I did not write it to release it. I wrote it because I needed to hear someone say the thing out loud, and nobody was going to say it for me.
It came out in one sitting, in the chair by the window, on the kind of afternoon where the light moves across the floor and you notice because you have nowhere to be. I had a pencil and the back of an appointment sheet. That is the whole story of the recording session.
What surprised me was what happened after. People started writing to me. Not about the melody. About the line in the second verse. Women my age, and a few men, telling me about their own year. I had written a private thing and it turned out to be a common thing.
That is when I understood what I actually do. I am not in the business of making people cry at a piano. I am in the business of saying the thing out loud so somebody else does not have to carry it alone.
If you found me through that song, you are in the right place. There is a short journal on this site built from what I wrote that year. It is free and there is nothing clever behind it.
