Time Machine

I'm obsessive when it comes to music. If I love a songwriter, I will want to listen to all of his or her work. If I love a song, I can listen to it over and over.

In recent months, the writer I most listen to is Lori Carson. (I will call her Lori even though we don't know each other.) I first discovered Lori's work from two CDs I found by happenstance in a Hoboken discount bin. Since then, I have purchased all her albums and, because most of the work had been already released, I discovered her work out of the order it was written.

Later, I discovered her blog at a time when she was just getting back into songwriting. Through the blog, I learned of her first public performance in years. The concert was free with just a handful of friends in attendance.

Since then, she’s been posting her new songs on her website.

It’s weird when people ask me who my favorite artist is, when my favorite artist right now is an artist very few know. (So I usually say Coldplay instead.) Furthermore, the songs that I am listening to now are songs that few of her fans know.

She is, I believe, writing the best songs she has ever written right now.

Her latest song is “Time Machine.” Lori Carson is a great story teller. I marvel at her opening lines. They always seem natural, conversational, but they are very precise. Likewise, the stories she tells are always specific in detail, yet metaphoric, and her details are always just enough and no more. She’s been writing a lot now in the second person, which makes “Time Machine” more of a story than previous songs like “Whole Heart” which were monologues.

I wish I could convey what attracts me to her work. Certainly, part of what I found compelling about “Time Machine” was how it related to my life:

And you can't ever know
The wrong turn, the mistake
Until they build a time machine
Don't look back

However, it is really the artistry. I feel compelled to try to figure out why I am compelled.

After the concert, I wrote on her blog that I was there and how I enjoyed the concert and she told me to introduce myself the next time I attend, but I’m reluctant to do so because right now it’s about the mystery of her art and I’m happy to have it just be about that.