She was the tiniest, frailest person of my own generation I had ever met by the time I stood next to her in the rehab room where I was stationed to provide her care during night shifts as she recovered from an undisclosed procedure.

I suppose I could have found out more about her gory details if I’d tried, but her status as a celebrity made me want to protect her, even from my own prying mind.

Once I thought being famous would be everything I ever needed to make me happy. By that time, I definitely knew better. I wouldn’t wish fame on anyone, let alone on anyone with a predisposition to mental health and addiction issues, or a survivor of childhood trauma, both of which she qualified as.The thigh bone is connected to the leg bone. Neither bone does well under public scrutiny.

When I entered her room to sit watch, she was just a small bundle in the double bed against the wall. It was dim, with curtains drawn and all surfaces hushed by carpets, drapes, pillows, clothing, newspapers, towels. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. The punk icon of my youth laid low by who knows what instead of shredding pope photos on late night TV.

It dawned on me I hadn’t really heard much about her recently. I felt bad suddenly, as if I had forgotten to check on a dear friend. What shits we can be, consuming our heroes while they are fresh and vibrant, never giving two thoughts when they disappear from view, or we hear rumors they may be losing their edge.

I realized sitting in her room while she slept, I had no idea what her life was, or what being out there rocking the world on our behalf as a smart, political, outspoken, brave, Gen X woman had actually cost her.

I’d been called earlier that afternoon on an emergency basis, by the friend of a friend, to help provide round-the-clock support to a secret client. I had been working in recovery for a few years at that time, mostly as a provider of transportation and support counseling to in-patient rehab customers at private facilities in the Bay Area, sometimes as an art therapist.

I had been clean and sober myself for 20 years or more. I was a Gen X small town punk rock kid who had become a theater geek, folk musician, art weirdo and then married a Boomer trust fund hippie folk musician, had a baby, and ran screaming into sobriety for my dear life.

In my life as a band bitch, I had rubbed up against so many famous folk by this time, I was pretty immune to the sticker shock of A-List Players. But this was different. The world, rock and roll in general, and punk rock specifically being primarily a boys’ playing field, our roster of Gen X female punk rock role models was limited to begin with. Add spins of riot grrl feminism, addiction recovery, trauma recovery, mental health advocacy… the pool gets even shallower.

Sinead hit all the highlights. First, she had shrugged off the oppressive idealized projections of feminine beauty that we were all slogging through by shaving her head and telling everyone who said shit about it to, in essence, fuck off. Then, in 1992, nine years before anyone publicly acknowledged the institutionalized child abuse inside the Catholic church, when she performed Bob Marley’s “War” on SNL as a protest of sexual abuse of children by church officials, she entered legendary status.

The backlash she received from that point forward was painful to watch. I can only imagine what it felt like to be at ground zero: inside her life. But what it meant to me, and to lots of us I think, was everything. Because of her public actions, among others, when I encountered suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse that emerged from the darkness between the years of 1992 and 1996, I was able to summon the courage to leave my abusive marriage, find support from a therapist, enter addiction recovery, break silence in my own family, and begin the journey of healing that began to unfold for me from that point.

For better or worse, whoever I became as a trauma survivor, woman, mother, and artist were in part because of Sinead. Now here I was, standing guard while she slept. She was so tiny and frail. This powerhouse. This icon. This leader.

I was humbled more deeply than I knew I could be. It occurred to me sitting in that room, no matter who you are, how powerful and mighty, life can crumble you. But there was a beauty to her that could not be erased by time and tragedy.

She came barely to my shoulder when she finally stood and walked with me. Hair greying, still shaved. Skin aging, tattoos blurring—like me.

Here’s how we do it. No nip and tuck, no stretched face shiny weirdness. No gloss, no glory. Thank gods for middle aged punk chicks. I learned a lot about her through those days. What she shared with me, I don’t share, and stays with me cherished as private conversation.

Each of us, in our vulnerable moments, deserves privacy and dignity. Being a successful artist doesn’t mean the world owns our insides. But much of what she spoke about with me was already out in the public record. I looked up her public interviews, visited her social media posts, caught up on what she was presenting to the world since I had last paid attention. Her life has been filled with so much difficulty, tragedy, struggle, and pain.

My heart went out to her. No amount of success in the world can guard us from what it costs to live in the world as ourselves.In the few days I had with her, I chose to quietly just be there, listening, helping her get back on her feet literally, talked to her like she was any other women in a vulnerable place, trying to get somewhere better.

I never told her what she meant to me. How much I admired her. How much I was rooting for her. It felt like an invasion of privacy to do so. I just tried to transmit my gratitude to her in my actions and leave the rest unspoken. Let her just be another person in need for a while. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or not. Maybe it would have mattered to her to hear how she had made a difference in my life. How she had made a difference in the lives of so many women I knew of my generation and beyond. How so many of us were rooting for her. How we saw her as beautiful, and cherished, and vital, and irreplaceable.

Regardless, the moments I had with her on those days I cherish and carry with me. They inform how I am aging, how I treat myself, how I see other women at times. Life is going to crumble us all eventually. No matter how bad ass, how important, how amazing. The only thing we need to do in the meantime is keep getting up again, getting to our feet, speaking our truth, being ourselves, keep going on.

A few years after my time with Sinead, we all got to see her live performance from Berlin on world media. It was so glorious, I cried. Risen up from a tiny cocoon of blankets in the dark, that beautiful butterfly again. Never say never. It isn’t over ‘til it’s over.

