Love,

I just re-listened to the Songs From A Room interview you gave a few years ago.  I don't recall if I had seen a version last time, or if it had been audio-only then, as well.

One of your recent lyrics made me think that you were saying that you didn't know enough about me, and while my fiction and my non-fiction writing, I had thought, expressed much about me, I could understand how you would had found only yourself expressed in my then-poetry, now-turned lyrics...

Well, you know I had lived in then-West Germany during the tail end of the Vietnam War, that I had a very different sort of experience in school, and had both parents (itself a rarity among my friends) who were both educators.

My house was so packed full of books and ephemera from travels and musical instruments, and prints of paintings, and a tapestry, that my school friends said that I lived in a museum.

After my father had suffered a heart attack when I was still a child, we had been plunged into darkness and silence to permit him the rest he needed, and I am told that that period (aged 7 - 12) is reflected in my writing, and worlds, and outlook.

Vietnam, too, had deeply affected me: I have always had a profound recall of my life, from crib-days, diaper-days, and so, memories of watching the news and seeing those men's faces, hearing their upset at being labelled baby-killers and seeing their friends die and doing what the nation had asked of them -- it never left my mind, and when I was 17, sought to follow in my family's way, where my eldest sister had served in the Air Force during Vietnam, Stateside, and other family members in other wars and armies; my father a Lieutenant and his funny stories of trying to impress his men and his ultra-lucky shots at critical times to demonstrate his skill...  I had taken the step to enter the Army.

Fast Forward and when my nearly-cemented marriage had soured and I split from my partner, I had grown ... dark and once again sought to make something new of myself through service, but my plans went from Bodyguard to Diplomatic Protection and the veterans I had trained with -- one who had returned not only from Iraq, but had also served first in Afghanistan, had steered me, us, the lot of us, towards going overseas -- until Blackwater had its infamous 'bad day' and the entire landscape and business of Security Contractors was radically redesigned and we cut out of the loop.  The prospect of working security outside Gentlemen's Clubs two counties north of my home didn't appeal and I was petitioned to return to my folks as my father's health took his final decline.

he had once famously declared that once he was gone, he didn't care what happened to us, and so we had no insurance or anything else, and the house had been leveraged three times -- and was lost.  Mom and I then spent the years from September 2009 until her death December 1st 2020.  We had moved further and further north in Florida until I found myself in the town of my failed partnership a second time.  The jobs were grim in 2020-21, and then I saw your tour dates and the rest is history.  Our history... so far.

The years I have glossed-over were ... ah, the silly people I had met, the men and women I had loved, you have read of them in my earliest lyrics I have shared with you.

I know the world, I know love, I know your immeasurable worth, and I know my mind.

It is all you, Marissa.
K