Words…

The University of Memphis, English Building, freshman composition.

1997.

A young graduate assistant teacher pushes a television cart into the classroom and tells us to write our first paper on the video he’s about to play.

Seconds into the song, the opening electric guitar riffs wrap around me with familiarity just as the harmonica hooks join in…

‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance,’ by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

I prefer listening to great songs with my eyes closed, but this was a video and we were in the peak of MTV’s video music era. It was also an assignment.

So, eyes open.

My pencil repeatedly scratched horizontally across the paper laid in front of me while my young mind found gladness and ease in the assignment.

As a budding writer, I knew I was driven by stories.

Present day, I no longer watch the news. And online algorithms oftentimes send me spiraling into the internet and its seeming efforts of spewing relentless lies. And even manic declarations.

Music, memoir and documentaries- muses that help paint my thoughts into words.

The ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ music video embodies all three of these inspirations.

I find my fingers almost always choosing a Zach Bryan song on my dashboard these days. He’s a modern day poet who speaks to my soul with lyrics and rhythms that paint pictures of my own life into my mind.

‘Baptize me in a bottle of Beam with Johnny on the vinyl…’ -Revival

‘And I think fear and Fridays got an awful lot in common. They are overdone and glorified and always leave you wanting…’ -Fear and Fridays

Words. I love words. Whether they’re written or spoken. I love them. What beautiful and sometimes tragic wattage they hold.

And I love that we live in a world that is filled with words that can, as Eric Church says, ‘Turn the quiet up, turn the noise down.’

How lucky we are to be able to choose what we listen to and read…how lucky we are to have the gift of interpretation of what is placed in front of us.

May we all be able to decipher it with the wide eyes of the younger version of ourselves and grow love for something through it…may we all choose to give the words around us only the energy we want them to hold.