In time, I’d recognize that pull as a desire to write myself. Not songs, but stories, which feels fitting because, though the harmonies are lovely on that album, it was really the storytelling above all else that moved me. The brevity, the oddness, the glimpses of worlds existing beyond three-minute tracks.

It was not that long ago that communities supported the idea of the prophet within all, hidden under the blanket of sleep. Similar realms include that of daydreaming and meditation. When we listen to our intuition, heed our dreams, and allow our senses to roam outside of the tangible world, that is when we can access our full creativity.

In the intervening years, I have come back again and again to those old radio country songs because they capture that same fresh liberation they did when I first heard them over a gas station milkshake on a dusty 110-degree day. They express what I never could.