Something About You

photo: Michael Harris

When I think about why I hunker into loving a musical artist, my answers are eccentric and personal and might not make sense.

I remember when my mother first bought a

Joni Mitchell album, and left it on the dining room table. I discovered it.

I played it on the turntable, as a child, and the voice I heard was so pure and so pretty

I fell in love with it, the way you would find a bird in a pet shop and want to take it home.

I didn't tell anyone, but when my mother was away, I listened to her record.

At ten, I appropriated her guitar. Quietly, it became my guitar. I sat on my bed and strummed it. I played chords and made up songs, by myself. But my discovery of artists, ones my mother loved, was my own, and they lived in my private world. Our parents' music was cool music.

It was my father who introduced me to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, and Sly and the Family Stone. And it was my mother who loved Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and protest music.

But growing up, my musical loves were MY artists. They didn't belong to other people.

In school, when I discovered Richard and Linda Thompson, I was completely enamored.

Part of the reason was that they were my secret.

I had a private disdain for charting artists like Duran Duran and Tears for Fears. Why? Because everyone liked them, and everyone knew them and played them and referred to them.

When I wrote songs, I went into my own world. I didn't try to write anything for anyone but myself and my musical heroes.

I tried to choose music that was not popular or known. For a while, I thrust myself into the Allan Lomax Folk Songs of North America, or the Elizabeth Cotten song "Freight Train." I checked books out of the library and learned songs from old country and folk songbooks, songs no one knew or sang.

As soon as a musical artist became popular, I seemed to lose interest. I loved Billy Bragg when no one had ever heard of him. When he joined with Wilco, the secret was out. He was no longer mine.

When I grew up and went to college, I had the chance to meet Richard Thompson and even talk to him. I do think this changed my life. I was 18 and remember seeing him backstage. He even played a song for me, and was kind, and told me to keep playing my guitar.

I ended up seeing him play in various small pubs in England, and even selling t-shirts for him.

When I found out he had a massive fan club, I felt embarrassed that I had had such a crush on his music. I was not unusual. Many people do. They are called fans!

And now, flash forward to myself as a musical artist. I feel I am still writing for the few, the people who are like I have been, those who want to find someone that very few know about or celebrate.

Obviously, it is in the interest of the Artist to be famous, to have millions of fans, and lots of money. But these factors are why I have never bothered to get in deep with Taylor Swift. She doesn't need me. My relationship with her music could never be a private thing.

I still live to discover an artist that other people don't know about or like or follow. When I do, it's kind of like the way I feel about an author. I want the whole collection. I want to absorb myself in every album.

I am not a playlist person, I guess. I can listen to the same album over and over and over.

This week, I have been obsessed with PM Dawn. Don't ask me why. Set adrift on memory bliss.

Paper Doll. I'm positive that few people are playing this CD, one I got for $6.99.

But I love it. I love every detail of it. It's my private thing.

And that's how it goes and how I listen. One obsession at a time. I love that I love like that .

I love that I can have such a weird and private relationship with the music I love. It has nothing to do with Spotify or streamers or who is getting big reviews.

It's my personal Zeitgeist. Something about you that's exclusively mine.

And I make music hoping to be someone's special friend.

And of course I will never even really know about that.