The Secret Song

There was a stencil on the sidewalk outside of my old Hell’s Kitchen apartment that read, “Being impatient won’t get you the secret song.”

We all have secrets, truths that gnaw at us, crush our spirit, and kill us from the inside out. Here’s mine.

Like millions of Americans, adverse childhood experiences (divorce, assault) left me hypervigilant.

Chronic stress amplified it. I chose jobs tethered to the uncertainty of the news cycle and thrash of global travel. And I chose perhaps the world’s most stressful address. I was anxious, sleepless, fitful and coping with everything at my disposal.

By the time I arrived at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, last August, I was untethered from all of the above and living in a leafy, bucolic environment.

I knew I had to tear the curtains down and let the daylight in. I had to throw the windows wide, and sing that secret song for myself, and anyone like me.

“The Secret Song,” the second single from my forthcoming album, Constellations, is that moment of realization and transformation made manifest.

On this week’s Friends & Neighbors, I share the journey of writing and recording of “The Secret Song,” from inception to release, and explore how it came to help me, as Fred Rogers often said, “make the mentionable manageable.”