UPDATE: Wednesday, May 10, 2023 · 2:18:33 PM +00:00 · Max Wyvern
I’m blown away by all the kind comments on this diary and want to thank you all for helping me get through this. I visited with Byron yesterday, and I wish I could say I was sure he’d pull through. His wife didn’t know how long he’d been without oxygen. Could have been 10 or 15 minutes, which definitely puts him in the danger zone for anoxia. He was opening his eyes to our voices and when I played and sang his music, so there’s still reason to hope. He’s scheduled for an MRI later today that should make things more clear.
I forgot to mention that he’d only recently joined DailyKos with the username byronius. He’s been a force on Democratic Underground for years and is a huge supporter of Ukraine and deeply knowledgeable on the war and on European history. I hope he comes back all the way and becomes a big part of our community. I guess he’s become that anyway thanks to all of you.
About forty years ago, something rare and beautiful happened in my life. I was in my mid-twenties, and to be honest, a mess. Dirt poor and searching for meaning, I was exploring a lot of recreational substances, including some powerful psychedelics. I was living in a communal setting with a few other similarly inclined lost souls in a house in north Boulder, Colorado. A good friend since high school named Tom popped in from out of state, with a van full of wild and crazy guys, and one woman. We came to know them as the mad men (even the girl). I want to talk about one of them for a moment.
From the first moments after meeting Byron, I knew we were going to be friends for life, and it came to be. We shared interests in the same music and books, and he had a powerful charisma and joyful intensity that I resonated with to a powerful degree. The only detail I remember from that night was his selection of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn from our music stash. I knew right away that he was special.
The madmen set up shop across town. They were all something else. Greg was a guitarist and philosophy major, Jay was Byron’s best friend since growing up with him in Arizona. Craig was a psychedelic cowboy musician, had a hundred songs he could play at any moment and under any influence. The girl was his paramour and she was probably the most “normal” of them. I spent the next couple of years bouncing between my place which was known affectionately as “the bin” and “the madhouse” across town. We all had parties, talked deep into the night about the deepest things we could imagine, did drugs, got blasted drunk, and enjoyed the blazing magic of youth.
Tom and Greg were pretty decent musicians and extremely creative, and one day Byron surprised us all by revealing that he was a hell of a singer. The three of them went into the studio and recorded some tracks that were mighty impressive to me at the time and I envied their talent. A couple years later they announced they were leaving for California to form a rock band. I went out and bought a bass guitar and joined them. Over the next year I learned a few basic blues riffs and we were off. There were some major ups and downs, but within another year or two the band Jupiter Sheep was playing clubs in Sacramento. Tom and I were the rhythm section, Greg had been booted for incessant drunkenness and bullying, and Byron was the lead singer. We added two new guitarists and two female vocalists, one of whom played gorgeous keyboards. We were, to be frank, pretty damned good.
For about five years I lived in the Sheephouse - our shared rehearsal space, with Byron as my housemate - and had long jam sessions several times a week while we dreamed of stardom. Things eventually fell apart. Half the band wasn’t as committed as Byron and me, and their desire to not starve won out. When our lead guitarist split for Seattle in desperation, we called it quits and the heartbreak was real and enduring. I still long for that wondrous time. The Time of Our Lives, as one of our signature songs was titled.
Byron got married to one of our fans and had two amazing kids. I moved to San Francisco and eventually found my own soul mate and now we have a wonderful son of our own. Years later, the drive to create music fell upon me once again and I traveled up the road to join Byron with Missy, our incredible keyboardist, to turn the crazy new dream of a rock opera about a planet in love with its atmosphere into a reality. It’s called Planet and Sky, a cosmic rock opera and you can still find it online if you google it (and you really should). Byron sang lead on a couple songs and it was all done in his home studio with his expert hand on the controls. I was going through some new issues in my life, and he was the rock I needed. He was always there for me.
Byron was always a bit of a workaholic. He threw himself into everything and always had multiple projects in full swing simultaneously, while also writing and playing music and writing a few epic novels on the side. He bought a company that eventually ran aground and was trying to put it out of its misery gracefully while also working full time for the state. I had fallen a little out of touch and didn’t realize that this strong, superhuman dude I loved all my life was in genuine crisis. He had a nightmare boss and he wasn’t coping well. He was trying to get paperwork filled out for a FMLA extended leave and the stress of that is apparently what led to the phone call I got this morning. It was his adult daughter, and he’d had a heart attack at age 62. At this time, all I know is he’s in the hospital, unconscious, and on a ventilator. It seems inconceivable to me. Byron is like a god to me. Full of astounding vigor and capable of anything. A vegan who rarely drinks and works out every day. People like him don’t have heart attacks. Until they do.
I’ve never been a prolific writer or creator. My diaries here are few and far between and rarely get much notice, though I jump in the comments fairly often. This is my community though, and right now I need some love because this is really hard. I don’t really believe in prayer, but I do believe in hope and I need it more than ever before. I guess I just hope a few of you out there who’ve been through shocks like this can feel for me. It feels selfish to worry more about my own feelings than his wonderful wife and kids, but the man is my dearest brother and I’m dying inside right now.