To friends who are now famous:

Nashville is a funny town.  People come here with a plan, but Rock and Roll dreams either turn to bus-boy realities or rockets to stardom (after about 10 years of work).  I'm always a little sad when friends 'make it'.  Not because of jealousy, but because 'making it' often means that that person will grow a hedge between themselves and the people they used to know. 

I think of sweet friends who I played music with, wrote with, sang with, ate lunch at the street cafes with, who no longer return my calls.  It's odd.  Are they too busy meeting with record lables, stylists, producers?  Do they think I have some ulterior motive?  Are they too exahusted from driving from town to town and singing to carve out time for friends back home who knew them before the stylists, the lables, and producers?  Do we just not have anything in common any more?  Am I to busy with motherhood and my own life to be intentional with them?  Not sure.

It is hard to watch friends pull away.  It is a hard thing to miss them and to still want to tell them about my little girl, my expected son, how things are growing and changing with me and my husband, my life now, how the music I make now is mostly for kids under the age of 5 at the public library, and often is only heard by one little sweet baby girl (and how I much I love that!).  How I'm happy for them and thrill at seeing them in a music video when not to long ago, we were singing to the cakes (i.e. and empty room) together in some out of the way bookstore cafe.  To wish that we still could talk about our lives with the honesty and frequency of years past.

So to my friends who now grace the music channels and the radio: I hope you are well in heart, mind, soul, and body.  I hope that you have joy and peace in your day.  I hope you have time for quiet and rest.  I'm so proud to have known you, even for a little while.