Go easy, big soul. You blazed a trail for us. I’m here walking behind you, holding a little part of the light you carried maybe a little further down the path, hopefully handing pieces of it to those behind me too.

You changed us, you helped change the world, even if only a little. Change is ridiculously slow, but following your example, I’ll keep getting up, and keeping on.

Originally published at NOVEL atelier | Charissa Drengsen.

Having celebrated his 86th birthday last July 30, Buddy Guy remains one of the last pillars of the rich Chicago-blues music scene that counted the late Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and B.B. King among its luminaries.

Still at it, Guy brings his inimitable chops to Sonoma County next week with an appearance at the Green Music Center as part of his “Damn Right Farewell Tour.”

Auspiciously, the tour aligns with the release of Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away, a documentary, part of the PBS American Masters series, which aired last week and is now available streaming.

“The way they treat the blues now, you don’t hear it on your big radio stations anymore,” Guy said during a recent phone interview. “Your big AM/FM stations don’t play blues hardly anymore. So whatever little I can do to help keep blues alive, I’m open for it. I’m ready to wake up in the midnight hours of the night to help keep it alive, because without satellite radio, I don’t think you hear much of B.B. King no more.”

He added, “Even the British blues guys aren’t being played much on radio anymore. You get a lot of hip-hop and superstars’ records, which don’t need to be played because they’re so well-known. Their records are going to go [big] anyway. I don’t need to hear Muddy Waters as much as I hear Madonna or somebody else. Just play me Muddy Waters once or twice a month.”

Throughout the hour-and-23-minute-long American Masters episode, Guy’s life proves to be a fascinating tale. In addition to original interviews with Guy and numerous acolytes, including John Mayer, Carlos Santana, Gary Clark Jr. and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, viewers are treated to quite the travelogue.

The filmmakers trace the guitarist from his origins working the Louisiana fields his sharecropper family plowed—and where a portion of highway was named after him in December 2018—to the thriving 1950s Chicago music scene he arrived in with nothing but a guitar in his hand and the suit on his back. It was here that he got his first break, when Waters took the 21-year-old fret-bender under his wing.

“Sixty-five years ago last year I’d just gotten to Chicago, and I wasn’t looking to be a professional musician,” Guy said. “I’d left Louisiana because they told me I could go to Chicago, get a day job and wouldn’t have to pay to see Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and all those guys. I was looking for a day job because I didn’t never think I was good enough to play with them. But I learned how to play Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed and a few Muddy Waters licks.”

“I hadn’t eaten in three days and a guy took me to the 708, a famous blues club on 47th Street in Chicago,” Guy continued. “I went up and played a number with the late Otis Rush and somebody called Muddy Waters, who was living about five blocks away. He got out of his van, and because he heard I was telling people how hungry I was, he brought me a bologna sandwich.”

Word of Guy’s guitar prowess got around. After a brief stint recording a few sides for Cobra Records, he landed at Chess courtesy of Waters, who favored the young musician. Soon, other artists in the label’s stable started using him on their records as well.

Label founder Leonard Chess begrudgingly used Guy while denouncing what he did as “just making noise.” However, the Louisiana native’s combination of tasty playing and over-the-top showmanship made him a favorite of the British Invasion triumvirate of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, as well as stateside guitar god Jimi Hendrix. And while Guy is a humble man, he’s quick to acknowledge his abilities, particularly when asked what he thought about Hendrix the first time they met in 1968.

“You should ask what he thought of me, because he told me he came from a gig to come see me play because he’d picked up some things from me,” Guy said with a chuckle. “As a matter of fact, I was playing in New York, and he came in with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and I didn’t know who the hell he was. He asked if he could tape, and I could hear somebody saying, ‘That’s Jimi Hendrix.’”

He added, “I didn’t know much about him because I was following B.B. King, Muddy Waters and T-Bone (Walker). I said, ‘So what. Who in the hell is Jimi Hendrix?’ He come up and asked if he could tape what I was doing because he just canceled a gig to come to New York to hear me play.”

While blues may have fallen out of favor in the ’70s and ’80s, Guy experienced a comeback in the ’90s, beginning with the release of his 1991 album, Damn Right, I Got the Blues, his first recording in nearly a decade. Featuring cameos by Clapton, Beck and Mark Knopfler, the album is credited with kickstarting a blues rebirth. Guy has released a steady stream of albums since then, won eight Grammy Awards, earned a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and played for fellow Chicagoan President Barack Obama.

“I always say I went from the outhouse to the White House,” he noted.

Having never stopped touring, even during his lean years, Guy understandably had slowed his pace some in recent years. But his fire for playing guitar and spreading the blues gospel hasn’t waned. Following on the heels of the PBS film is The Torch, a documentary that examines the guitarist’s ongoing influence on the blues and includes interviews with a number of musicians, including Carlos Santana and Susan Tedeschi.

As for what folks can expect coming out to see this living legend do his thing on stage, Guy promises prime rib in a world of Spam.

“Folks can expect the best that I got,” he said. “My dad told me this, and I’ll tell you the same thing he told me before I learned how to play when I was driving the tractor and plowing the fields in Louisiana. He said, ‘Son, don’t be the best in town. Just be the best until the best come around.’”

Buddy Guy performs at 7:30pm, Friday, Aug. 4 at Weill Hall at Green Music Center, 1801 E Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Tickets available at https://gmc.sonoma.edu/buddy-guy/