Otter's Rock

Life has been A Lot this year due to work things, home things, health things, and ::gestures vaguely at the world:: things.

But sometimes it can also be absolutely lovely. A few days ago I ordered some CDs--including one from one of my all time favorite groups--from the website of a trad musician and left a quick comment in the delivery instructions box to the effect of Hey, if you ever have you guys's fourth CD back in stock, please let me know.

I hit "purchase", watched the transaction go through, and went about my evening.

A day later, an email with the musician's name in the "sender" field popped up in my inbox during an extremely trying afternoon. Surely not, I thought.

But guys. Guys. It was. It was a real, an-actual-human-sat-down-and-wrote-this email from the actual musician expressing surprise and pleasure that someone had bought these CDs, giving some updates about the group (including that one of the members had passed away two years ago--a fact I'd already known, but hearing it directly from this person who was his bandmate and friend...😭😭), and musing about the music the group had made together. The email contained both proper punctuation and grammar and proper emoji usage. The email also contained a proof of shipping photo of the packaged CDs in which the slightly messy interior of this person's car is visible. The whole thing is about as far away from social media influencer presentation as you can get and I cannot express how delightful I find this.

I replied saying that I'd been really sad to hear of the group member's passing and how much I absolutely loved their albums. He sent a second email thanking me again, adding that the group had never felt successful (PS: 😱) and that it really meant something whenever someone said they enjoyed their music.

And, just. It would be hard to overstate how 🤩🤩🤩 I am over this entire situation. I have been listening to this group for 27 years and this individual's other projects for almost as long. This group has had a HUGE influence on my own playing, stylistically and in terms of repertoire. Two of their CDs are in my in my top 25 most-played albums of all time. On top of that, this person is widely regarded as one of the best players of his instrument, in this genre, in the world. And it turns he is also a genuine and down-to-earth human being. I would never in a million years have imagined I would have any kind of interaction with him, let alone that he would act like I'm the one doing him a favor by appreciating the art he has helped put out into the world.

Seriously. This has made my week and will quite possibly be one of the high points of this entire year. So yeah. Sometimes life is wonderful.

これで以上です。