Devil Sent the Rain

Last year I had the best-ever brush with greatness experience while listening to National Public Radio.

From my end of things the scene resembled any random Sunday. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I turned on the radio. I was standing at the sink, sporting some hot-pink-dish-gloves by the way, trying to keep my hair from falling into my eyes, and tuned into an author interview on NPR. Tom Piazza had published Devil Sent the Rain Music and Writing in Desperate America and was being interviewed as part of a publicity circuit. 

Tom was part of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop at the same time as I was part of the undergraduate workshop wannabes. And, as commonly occurs, all of the underclass writers knew and admired the members of the graduate workshop. I met Tom, maybe, three times. We talked about music. He was curious about my dad's radio show, and extensive vinyl record collection. 

So I was standing in my kitchen, last year, half listening to this interview and half sorting through the where and the when of things in a mental box labelled "Tom Piazza" in my brain. And the interview pierced the mental cobwebs with this: "[i]t's not just about beautiful sentences. It's not just about catchy song hooks. But it's about something deeper. And it is about the reaching from one individual out to another individual."

I looked up from the dish soap to imagine him talking about this book with a friend in a crowded restaurant. One of those noisy rooms I would be too embarrassed to cross. A moment I wouldn't want to interrupt. But imagined him glancing around, for just a second, wondering why that blonde in the corner looked so familiar?

I winked at the blank wall above my kitchen sink, and I wished Tom Piazza well.