I lay motionless, out of breath and shining with sweat. Songs From the Eye of an Elephant had exhausted not only my emotions but my physical being as well. I was reveling in detumescence what was essentially a post-coital haze. R.Star’s Songs From the Eye of an Elephant had gotten me off harder than most men I’d ever fucked. And with twenty tracks on the album, it lasted longer too.

Two days later I saw Ryan Star play live at New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall as part of his sold out summer residency with the small new club. A few songs into the set, Ryan stepped out from behind his piano and picked up his acoustic guitar. He stomped the beat with his left foot while he played “Take a Ride With Me.” My cork-wedge sandal was resting on the edge of the stage, and the rhythmic vibration shot up my leg and through my entire body with every quarter note.

As a policy, I reserve my idolatry for a select few; I’m instantly critical of the Zeitgeist. I prefer function over form, and the criteria for earning my reverence are not easily fulfilled. That being said, Ryan Star had just reduced me to a blushing, ogling, thirteen-year-old groupie.

So when my boss introduced me to Ryan, and informed me that I’d be interviewing him the following week, I let out a brief girlish giggle, in spite of myself. The former frontman of Maverick Recording Artists Stage, Ryan Star was treated to a lifestyle that most only dream of. He went on tour with his bandmates and saw the countryside. He recorded a major label release in lavish studios with his pick-of-the-litter producer Greg Wattenberg. And he got the rug swept out from under his feet. After a year with the majors, during a tumultuous time for the industry, Stage opted out of their contract due to lack of label support. A few months later, much to the chagrin of longtime friends and fans, Stage disbanded. But R.Star was born...

When I first sat down with Ryan at Cityzen headquarters, I expected the typically defensive, talking-point-oriented, former frontman goes solo interview. But once his mirrored aviator sunglasses came off, I realized that his fame-mystique had been a creation of my own. His charm was earnest and his smile broad. His voice, words, and expression are wholly free of self-consciousness. He is confident but not arrogant, amusingly self-deprecating but not pitiful. Ryan Star on the couch in my office is Ryan Star on stage. For all the angst in his music, he is affable and full of enthusiasm for life’s simple pleasures. If his interview-persona was rehearsed, it was done so en-route in his rear-view mirror. The interview could have been a pleasant conversation over a beer and a game of pool.

“I’m trying to show that you can get it out to the masses,” he says. Show whom? The suits and ties of the big labels? Aspiring young musicians? I neglected to ask. (Barbara Walters I am not.) But I would stipulate that, above all, Ryan wants to show himself. His album is the result of solitary introspection, maturization, and plain-old hard work. These are the mechanisms by which Eye of an Elephant made its way, but the fuel was a lone crude: love. Star, who recorded and produced SftEoaE in his living room, played all the instruments on the album. His decision was both professional and personal. After his experience with Stage, he is now “trying to do the grass-roots” thing. “I think this music is the spokeschild,” he says, “because it is so raw.” His remark is revealing; the “child” is his own.

Songs From the Eye of an Elephant is Star’s “life’s work.” (Hopefully, though, it is only the first volume, or his <life-thus-far’s work.> It is intensely personal and introspective. The lyrics conjure up stark and significant life experiences: losing one’s virginity, … and the reoccurring references to self-mutilation. Star’s story unfolds track by track, and it reflects many of our own past selves: an awkward, frustrated teenager in the backseat of a car; a desolate soul at Montauk in winter; an anguished shell of a human sitting on the cold tile-floor of a blood covered bathroom.

Lyrically, Star traverses between metaphor-laden prose-poetry (“Lying on the grass now/ Dancin’ for the stars/ Maybe one will come down/ And tell us who we are”) and raw twenty-something-Guy vernacular (“In a minute we’ll be gone/ So we might as well just fuck”). When I casually recite the latter (from “The Back Seat of Your Car”) to him, he considers briefly that he might come off as an asshole. But he recants his defensiveness within seconds, explaining, “It’s honest…it’s real. In the song, the world is ending… There’s no time, and…we might as well just fuck.”

The album’s length may be problematic for those listeners with abbreviated attention spans. Twelve of the first fifteen tracks (the exceptions are two guy-and-his-guitar tunes – “The Same When I’m Alone” and “Famous Yet” – and the quasi-gimmicky “Psycho Suicidal Girls”) are piano based and similarly arranged with haunting cello and soaring violin accompaniment. The reward, though, is the album’s sixteenth track, “Here Son.” Percussion kicks in with the second refrain, and the passionate urgency mounts. The song evolves further: operatic harmonies evoke a timeless quality…

“Here Son” is an intense portrait of Star’s soul, and his emotional investment pays off: On an album of beauties, “Here Son” is Helen of Troy.

There are certain universals in life: the dreams and risks of everyday, as well as the bigger stage, the grander schemes, the desire to be great. Ryan Star has adeptly recognized these universal and crafted them into music. Untouchable rock star idol, or grounded every-man? Both. The reconciliation of these two personas (or two facets of one complex person) is evident during Ryan’s Thursday night stints at Rockwood. The Lower East Side singer-songwriter venue was comfortably intimate. Star quipped a few personal anecdotes with well-timed wit and – most importantly – genuine affection for the crowd.

Songs From the Eye of an Elephant is Ryan Star’s poignant and honest effort at musical memoir. He wrote and recorded the album on his own, in his own home, on his own time. The solitude of the process by which it was created is reflected in each of the twenty songs. “I wanted to make a record that was just me… in my living room,” he says, as if no further explanation of his soul-searching were needed.