At the Seattle Art Museum, I saw a Rothko exhibit where he was quoted: "To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command." It reminded me of how I hoped to write The Magical Language of Others. I didn’t want to command the story — I wanted to be lost in it. These songs are the interstices of my experiences writing the memoir and they allowed me to remain lost within the writing. I owe them for letting me see how I can write but also how I can live the same way....