?

Me: No, he passed after the release of the movie, “Ray.”

(Pause)

Me: I can check to make sure.

Jamie: No, he’s here now, so he’s dead.

Me: Well, hello, Mr. Charles.

Jamie: Oh, you better call him Ray!

Me: Hey, Ray!

Jamie: Uh huh. That’s better! He whips off his glasses and says, “I don’t need these anymore!”

Me: Awesome. How great!

Jamie: He’s singing, “Georgia, sweet Georgia.”

Jamie (to Ray): Ah, you like being here?

Ray: Home is where the heart is.

Jamie: Are you a Georgian? Well, welcome home!

Jamie is in Georgia.

Me: What was your spiritual mission this lifetime?

Jamie (giggling): He puts his hands down on the table, and, I don’t know, he’s got on a t-shirt with a sports jacket over it, and his eyes are neat. They’re a light hazel color.

Me: Interesting.

Ray (putting his hands on the table): I was here to show that anything was possible.

Me: That’s a biggie.

Ray: I only taught a small corner of it. I hoped to teach people that they are not victims of their own life. (With more emphasis) They are not the victims of their own life!

Jamie: He’s got a really animated voice.

Me: Well, he was never a victim of his blindness. You showed everybody!

Ray: What? I was blind?!

Jamie, Erik and I laugh.

Jamie: I didn’t think he’d be that silly!

Jamie continues to laugh. She has a hard time composing herself.

Ray: I didn’t know! I didn’t know!

Me: You didn’t know what? That you were blind?

Ray: Yeah. I had such a good life.

Me: Aww. That’s good. Were you here to learn anything?

(Long pause)

Jamie (to Ray): No. Anything, You can—(to me) He’s trying to, it’s so funny. When I get to talking, he interrupts me!

Ray: I’m an onion.

Me: Mm. Lot’s of layers to you.

Jamie (to Ray, chuckling): Oh, you’re just being silly now! (To me) He calls himself a Georgia Vidalia onion. He thought that’d be funny to me, I guess because we’re in Georgia.

Ray: I had many layers and many things to learn, and, wouldn’t you know it, the bulk of my life of who I was and what drove me was learned between the ages of one and eight.

Me: Was that when you started to become blind?

Ray: Yes ma’am.

Jamie (whispering): I thought he was born blind.

Me: I thought that too until I watched the movie.

Ray: No. I saw the world, the light, the colors, and I know it was in my contract to lose my sight. I saw death. I saw sadness, and I never wanted to see it again.

Me: Oh, gosh. His brother drowned, I think. His little brother.

Jamie (to Ray): Did your little brother drown?

Ray: Yes ma’am.

Me: Are you together now?

(Pause)

Jamie (laughing): That’s a “yes,” and apparently he’s the worst and the best brother.

Me: Aw, that’s cute.

Jamie (choking up): Oh gosh. I got this overwhelming sense of emotion when he said that when he got into Heaven, he was the first person to reach out and save him.

Me: Aww.

Jamie: I’m so gonna choke up. Just bear with me.

(Pause)

Jamie (with a quiver in her voice): He can push emotion out. It’s incredible. He said when his little brother reached out to pull him from life, it was like saving him.

Jamie (crying softly): I don’t know why I can’t—I can’t sit in this. I gotta walk away. Let me step back so I can listen.

Me: Poor Jamie.

Jamie: No, it’s such a neat feeling. All right. I’m on the other side of the room.

Ray says something to her.

Jamie (to Ray): No, it’s not punishment! I’m learning how to deal with feeling things!

She laughs.

Jamie: Ah, he’s cutting up. He says his little brother drowned, and he didn’t save him. He didn’t reach out and grab him, but he saw it happen. So when his little brother reached out and pulled him out of this life, it was like pulling him out of the bathtub. It was saving Ray from the life that he’d been in.

Ray: When the two of us met, it was the one true forgiveness I was waiting for my whole life. I didn’t realize how valuable it was to me. So my life so far in Heaven has been just the cream of the crop.

Me: Aww. How wonderful. I know that it hit you very hard, and probably that drowning that took your brother had a lot to do with shaping the rest of your life.

Ray: It did, and I know that’s why God blessed me with losing my eyes. I couldn’t bear to see anything like that again, and I often wondered, in my life, if losing my eyesight at the age that I did was a way of sealing in only the handful of memories that I could carry on. That really kept me in a framework that I know I wouldn’t have held onto if I had been able to see.

Me: Interesting. Were you here to learn anything?

Ray: I’m comin’ back! I’m not done with that!

Jamie and I laugh.

Jamie: Erik’s laughing.

Erik: Jamie, you’re going to have to get used to this.

Me: Easier said than done.

Jamie: Well, it’s new, so…

I repeat the question about whether he was here to learn something, and Jamie mutters it to Ray.

Ray: Yes ma’am, yes ma’am. I—

(Long pause)

Jamie (to Ray): Is that a song? (To me, laughing) He’s singing something to me.

Ray: I was here to learn how to forgive. First, it was learning how to forgive myself. The only way I knew how to do it was through music. I couldn’t speak straight. I couldn’t talk to someone straight. It had to come through music. Then, everyone could understand how the words in my head sounded because they come with tone and harmony and rhythm. I had more emotion than I knew what to do with.

Me: Mm. And song has so many more layers of expression than words.

Jamie: Ah, he likes that bit about the layers.   Ray): So you’re a Vidalia onion!

Me: Anything else about what you were here to learn, or should we go on?

Ray: Let’s move right along.

How about a sweet tune from the man!