Music for a Book: Titled

AND THEN, IT WAS ON-SALE DAY.

It’s official: This Must Be the Place is out in stores, making its way, kicking up its heels and tossing its beret in the air and generally being a gadabout book-about-town.  It seems a perfect moment to publicly (and world wide webbily) thank my amazing agent Bonnie Nadell; the folks at Henry Holt & Company, including my extraordinary editor Marjorie Braman, her assistants Rachel Bergmann and Lauren Culley, my fabulous publicist Melanie DeNardo, and king of the web Jason Liebman; and my tremendous family and friends: you’ve been supportive and excited about this adventure beyond my wildest dreams, and I love you dearly (both specifically for the encouragement and because, you know, I love you).  I simply cannot thank you all enough for making this possible, and for making it so much fun.

Now for today’s soundtrack cut (which I’m compelled to present with an art nerd nudity disclaimer, though what the heck, watch it at work, it’s art): This Must Be the Place by the Talking Heads, who lent me a title.  The book was originally and blah blah boringly called This Happens to Everyone, and way back when I started writing it, it lived in a folder on my desktop called The Big Kahuna, which was more fun but also wicked random.  I wish I had a great story about how I was searching my soul for an intriguing and suggestive title and David Byrne appeared to me in a dream, playing the song on a ukulele as trained hamsters swam Esther Williams routines in a shallow kiddie pool (man, I wish, especially since that’s just another Tuesday night for David Byrne).  What really happened was this: I loaded the Talking Heads compilation Sand in the Vaseline into my ipod, set it to shuffle, and seized on these lyrics one day as I was daydreaming my evening commute away:

Share the same space for a minute or two

It’s a sweet and deceptively simple song, enigmatic and meandering, about finding a home in yourself and in the people you love.  It was a nice thematic fit.  So on the manuscript it went; on the manuscript it stayed.  And now it’s out in the world, and I can’t stop thinking two words:

Okay, four words: holy crap, and thank you.

Boston-area PSA!  Next week the Somerville Theater in Davis Square will be screening Stop Making Sense, the Jonathan Demme-directed live concert film the link above was taken from.  In a word: GO!

I no longer do this for a living, but I used to be all about writing DISCLOSURE, so why stop now: lyrics totally and completely reprinted here without permission.