Interview with the Songwriter
by Michael Miller
At the outdoor table, we write a night walk together.
This is our project: myself the journalist on deadline
and he the artist on the charts, this campus that inspired
his new song our halfway point to meet. My notepad spreads
in front of me and I ask about the night walk. Does it start
here at the cafe? Between sips from the flask, grinning, he tells
the tale of freshman year, his route back to the dorm
after waiting tables, the window where he paused, night
after night, to stare at the girl’s silhouette, the drapes open
just an inch in the middle. Even the moonlight risked peeking,
I jot down, then show him. We laugh. For half an hour, we
have capped each other’s sentences, fleshed out the night walk
with what words can evoke: a moon behind tree branches
and smoke from an unseen joint, lyrics quoted from memory
from Cream, Paul Simon, the education we each honed
in bookstores and hours by the radio. Had we met at 19,
20 even, this night walk would not be a story but a song —
our table in the dorm strewn with coffee cups, liner notes,
chords spun until dawn into a recorder’s light. This year,
the year after, is there time for sudden friendship? The talks
come timed now, both of us with rings and planners, a text
on his phone cutting the hour short. He flashes the baby’s
picture, scatters tour schedule cards. If you want to see the dorm,
he says, it’s the second on the right. And he goes. I stay, left
with what so many days amount to: a notepad scrawled
with facts, two quotes, a promise to make no errors. There is
barely time to linger, but with minutes, I take his night walk —
a day walk this time, all the drapes wide open. In one window,
a girl plucks her guitar. In another, three boys laugh, their books
strewn untouched, the sound of slow time and loved rapport.
*First published in Angels in Seven (Moon Tide Press, 2016)
Michael Miller is the co-founder of Moon Tide Press, the author of five books of poetry, and a former entertainment and community news journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He currently teaches English and coordinates the visiting-author program at St. Cyril of Jerusalem School in Encino, California. You may read more about him and visit his blog at www.michaelmillerpoet.com.
