This morning, I felt like I struck gold. I DID strike gold. As a senior citizen now, I can’t keep up with all the features of any one app, like for instance, Facebook Messenger. Who knew that you had to check it to see if anyone had written you? Further, who knew that Facebook filters messages it perceives to be spam? Somehow, ancient messages from the years 2012 through 2015 surfaced this morning and boy was it fun!
One woman wrote from Greece. She wanted to know if I was the person who sang and wrote “Quit It.” Yes! I am, I told her (four years late!!). She told me in broken English that she’d heard the song on multiple compilations and wanted to find out who had sung it. Hah! Who knew there were compilations in Greece with my songs on them either? Un- authorized distributions, of course, but what the heck. I’ll take it. Someone in Europe is listening to a song I wrote in 1992 and was released on Silence is Broken. Wow! How great is that?
Another guy wrote from Philadelphia. He heard something of mine on WXPN Radio and told me he’d been a fan for years. Really? Who knew? I sure didn’t. He’d written three years ago. Still another person wrote to tell me they’d read a short story I’d written that was published in The Sun magazine. That story was about Forrest. It moved her enough to find me. I didn’t get her message until this morning, a year later.
Anyway, you get the point. There were a dozen or so of these filtered messages. Reading them I felt like I might explode. People I don’t know were encountering my work and felt compelled to write. It doesn’t get much better than that for me.
Within a few minutes of discovering all these wonderful messages one of my songwriting students showed up for her weekly lesson. Katie is fourteen and well on her way to writing a lifetime of songs. I couldn’t help but tell her about my windfall – not to impress her, but because it continues to amaze me that my music (or anyone’s music, words, art) travels as far as it does, in ways we can’t control or cause. I told Katie all of this so she would continue to write, to continue to do the best she can, so that one day she’ll be as surprised as I was this morning to hear from people she’s never met. What a thrill. I’m grateful beyond words.
This is Katie.