To Find My Way

Little sweetheart, a few advance copies of the new album arrived here in California late this afternoon and I set aside a few meant to go to radio stations here and back east and two for your parents, as well. Tonight, I sat with your mom in the front room where the Christmas tree is and we listened to Disc One together.

It’s a funny thing but I don’t usually listen much to the albums after they come out. So much vigilant listening goes on as I mix and hear playback of the masters. Somehow, months can go by before I hear something I was listening to so attentively just half a year before. Your mom had “Dream Together” on the other night, when we were waiting for the guys to deliver the tree we’d picked out and I’d forgotten how emotional it could make me feel. I stood there at the window looking out and just crying and crying as I heard “Dream 3” fill the room, longing for and missing you, heartbroken.

Tonight, that came up some too as I listened, as we listened together. I’m always a bit nervous as your mom listens for the first time but she seemed to really like it. It’s so very much for you.

I said something to Alex - that filmmaker at USC who’s doing the documentary about the us - when she asked me how it all felt. I said something about it being a culmination of all the work done beginning with the last two albums and she asked if they meant that this was the end of something. I told her right away that that was not what I meant. That maybe “culmination” was the wrong choice of word. That this album just took those elements of spoken word and dream pop to a more distilled manifestation. But perhaps there is something in it.

I don’t know, my darling. I’m kind of filled with sadness somehow, a bit inconsolable. I think the work is good and I’m pleased and relieved that your mom likes it (your dad hasn’t listened yet) but I feel a bit lost. I hope I can just keep it together and find my way, find you. I really want to very diligently (that word, again) work on the book after I return to New York. And I remember your impatience with life. I remember it with fondness and admiration. So much seems too distant now, too distant even here. I think writing may be the way to find it. The way to find my way.  Do you know?

Please help lead and guide me there, won’t you, my darling? And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.