Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

But what inspires this particular compliment, this feeling of not just loving a song, or any work of art, but longing to have created it yourself? It happens when you identify so intensely with the work it feels somehow wrong—sad, almost—that it didn’t come from your own brain. Like if you had arrived at this expression yourself, you would have more effectively metastasized the emotions that made you love the song so much. Look what I turned that experience into, you could think, if you’d written “A Case of You.” Your pain would have made the world more beautiful, would have made generations of women cry the most cleansing tears, the kind that open floodgates of endorphins when they’re done. You would be forever connected to these women: your people. And your wound would be healed.