The Stevie Ray Vaughan Experience
Kenny Duthie
June 29, 2001

Today I read on www.blueschat.com about The Stevie Ray Vaughan Scholarship Fund, a 'dropout incentive program' which allows students with musical talent (and good grades) to go to college or university. This is a direct, tangible, and beautiful way to remember our hero. I hope many kids in the Oak Cliff area where Stevie grew up go on to enrich and improve their lives.

I know that Stevie made a difference in my life. I think about him every day. I share Buddy Guy's birthday, the 30th of July, and as I write, it's exactly one month before my 36th birthday. In his novel 'Steppenwolf', Hermann Hesse wrote that if one's suffering becomes intolerable, one can nominate a day to use as a 'trapdoor' - and end it. When I was drinking I always saw the final day in Stevie's timeline as my own cut off point - 36 days before my 36th birthday. It's amazing the sick stuff that goes through your mind when you're using like that. But as I cleaned up, Stevie Ray Vaughan was always my bodhisattva, my main man. His music was a direct route inside. And I knew that I needed to accept what was in my heart before I could heal myself.

Stevie was able to reveal what was in his heart, through his music. And I was finally able to look inside, and find - not what I was so afraid of, (what was that again? - it's difficult to remember now) but a real human being.

I never managed to see SRV play, but I will always be thankful to Stevie, and to Jimmie, and to Tommy, Chris, and Reese. Their music resonates throughout my life.

I'd like here to thank everyone who has written to this website sharing their thoughts and feelings about Stevie, and Brian for giving us this forum. A special mention to kat (12 years in August - no booze!) who like me, indulges in some self-torture now and again (if only Stevie was still here, etc.). When I find myself playing that game, I find it helps to remember how Buddhists regard Siddhartha Gautama, who lived and died over two thousand years ago. It's thought fortunate that we live now, in a time when his teachings are available to us. This is how I see Stevie, a man come to teach us impermanence, life, and love.

Like the American writer Raymond Carver, I believe I have had two separate lives. I savour this second, reclaimed life of mine, because I know full well it could have ended for me first time around.

And as I walk out into this mysterious existence, I take great comfort knowing Stevie Ray is with me ... my blues, and my self-faith ... sustain me.

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