I listened to your songs, and read the things you wrote, and decided that I liked you based on words and scattered notes. Now, that might sound kind of stupid, and you’d probably be right. But I listen to your music, and something feels all right. For all I know, you could just be a scoundrel or a fool, or possibly a villain come to rob us of the jewels. But somehow I still like to think I know a good heart from a bad. I can hear it in the music— in the happy and the sad. Isn’t that a good thing? It’s all it needs to be: making songs for strangers while sipping cups of tea. Sending little pieces of a life we’ll never see. You make your songs for strangers, and one of them is me. Perhaps you’re rude to waiters. Perhaps you cheat at cards. Perhaps you leave your shopping cart abandoned in the yard. But no one writes so tenderly without some tender part. Even fools and scoundrels occasionally have hearts. Isn’t that a good thing? It’s all it needs to be: making songs for strangers who listen quietly. No need for introductions, or proof of pedigree. You make your songs for strangers, and one of them is me. I don’t know where you come from. You don’t know where I’ve been. We only know the little truths we hide between the lines. And maybe I imagined the person in your songs. But sometimes what we recognize is worth the risk of being wrong. Isn’t that a good thing? It’s all it needs to be: a song released at midnight, a stranger drinking tea. No promises between us. No grand philosophy. You made a song for strangers, and somehow it found me. For all I know, you’re terrible. But your music isn’t.
