This morning, I sit in my little studio and write with a view of the birch-lined road and the light let loose in the garden.
I’ll work until 4:00 or 4:30, then pick up the children at the bus stop, and finally … head back home.
We fled to this faraway town a few years ago and never looked back. Some people here know I write lines that don’t quite make it to the edge of the page. But mostly I keep quiet about it, and keep making up songs.
It occurs to me there are artists who make their work beautiful in a way that they can never make their lives beautiful. One night they can have the world at their feet, and they can be all alone the next morning trying to find someone to have a cup of coffee with.
I believe you can stand for something beautiful and high without surrendering completely, without forsaking the simple, beautiful things that make a life.
I’ve always seen my songs as the evidence of my life, rather than the life itself. Life for me revolves around my wife, our children, the place where we live, those birches: the unrepeatable everyday beautiful, identical to all days.
