I’ve had two songs stuck in my head for eleven years. Yes, that’s a very long time. They’re very good songs. You haven’t heard of them, and I mean that literally and not in the hipster sense. I mean that the chance you’ve heard them is insanely small—perhaps 100 people ever have.
Eleven years ago I stage managed a show for a good friend of mine. It was about a train, its passengers, and a rail crash. It was an experimental show, so there was monologue, scene, spoken word, movement (what non-dancers call dance), and folk music. The folk music was provided by a friend of my friend, the lovely and fantastic Nick Jaina. I remember we acting studenty people were rapt when Nick described his traveling life with music, how it had a romantic vagabond appeal. The music he wrote for that show reflected just that. It was soulful, not preachy, charming, and since I still have bits of it in my head 11 years later, I can tell you it was damned good. By the end of the show’s run more than half the women were in love with him. That’s good stuff.
I was out walking the other day and had my cans on my ears, Pandora cranking. Then I heard a voice, a familiar voice, one I hadn’t heard in eleven years, a favorite voice that tickled a soft warm spot inside my little heart. I peeked down at my screen. Yes, Pandora led me back to a voice I thought I’d never hear again. And yeah, he’s got a website, and yeah I sent him an email right quick. To the effect of:
It’s been so long that I’m certain you won’t remember me, but that doesn’t matter, because I remember you. Your music has been in my head for 11 years, and I just wanted to say thank you. I’m not sure if I ever said what a pleasure it was to work with you, but it was and is, because those songs are still with me.
There’s a certain frustration to having music stuck in your head that no one else knows. I’ve always wanted to share with someone just how good these songs are, but I can’t do them justice because I only had a set number of times to hear them and memory has a way of softening the edges on things. But they were good, that good. To give a proper frame of reference, the longest I’ve ever had any other music stuck in my head was a month, and that was The Beatles, and it was Yellow Submarine. Yes, Nick Jaina’s songs have out lasted The Beatles by 10 years 11 months.
I went to his site. He’s made album after album—one of them done on Elliot Smith’s piano. I looked for my songs (that’s how I think of them, as mine) they’re not there, of course. It was too long ago and they were just for the show… but damn, if I didn’t find a treasure again. If you’re up for listening to some thoughtful stuff and wandering through a little piece of my heart, do go. The song that Pandora played for me was off Seven Stations. The above video is for Sleep, Child.
-TLOTH
