Sweet Patty. She has been my crutch, my confidant, a reason to maintain. Through her I have been entertained. Absolved. I am not actually sure where it all began, but with her I have welcomed all experience.

Hyperbole? Yes. But it is Necessary in order to attempt to explain the importance of her to me. Music takes a moment and extends it through repeated plays. Moments or years later it still plays/sounds the same. But each experience of mine seems to cling to it. As I have found myself clinging to so many of her songs.

A quick flashback for context: My relationship with music as identity began a long time ago. It was fifth or sixth grade. I was living out in the wooded country. I heard the Green album by R.E.M.  My older cousin, whom I idolized, loved it and we played it on repeat during our adventures. I didn’t really pay much attention to the lyrics–it was the spirit of the music that attracted me. Upbeat and danceable songs followed slow and intimate ones. It was both so eclectic and so unified. The catchy choruses echoed in my head even after I ceased playing the record. And at the time it was something that set me apart from all of my NKOTB-loving peers at school.

From that point forward, music wasn’t something that I simply enjoyed–it was my defining characteristic. Identity and friendships became so entwined with my beloved “alternative” acts that there was a period that listening to and liking any given album was less important than living them. Sure there are plenty of songs that I still intensely love today, but I don’t have such strong emotional bonds with the music as I do with the defining “aura” around them. There were some cathartic moments with Tori Amos’ albums, but by and large this was all about outside things. It wasn’t until college that music really moved the inside of me.

Enter Patty. One night as a Freshman I am sitting in a group including a boy named Mitch. This boy played guitar and wore flared vintage jeans. He ate avocado sandwiches and paid attention to me in a tender way uncommon for most straight boys I knew. It was in that state of infatuation that I happened to care that the song he played for me was called “Sweet Lorraine” by a lady named Patty Griffin. It was on an album called Living with Ghosts that he would copy for me. (god bless cassette tapes and the 90s) I am sure he had no idea what he had actually introduced into my life–but it burrowed deep.

Like many Midwestern queer kids my life had been filled with a good amount of unrequited love and generalized pain. I was young enough to let the inertia of optimism guide me but not lucky enough to escape all the melancholy that filled lonely rooms. And it was in this space that I played my copy of Patty’s first album. With the first hammered chords of “Moses” and lyrics asking for help to “cross the sea of loneliness” and declarations of “a best friend who is a queer” I was hooked.

Patty embraced the beautiful music of melancholy. She wrote songs about recollections that struck like bullets and immortalized abused heroines. She declared beauty in a brassy voice. She ended this 10 song epic with a reminder that I wasn’t alone. I listened to this album on repeat for about two years. I gave copies to boys I loved. I allowed this music to help me begin to tell my story.