Part 8

There's something inspiring about the blank pages of a brand new notebook. Each empty line holds a new possibility. It’s a feeling I’ve had a hundred times throughout my life, and I’m sure you’ve had it too. But when I picked up what would become my next journal at a store somewhere in Northeast LA, after having spent the day looking at potential rental houses with JD, that feeling was more powerful than ever.

I couldn’t wait to fill the pages with these wild stories, both past and future, about the things I did and the people I met. I thought maybe someday I could tell a dedicated audience about what it was like to live with a rock star, how I met Rick Rubin, and how I frequently brushed shoulders with actors, athletes, and world famous musicians. It would be a colorful chapter in my autobiography, an incredible step on the ladder to success. But in all honesty, when I recently consulted this journal to fill in the gaps of my story, I was shocked at what I failed to remember: It was one of the loneliest periods of my entire life. 

It’s kind of a delicate subject, because if I’m to give you my version of events, it follows that some of the people involved will be inadvertently convicted by it, which was never my intention. It would be much easier, and perhaps much safer, to just give you the highlight reel of my two months in Malibu and move on, but that would only be a small fraction of the story.

Let’s just say we were an unusually self-involved group of people. Anthony was and is the frontman of one of the world’s most successful bands of all time, and because of that he was hardly ever home. JD had lost his father only one year prior, and was in a prolonged state of mourning. He preferred to be left alone. I started to get the impression that my hunger for success and adventure annoyed him, so I eventually learned to stop asking him to hang out with me. 

Baker’s presence was impactful but brief. It became increasingly clear that the Machiavellian worldview he subscribed to took precedence over our friendship. When we couldn’t agree on the composition of our single, he said some things that utterly destroyed my confidence as a songwriter, and although he tried to make amends, I couldn’t get over what he had said. 

I began to believe that I was the only one who actually wanted what JD and I had set out to accomplish, and that belief caused me to become bitter and resentful. In retrospect, I can see that I had little patience for other peoples' problems, and saw them as a hindrance to my own forward progress. My one-track mind, which had often served as one of my greatest strengths, was turning into one of my greatest weaknesses.

Years later, I heard a quote from a popular business consultant, the former lead hostage negotiator for the FBI, Chris Voss, and it's resonated with me ever since. He said, "Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better." 

But in the fall of 2016, I had never heard of Chris Voss, nor had I ever been so sure of what I wanted. What could be better than unmitigated material gain? It was all so close, yet so far away. I held out hope that JD and I would settle our differences, that Anthony would deliver on what we had talked about, and that everything would be okay in the end. Either way, I had a lot of time to kill in the interim.

I tried filling my time with more people-watching at the plaza, walking Anthony's dogs, driving his custom golf cart to the beach, and reading. The house was actually full of books, both in the living room and home office, the subjects ranging from esoteric spirituality to health, autobiographies, and classic literature. Although I was in the habit of picking up a random book, skimming the pages and putting it back, I felt unusually drawn to a particular title that happened to catch my eye: East of Eden by John Steinbeck. 

I took the book off the shelf and flipped to the first chapter. I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful imagery of California and the pace of the writing. Although I had been overwhelmed with the feeling that my life had reached a giant anticlimax, something told me that this book was about to take me away on an epic journey beyond my whole scope of knowledge. Little did I know, it would change my life forever.