It takes a certain kind of courage or audacity or just a true sense of self to don a top hat and a flowing skirt, to create something that is utterly your own style and walk out onto a stage and sing a song.  To boldly say, "Here I am; here is my song.”  To have thousands lean in close to listen and to keep that keeping on for more than 30 years. I marvel at it.  

I was thinking about Stevie Nicks after reading a piece a while back in The Huffington Post. She was talking about Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming tour and new artists she finds interesting, but what struck me was the story she told about how she got started. 

When she was 15, she signed up for a month of classical guitar lessons. Shortly after, her teacher decided to move and he sold his guitar to her parents who gave it to Stevie for her 16th birthday. 

The article went on,  “And I wrote a song a week later, and I went and said to my mom and dad, "You have to come into my bedroom and sit on my bed, and I'm going to sit and I'm going to play you this song." 

By the end of the song she was crying.  “And my mom and dad have little tears in their eyes and they said, `Well,  you know what, that's a good song.’ “And I said, `Well, I'm glad you like it, because I'm going to be a songwriter and that's it. That's what I'm doing.’" 

I loved the steadfastness of that, the no-matter-what of her quest. She was going to be an artist and that was that. She says all these years later  it  remains true. 

So I dust off the old albums. (Well, only metaphorically because actually we have nothing to play them on anymore and they are warped and scratched from that younger self listening. Instead, I download some songs from ITunes.)  

I settle in for a new listen, startled again at the alchemy of songwriting,  how someone sitting in a home in L.A. or a  little place in Brooklyn can write down lyrics, and pluck out chords. Someone like Stevie Nicks can turn this into a song that eventually wends itself our way, across miles and years and circumstances to us. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/stevie-nicks-fleetwood-mac-reunion-rihanna-kanye_n_2220029.html