Letter: The medium and the musician

On the 18th anniversary of John Denver’s passing, maybe it’s a good time to recap what his life was about and what his afterlife is about.

Tribute concerts, of course, are wonderful. The music is alive and always will be. But knowing what I know of John and his spirit, I think he might now like to be remembered for something besides music — namely his work on behalf of Mother Earth.

In 1987, while I was doing research on John, I had a reading with a clairvoyant I’ll call Dolores.

We sat in her kitchen as she read a photo of John.

“He’s afraid of what he represents,” she said. “He doesn’t have a life of his own. I doubt if this man could walk into a theater, buy a bag of popcorn, sit down and watch a movie without someone knowing who he is.

“I’ll bet he hates his name. I bet he’d love to be called Sam Smith or anything nobody knows. He does not call the shots in his life. He never has.

“It cost him to entertain. It cost him double every penny he made. But he didn’t realize this until 1984, why he was here.

“The summer of 1984 was the pits for this man. He was about ready to blow his brains out. But he didn’t quite dare do it to himself or to the world. That’s when he realized he belonged to the world, when he wanted to do away with himself.”

Dolores noticed the look on my face.

“Now, honey, I don’t know if I’m right or not,” she said. “This is what his eyes tell me. Am I right?”

Twenty-one years later, I was talking with another clairvoyant who was also a medium. In a reading on July 4, 2008, John told us: “Well, this is from my heart. All I really care about is that Mother Earth gets her due respect.”

He said, “That’s what’s in my heart, that the people on the planet come back to knowing that she is a living, breathing being.”

Linelle

Aspen