DROP

I am flying. Really.

I no longer know where I am going, where I have been.

I am in the middle of a long-ass bus tour. Thirty-three shows in thirty-six days. It’s a fucking marathon, and when the bus can’t get me where I need to be, I hop on a plane and jet back and forth. Put a pin on the map, wherever we are, fly back to the bus, and continue on our way.

There’s a copy of today’s New York Times folded in on itself and stuffed into the seat-back cushion in front of me. Or maybe it’s yesterday’s paper—I’m no longer sure of the date, either. Whatever. Can’t remember the last time I cracked an actual newspaper. It’s old-school. These broadsheets, with the leaky newsprint … it’s the way my father used to read the paper. Somebody told me they have classes on how to read the Times, how to spread out the paper and fold it lengthwise into long accordion sections, and then again from the top down—the only way to read the damn thing on a subway. Or a tour bus.

I pull out the paper, start to read. I am drawn to the obituaries—to one in particular, for an artist named Gary Burden, who designed all these iconic album covers. They give him a half page, so you know the guy was the real deal. I don’t recognize the name, but I see that I know his work. I see that his work mattered. There are thumbnail images of familiar album art, covers I’ve seen over and over to where I can even attach the accompanying songs to what I’m seeing: the Doors … Crosby, Stills & Nash … Neil Young.

Here is a shot of the cover of Joni Mitchell’s Blue—one of Gary Burden’s covers, apparently.

Here is a quote pulled from an interview with Gary Burden on NPR’s World Cafe: “How to visualize the music. That’s been my obsession.”

Mine, too. Always, I think in terms of what I’m seeing as I play my music, what my fans are seeing. Back when music videos were relevant, prevalent, you could maybe manipulate the visual, help the listener out, get him or her to imagine what you were imagining. But now, it’s back to what the music tells you. It’s whatever mood you’re able to create, whatever colors come along with that.

I am floored by the connection. The serendipity of it. I mean, what are the odds? This book you now hold in your hands, open to this very page, it is on my mind as I ride the bus, as I bounce from city to city. I write as I move. I write as I breathe. I reach for the shades that color my music and try to put them into words. And here is this obituary of this giant album artist, someone who put his fingerprints all over these classic records, helped us to “see” these classic artists as they didn’t know they wanted to be seen. As they were meant to be seen.

I set the paper down and think what it means, me coming across this obituary, at just this time in my life. It’s not about me, I know. Somebody died. He had a wife. He left a mark. So, yeah, it’s about him. Gary Burden. But running into him like this, learning the story of his life and career, reading about how he would try to visualize the music with his designs, seeing what we might see before we could see it for ourselves … it’s almost cosmic. That Joni Mitchell album cover, staring back at me. The artist, half in shadow, lost in song, lit by shades of blue. It’s like this folded-up newspaper was left here for me. It’s just too, too much.

Blue.

I find the album online, start to listen. Some of the songs I know. Some I don’t. The title song, “Blue”—it’s possible I’m hearing it for the first time, because it doesn’t feel familiar. It’s not a part of me. Yet.

“Songs are like tattoos,” Joni Mitchell sings. Yeah, they are. We wear them on our hearts. They become a part of us. We reflect what we hear and put it back out into the world, so everyone else can hear what we’re hearing.