…and instead I went down a rabbit hole of music on YouTube. It started innocently enough – I was taking a study break and went on Facebook and a friend mentioned he’d just discovered Pentatonix. So I posted the video of Dolly Parton and Pentatonix singing Jolene. I have a personal love affair with this song and with Dolly Parton in general. This song inspired a poem, and Dolly is a wonderful, philanthropic person. But of course it didn’t stop there…

I proceeded to listen to Pentatonix sing Hallelujah, which is one of my favorite songs. Then I listened to the Jeff Buckley version of this song. Then I listened to Hide and Seek by Imogean Heap — the original, not the one Jason Derulo sampled, though I do like that song. Then I hopped over to Counting Crow’s Raining in Baltimore because that song, and that whole album, is fantastic. And then there’s this subway performer playing, what I think, may be the most brilliant version of Landslide I’ve ever seen.

Then I started listening to one of my all-time favorite musicians, William Fitzsimmons. I used to listen to him on repeat, he writes music the way I write poems – to get it all out, to pour your heart onto the page as a way of processing it. And this isn’t surprising as Fitzsimmons is a former therapist who eventually left that career to become a musician. In fact, his song After All, inspired a poem: I’m Always the Refrain in Your Songs, which was just published by Kissing Dynamite. Listen to the song and then read the poem.

And that paper….it eventually got written. 😉