Eli Strater sang old-time tunes. He never bothered thinking about the words, too busy moving his fingers up and down the strings. “Lyrics?” he laughed. “Just decorations. Like wallpaper.” But old songs have a way of waiting for you, like leaning against a lamppost in the back of your mind, smoking, saying, We’ll see about that, mate. One morning, Eli was driving, humming an ancient verse:
If ever you wander, if ever you roam,
Watch for the crossroads calling you home.
It didn’t mean anything. Except suddenly he was at a crossroads, the literal kind, with a handmade sign pointing toward a crooked old house: LUTHIER – FIXES GUITARS & OTHER BROKEN THINGS
His guitar had been rattling a couple weeks he knew not why. He took the hint. Inside, an old woman with driftwood looking hands inspected the guitar like a doctor would a patient.
“You’ve got too much weight in the neck,” she said.
“Are you talking about the guitar,” Eli asked, “or me?”
“Yes,” she said.
Eli went on playing gigs. Barns, backyards, bars. Little by little, those old songs crept out of his mouth and into his life. He sang a verse one night about:
The friend who smiles a little too wide,
Trouble walking either side.
Two days later, his smiley booking agent vanished along with Eli’s festival money. Just gone, like a bad dream.
“Right,” Eli muttered. “The song knew before I did.”
Then there was a love song something soft about a river “returning after rain.” Not long after, he got a message from an old love he hadn’t heard from in years. It felt like the song had dialed her number while he wasn’t looking.
And another tune one about “silver coins and dodgy deals behind the fairgrounds” stopped him from signing a contract with a streaming company whose idea of “artist support” read like a ransom note.
Cosmic nudges, the songs were guiding him. Someone upstairs had put the lyrics on shuffle and aimed them at his life. One night, sitting outside a barn after a gig where the audience clapped on whichever beat felt most philosophical, Eli whispered to himself, “All these years I thought I was singing the songs. Turns out they were singing me.”