It’s You I Miss

I have competing stories about when I began to play guitar and write music. The first story is that I was living in Colombia back in the nineties, had just broken up with the woman who flew my hair to Cuba to put a curse on me, bought a guitar, and wrote my first song. The second story, which is also true, is that in 2021, I bought a guitar, dedicated myself to learning to play it, fell in love with an unavailable woman, imagined a whole relationship with her, and wrote lots of songs. And yes, both of these origin stories are absolutely true.

In fact, there are some other stories about how I started that are also true. My journey is all about fits and starts. I’m going to attempt to talk about those beginnings, endings, and new beginnings within the context of one of my newer songs, “It’s You I Miss.”

I find solace in music and writing, and I always have. On some level, I’ve been making music for as long as I can remember. My earliest music-related memories were creating a “stage” with lights and a sound system in my basement as a kid and pretending I was performing to thousands of fans. I do have an earlier memory of finding speakers in the garbage, taking apart my record player, and wiring a sort of surround sound system in my bedroom. Back then, I think all I had was a smallish collection of 45s.

I was pushed into piano lessons as a kid, but I completely rebelled against that, and when I joined the band in the fourth grade, it was as a drummer. I remember going to competitions and playing in assemblies and such. Since I was the only percussionist who could read music in our group, I played the xylophone on occasion. I left the band when they wouldn’t let me stay after practice to learn more.

In high school, I remember writing some songs. One, in particular, sounded a lot, in my head, like Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” In another coincidence, most of my songs are similar to “Suzanne” in that they often imagine the different paths a relationship could take, even if they never did or even ever would.

“It’s You I Miss” is a good example of imagined circumstances in relationships. I started writing the song in the Spring of 2023 for the woman I was sort of dating or wanted to get back together with. I had broken up with her because I was still nurturing the pain of a non-existent relationship with someone else. (Yes, I am oversimplifying that situation for brevity’s sake.) By December of 2024, the relationship had evolved into a friendship, but I still hadn’t finished the song. So, in order to finish it, I needed to imagine searching for a woman I had supposedly lost.

The music was, as always, the last to come. I had originally envisioned the song as bluesy and halting. Somehow, it changed into a song that sounded more like something from The Velvet Underground or Lou Reed. This evolution makes sense for a couple of reasons. Lou Reed has multiple albums that are odes or anti-odes to New York. “It’s You I Miss” ended up being an ode to Chicago in part because, in the song, the protagonist goes to the places he went to with his girlfriend, and most of those places were in Chicago and doing some very Chicago things such as walking along the 606 or taking shots of Malort.

I have a feeling there might be multiple versions of this song in different musical styles, and part of me wants to turn it into the first song of a medley that ends with the bridgeless version of the Velvel Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”