Dear Mike Deni

Ten years ago this past August, on the second Saturday of the month, I stood on a hill in Golden Gate Park with a plastic cup of wine in my hand. It was cheap red concession stand wine, and it was my second glass in an hour. I was trying to get drunk. I was trying to get drunk so I didn't feel so self-conscious about being at a music festival by myself. I wanted to join the crowd down below, where dozens of people were about to watch a set I had carefully chosen from a lineup of several possible choices. It was a group I'd never heard of until just a few months prior, but something about their music made me put them on my schedule. I wanted to join the growing group of fans, but I wasn't ready yet.

It was a cloudy-cool summer day, in a painful but also wonderfully memorable year. My dad had died a few months prior, and I'd been in a state of semi-mania ever since. Parties and bars, dancing and drugs, nonstop nights out with friends. All the while a three-inch thick binder of paperwork shoved to the back of my kitchen cabinet, haunting every minute of my fun: my dad's will, estate papers, and everything I needed to do to get his affairs settled and my inheritance safely administered. I was simultaneously terrified of it and thrilled by it. I knew it meant financial security and a fresh start for me. All I had to do was pull myself together and get a job, any job, and I would be okay. The depression and anxiety of being shiftless, of having no direction--none of that mattered now. I would be okay, if I could just face down the panic-inducing task of sorting all the legalities out and taking my first, belated steps towards real independence.  

The binder sat and waited. It waited for me to catch my breath after his death. To fly home to LA from Florida and accept reality: Mom and Dad both gone now. On my own for real this time. The binder sat and waited while my friends swooped in with love and laughter to be a short term surrogate family. The binder waited while my boyfriend took me to Bonnaroo. And the binder was there listening when we broke up soon afterward, the terrible weight of my grief flattening us beyond repair. The binder knew it was a bad idea to go to Outside Lands, but we'd already bought the tickets. We figured we could travel separately, maybe meet up for a few hours as friends, catch a little music together.

Cut to day two of the festival. There I was with my wine, my mixed feelings of loss and gain, and all the insecurities that were keeping me from walking down the hill to be less alone than I needed to be. I felt, somehow, both broken and invincible. A difficult past, a family full of trauma and conflict, all the arguments and unresolved anger between my father and I--it was finally gone, gone, gone. No one to frown with silent disappointment at my mistakes anymore. No one to offer criticism but never help. My every choice going forward would be weightless, free from judgment. I could do and be whatever I wanted...if I could only figure out what that was. And in the meantime, music.

The band started up. My heart began pounding, hearing that unmistakable synth-pop sound. Taking the microphone from its stand, you addressed the crowd. And something about what you said or maybe just how you said it--it was like a key turning in a lock. There was a gentleness to it. A humbleness. A recognition of the gravity of the moment. Yours wasn't the biggest band on the lineup, and didn't command the biggest crowd. It was just exactly what I needed, to feel safe enough to lose myself in sound and celebration, to remember what could be beautiful so I could start to forget what had been ugly. 

"Alright, you guys ready?" A tremor of excitement as bodies started to move. "Let's do this."

That's all you said. But it was the invitation I couldn't resist. I tossed back the rest of my wine and took deep, quick steps down the hill to come listen to you, alone but not. 

---

No one ever warns us to keep some music to ourselves. So we share it, to amplify its meaning. To get even higher on it with another than we can get when we are alone. We draw a triangle between ourselves, the one we love, and the song that we've come to believe belongs to us both. With great consideration and ceremony, we place a piece of our heart inside that triangle. We need to. And it's every bit as intoxicating as we knew it would be. 

What they don't tell us is that we'll never get that piece of our heart back. Forever after, the association is galvanized. Good luck separating those songs from the ghosts that cling to them. It's impossible.

But I never shared your music with anyone. It's mine alone. After the festival, I revisited your songs again and again over the years. But I never played Geographer for anyone. It became a signifier of a kind of solo inner life that began that shimmering summer ten years ago. Every time I hear Verona, I can reconstruct the moment exactly. The slight chill on my underdressed arms. Hellman Hollow filling up with day two attendees. Laughter and chatter and music everywhere. My indecision about whether to plant myself on the hill and watch from a distance, or get lost in the mix of welcoming strangers. Then you spoke, and my decision was made. And ever since, the sound of your voice reminds me of my independence and strength. Of my ability to crawl through difficult days, to face down binders and breakups, to break down and bounce back without anyone else's help. Your songs are my selfish, secret strength. 

People worry about me on Thanksgiving, but they do so for the wrong reasons. They worry because I am alone, but really they should worry because I am not. The table is set for one but there are uninvited guests everywhere. My parents are here. My brother, too. They all want me to remember the simple happiness of sitting down to a meal surrounded by the ones that mean you must be home, safe. I don't want to remember that. It's too wonderful and it's too far gone.

On a day when there is always so much to be thankful for, today I am thankful for you. To my left and to my right, memories surge that threaten to pull me down into a deadly well of sadness. But your voice is a through line, a bright, beautiful wire on a cloudy day--again. Ten years I've been listening, without realizing until now just how much it means to me.

So thank you.