By Doug Forbes

I used to write and play indie music. I used to promote music. I used to see live music every week.

When those days ended and our family started, Rox and I used to sit in my office, listen to music, watch music videos, strum savagely on a guitar. Rox, Elena and I used to have hardcore, late night dance parties, grooving to Warpaint or Kasabian or OK Go. It was pure magic.

Now I struggle to listen to a single song. It hurts to the bone.

These songs take me to many different places. And the last song listed here is the only one Roxie and I recorded together. It’s only beautiful because she’s in it. It’s weird and wily and cobbled together from clips and bytes and not even my musical thing per se. But I wanted her to have fun. We recorded it for mom, a day before Mother’s Day, seven weeks before my beautiful girl left the earth.