"Maybe Montana"

Last Friday morning I woke up to a beautiful day after having, the evening before, attended a wonderful musical performance by Dougie MacLean in Asheville. I felt good that morning and posted on Facebook that I "almost" felt like writing a song. One of my friends in the Department of Literature and Language responded, "Ooh! Write one about me!" Well, I'm afraid that "almost" was as close as I got (sorry, Dr. Cajka), but I started thinking about my songwriting days and all the people that swirled around my life back then and ended up in my songs. I wrote entire songs about some people. I wrote verses or lines about others. I wrote some people into the songs as just passing images.

Then I got to thinking that I have no certain knowledge of my ever having appeared in somebody else's song. But I like to think that I made an appearance, as one of those "passing images" mentioned above, in the song of an old friend of mine in Nashville.

When I was a songwriter in Music City, especially in those years when checks from my publisher provided enough money for a single man to be somewhat unfettered, I used to take off to Montana every chance I got. I loved it there—Missoula in particular. At some point—I don't remember exactly when—I became enamored with a woman I heard perform at the Bluebird Café. She was one of the best songwriters I'd come across, and somehow, shy as I was, we became friends. Although our relationship sometimes leaned in the direction of becoming more than friends, it never seemed right, so we decided not to go there. And we didn't. I wrote her into a few of my songs from that period, and that was that.

One day not long ago, I was walking in the park near my house, my mp3 player blaring in my ears. A favorite song by this former female friend played, and I listened as I walked. The song is about a woman trapped in her life and yearning for escape. As you might expect, near the end of the song, she just leaves, and neither the singer nor anybody else in the song seems to know where she went. The lyric at that point muses, "Maybe New York, maybe LA, / Maybe Montana . . . she never did say." As small and quickly passing as it is, I like to think that I inspired that "Maybe Montana" phrase. That doesn't seem too much to ask for all that I've written about other people.

But I'll never ask my friend about that phrase. She might just laugh and say I had nothing to do with it. She might just laugh and say it sounded better and more romantic than "Maybe New Hampshire" or "Maybe Wisconsin" or "Maybe Chicago" or "Maybe Atlanta." I couldn't take that. Not for a few minutes, at least (after which I would probably be fine).