Dear Jessica Brennan,
I’m in love with Zac Brown. I know the timing is bad given that today is Dad’s birthday but I don’t think he cares anyway. When I told him the news he got a little smile on his face and then went back to doing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. He likely thinks it’s a crush but it’s not. This is the real thing, although I don’t know why.
It’s not because of what Zac looks like because I don’t really know. What he looks like, I mean. I couldn’t pick him out of a line up. Obviously there is an age difference of about twenty years, but I’m sure that won’t matter. I can lunch with his mother and aunties. It’s not the songs really. After all I’m not a Country fan, at least not until now. Well it is the songs, I guess but more than that it’s the harmonies in the songs that I can feel somewhere between my heart and my temples – between my childhood and now, between listening with my dad to the Eagles “Lyin’ Eyes” on our Hi Fi on a Saturday afternoon and the whisper of a road story I repeated last night. There’s a moment in each song that grabs me, reminds me of another time and makes me weep, and I can’t get enough of that kind of delicious pain. Therefore obviously this is true love.
Before you bring it up, this isn’t like when I was eleven months and 7 weeks pregnant walking around with a carton of chocolate milk balanced on your yet to be born head, back when I was in love with Jack Wagner who played Frisco Jones on General Hospital. I did love Jack with all my heart, but of course taking on a newborn baby and having that demanding career would have been too much for him. I don’t want you to feel guilty though sweetie, your dad and I have had a good life.
My love for Zac comes from his way of writing, a thing that I just can’t shake. In each lyric I can feel the magnetic pull of an audience yet to assemble, the indecision of always needing to leave and yet wanting to come home. The lure of the limo, the vibration of the tour bus and subsequent flight, and in the space between each word I can detect the vibrant setting of touring, which once complete will fade into one big never-ending performance. I sense a distant chatter in the green room, feel the impatience we call sound-check, watch the hangers-on eating the rider and drinking the beer and hear the deep darkness of backstage – the perfect nothingness to create music from, and in the harmonies I feel the echo of an ache in that part of my chest behind the chamber that protects my deepest breath as I miss that road warrior life in that way you remember the beach in October.
As I said, I have no idea why I love Zac Brown. Anyway, I have to go now. Dad is taking his guitars in to be refurbished before he heads out on the road again for a seven month run of back to back gigs. I’m so grateful we’ll have Zac. Bundle up. It looks like January may bring colder weather.
Love Mum xo
