It began with a song:
“Objects in Motion” by Jim White, a southern gothic storyteller and musician. The industry labels his work alternative country but I find his music poetic and filled with offbeat humor and empathy for broken humanity.
In this particular song, White tells the story of finding a suitcase full of undelivered love letters floating down a river, unsigned, unanswered, and full of longing. He wonders who wrote them—”was she old, was she young, or was her heart undone by the cruel business of loving.”
Then the song takes a haunting turn and ends with lines that spoke to me:
“You can’t waste the whole damn day loving what you need to cast away. For from the flame of love comes the cinder of regret. Sometimes the thing you cling to most is the thing you’d best forget.”
They set my mind spinning.
So, I started writing what would become Love and Other Incurable Ailments with a simple “what if”: What if someone found those letters and couldn’t let them go?
Outsider characters, those who face obstacles of their own making, or feel marginalized or overlooked, have always interested me. I’d had a particular kind of character on my mind for a long time, and now I had the idea.
Serenity isn’t always as calm as her name suggests. She’s an anxious mess with a touch of hypochondria who works retail and attends group therapy. Her life is seemingly on hold until she finds a box of discarded love letters in a dumpster. Unanswered. No return address. Postmarked Ocracoke, NC. Signed only “Birdy.”
That’s when her story begins—she acts before she can talk herself out of it.
Fueled by magical thinking and a deep ache to be loved, Serenity sets out to find the letter writer and give him the ending she believes he deserves and hopefully claim a happy ending of her own in the process. She can be a mess, yes, but she also has laser focus when she wants something badly enough.
Of course, things don’t go as planned because they rarely do. That’s when she must let go of what she clings to the hardest.
In this way, Love and Other Incurable Ailments deals with letting go, finding new connections, and the different ways we heal. It’s about impulsive choices and hope.
Hold on or let go
White’s lyrics remind me that we all have objects in motion, including emotions, memories, and obsessions that we struggle to release. Sometimes we carry these things far too long. Sometimes we let go too soon.
And somewhere in between we find the space where stories are born.
By the way, I wrote to Jim White to tell him how his song inspired my novel. He was delighted and thanked me.
He then shared this in a Facebook post of his own:
I seldom perform Object in Motion because it’s regularly listed in various streaming reports as one of my least popular songs. I was real proud of the lyrics when I wrote them and wished I had done a better job with the music (3 chords, very monotonous). Believe it or not, that happens to be Bill Frisell on guitar, playing those three chords over and over for five minutes. Talk about squandering talent! It’s like buying a Maserati to go pig trailing in.
Anyway, I was so touched that this writer saw the value in my lyrics and wrote a whole book when impelled by their impetus.
This region of Mississippi where I presently am located is profoundly literary so the timing of learning of this book being written in response to my lyrics sure feels integral to the day and the spinning wheels of Fate and Circumstance.
Call it objects in motion, or call it serendipity.
Here’s the song: