September 9, 2001
Dear Phil,
I got your package today. I read your letter in the parking lot at Hastings. Sitting there in the sun, in my rolled-up-window car world, the scent of T-Town came whooshing out of the envelope; and I was Home. I can’t explain what that smell does to me or how it makes me feel. Its’ worth is beyond calculation; and all I have to send you is alternate cuts. I sat there with my face literally buried in your letter, breathing in your Words. I wish I could make your life as easy as knowing you makes mine.
Until I read your letter, I wasn’t going to send you my essay. Even though it was stamped and ready to go, I kept hiding it under the pile of bills on my kitchen counter. Somehow, it was too angry and too honest to send you, to send Phil the Angel. But after reading your letter, I know it’s all right. And what’s more, you’ll Get It.
"My God," Sara said, in hushed tones because she’s not supposed to use the phone to call me. "You’re gonna get the shit kicked out of you. You really are. This one isn’t even a fic! Are you insane?!"
"No."
I watched the CD spin in its little tray. I watched the digitized counter tick off the track. I was very calm. I knew exactly what I was doing. Strains of Leon Russell’s Tightrope came from somewhere deep inside my brain.
"At least change the names."
"No"
Sara made this weird little noise halfway between a cough and a laugh. "You’re really going to send it, aren’t you?"
"Yes," I replied,darkly.
"I shall be on the lookout for spontaneous human combustion."
I can see the headline in the Tulsa Tribune now: Woman Suspected of Causing Remote Spontaneous Human Combustion. Claims she was in Colorado having breakfast. With a nun.
When I finally found the song All of the Good Ones Are Taken, I knew. I knew I’d written it real. The universe was tired of me knowing only the chorus and singing it badly to boot – so it Provided. Strangely, it didn’t provide the version I knew. It didn’t cough up the up-tempo song that was on Empty V. It sent me a cut so haunting that it sends me reeling whenever I hear it. To me, it’s joyous. It’s sad as hell, but it’s joyous. I sense that this is the version that Ian Hunter himself prefers (if he thinks about it at all) – the All of the Good Ones Are Taken album experience was so horrible that it sent the man into seclusion for six years!
Okay, why am I babbling about this song? I babble because to me it’s solid proof that alternate cuts exist. They’re out there cruising the highways of memory and time just waiting to be rediscovered. And I’m not just talking about Music here, my friend. I’m talking about choices and happiness and the incredible gift we have in Time. Sometimes, alternate cuts are so painful, you can only look at them out from under your eyelashes. And other times…
You send the most wonderful Music. I can’t tell you what it means to me that my father dances around his house to the Mavericks tapes you gave me. When I came home from work and found "Pizzircco" on my answerphone, I burst out laughing. Only rarely does my own blood family use Music to talk. My father was saying: "See? I Get It."
I hope you like the essay I wrote for you. I assure you that as you give me an endless sense of Home and well being, I hold the same in my world for you. You are the only person who truly understands how I feel about Words. You understand because it’s the way you feel about Music. Just as you are compelled to take apart Leon Russell’s songs, I write myself to sleep inside the rhythm of Words. The stars outside my window stand still…
O What A Thrill.
With all my love and all my Words. All ways,
Liz.