The story behind one of my more unusual songs, “The Girl with an Accidental Memory,” starts at a weekly acoustic jam I was very fortunate to stumble upon soon after arriving on Tybee.
There on Tuesdays in the back room at Doc’s Bar, I met many of those who would become my new friends. I also heard many songs that I later added to my playlist.
And one night I was given a song:
It was late fall, I was running late, so I carried my guitar into a back room already buzzing. As I was unpacking and finding a seat, I overheard John Wynn saying something about a “five-dollar memory” and a little later someone else, or maybe it was John again, saying something about an “accidental funeral.”
As a former reporter and the son of a father who always insisted I carry a pen and notebook, I whipped out my plain Moleskine black journal.
Pete Love, me, John Wynn at a jam anniversary covered dish
I had detected a song, but I said to John as I wrote, “I’m flipping it around (why I still don’t know): to five-dollar funeral and accidental memory.”
Then I overhead Pete Love say he had followed a car to Tybee that had a blinking busted taillight. And I wrote that down and announced I was going to write a song with all three of those lines (never made such a bold declaration before, nor have I ever been so sure of anything).
As I prepared to write, I researched memories, the lost and the extraordinary, and I came across those who memorize the digits of pi. There are contests to see who can memorize the most.
Since the digits of pi never repeat, nor ever end, memorizing the digits of pi is problematic at best. Apparently, you don’t memorize them per se, you figure out clever ways to remember them, like pi poems.
So, I had me a poet.
What other memory contest would be easy for some who could remember the first 100 digits of pi? The correct sequence of all the presidents.
After the first two lines, the rest came relatively easy:
She can tell you all the presidents and the first 100 digits of pi
she can write haiku and even make it rhyme
I have no idea where or how she acquired a “pyromaniac’s eye,” but I love the way it allowed her to burn Atlanta, which in turn, at the end, let’s us see the “fire in her eyes.”
After playing it for Melissa, as I do all my new songs, she suggested adding a verse, which resulted in the 3rd verse about the Girl and the Father getting married. (Melissa is most often about the story. She usually wants more and nine times out of 10, she’s right.)
It was gratifying to play “The Girl with an Accidental Memory” for the guys at the jam.
They liked it. It’s one of the few songs of mine that my son the musician was impressed with. He said I was channeling Dylan.
My favorite line is in the second half of the song, verse 4, when she’s being philosophical and after she says “living is hard when you don’t have a place to hide,” she says:
“…aerodynamics can’t explain the fear of flying.”
“The Girl with an Accidental Memory” remains one of my favorites, perhaps because it’s so different from most of my other ones. But also, because of the story behind the song.
To read the story behind “Old Men” click here.
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Very clever you are. This is one of favorites also.
I thought that song was strange and I didn’t understand it – now I still think it’s strange but find it interesting to read the story behind it – strange it Ok of course