I was a kid in the 60s, and I remember a big glossy red square with a love heart on it and a man in the middle of the heart which seemed to be looking at me.

Those eyes had a great honesty, no walls. He has a quiet feel to him, almost a shyness. When he looked at me off that glossy cover, he didn’t take from me, or give to me, he was just ‘being’ in his own space. it was a marvellous thing to have a friend like this, even if he was only ever a picture.

He didn’t have a ‘taking-feeling’ to him, like narcissists do when their photo shouts ‘me’, ‘me’, ‘me’ at you. And that’s important because sometimes the person holding the picture has no sense of themselves at all, they admire nobody because they haven’t learned to or why they’d want to, they don’t need anyone to look at them or maybe even can’t stand it when people do… they just feel too ‘present’ and its not always easy to dare exist… especially if you’re autistic, like me.

But that man in that big heart shape on that shiny red square was Gene Pitney and I was holding his album ‘Half Heaven, Half Heartache’. I was about five. I had lost my main carers about six months earlier, my grandfather had died and my grandmother was shipped out to where I saw her four more times before she died. And I was just learning to read. I couldn’t read with meaning until I was about ten or so (they didn’t learn I didn’t understand sentences with meaning untill I was nine) but I learned early to sound out letters. Anyway, the reason I had this big red square in my hands was because it had a name on the back cover and the name was ‘Donna’. Gene Pitney had a song called ‘Donna Means Heartbreak’.

When I hear her name,the world just turns upside down

To others Donna means beauty
Donna means heaven,Donna means ecstacy,
But Donna means heartbreak to me

To others Donna means beauty
Donna means heaven,Donna means ecstacy,
But Donna means heartbreak to me

She ran around,like a there was no tomorrow
And all the time, I thought she was mine
She belonged to everyone,everyone,every,every,every one

…lyrics by the late great singer-songwriter Gene Pitney.

Gene, you looked into my eyes, the eyes of a little autistic girl, afraid of her name, afraid of being looked at, and I grew up to play the record inside of that big red glossy square record cover with the heart on the front and your face in that heart. My house was not a house of love, it was often a house of violence, of horror and madness and you brought beauty into my small little world. I sometimes think of that, the little places we find hope and inspiration and connection and the strangers who make themselves public who give us these things, shy strangers, strangers like you who, in our own private worlds where we listened to your music, we felt you were a friend.

I’d like to think that as the singer-songwriter I grew up to be, that there’s a little bit of Gene Pitney hanging out in my soul. And there will be a bit of Gene Pitney hanging out in the souls of so many people who sing your songs or play them, or saw you perform, and of course the special people in your home life and personal world, that you’ll surely never be gone.

I grew up to belong to the world, to everyone, and to claim my mind, my body, my feelings, my name and dare to let people know me just as you had let people dare to know you, through your words, through your voice, through your eyes and standing strong in this world with an enduring humility. I’d hope I don’t mean heartbreak and that I’ve brought, instead, a fragment of the beauty and passion and foundness that your music gave people.
In memory of a living musical masterpiece named

Gene Pitney
who died, today, in his sleep, in my husband’s home city of Cardiff, leaving behind a wife and three sons.
A tribute from Donna Williams *)

author of Nobody Nowhere
http://www.donnawilliams.net