hang out in your heart

maybe you will welcome thoughts of me (part 1)

Lindsey presses a button on his mixing desk, preparing to record the latest song he's decided to work on. After being home from Australia for about two days, the jet lag is wearing off, and he's taken advantage of a rare spare hour and slipped out to his studio to try to work on laying down some tracks for his next solo venture. He's decided to start with one that he'd already recorded as a demo years ago. Although he doesn't like to include too many cover songs on his albums, this old Donovan tune had gotten stuck in his head decades ago, and he'd never been able to get it out. With some lyric changes, he'd made it into a tribute to his gypsy girl, and his current feeling of malaise about being home, away from her, has had him going back to this song.

He decides to play through it once, just to feel out any changes he might want to make in the arrangement, and he pulls out his acoustic, strumming absently as he works through the adapted lyrics. "And who would be the one to say it was no good what we've done..."

He finishes the song and hits stop on the board, rewinding to listen back when he hears a noise behind him. For just a second, he has the absurd thought that Stevie is here, that she'd been missing him the same way he's been missing her, but when he turns, it's Kristen standing inside the door of his studio. He pastes a smile on his face to mask his disappointment (and really, what world is he living in where he thought his ex would be free to just drop in on him at his home?) and stands to greet her. She smiles thinly, her arms crossing over her pregnant belly, and he wonders what he's done wrong now.

"New song?" Her eyes say that she's spoiling for an argument, and Lindsey gives an inward sigh, waiting for the inevitable explanation he'll have to put up in defense of yet another song about Stevie.

"Old song, actually. I'm just wondering if I should rework it for the new album." He wonders how much of it she just heard. Not that it would make much difference once the finished album is out, but he'd rather avoid a fight about the subject matter for the time being.

"Don't you think," she begins, and Lindsey cringes - any sentence that begins like that from her turns into an argument - "that including a song like that on a new solo album from you would send the wrong message? I mean you're happily married with kids, and you're still singing about her? What will people think?"

"Well, I've made it a practice to not let what other people think have any influence on what I write in my songs. I don't think Rumours would even exist if any of us had been worried about what other people thought of us when we were writing it. You make your art for yourself, not anyone else." Lindsey had always despised the idea of writing a song for the express purpose of ending up as a single, or to be marketable to the masses. He's been fighting that fight about his artistic vision for his whole career, it seems, and he had learned to follow his heart every time - record execs' and bandmates' opinions be damned.

Kristen's eyes narrow just a bit, just enough to let him know that if he was trying to reassure her, he hadn't chosen the right words. "And what about me? You don't worry about what I think about your songs?"

"I know that you understand that my art comes organically, and to fight against that would be counterintuitive." He doesn't miss the barely contained rolling of her eyes.

"Well, how about what your children think about them? They're not going to be three and five forever, Lindsey." She gives him a significant look, as though she is annoyed that she even has to explain something so simple. "They're going to grow up and want to listen to Daddy's music, aren't they? And what are you going to tell them when they ask why you're spending time singing about an old, toxic relationship rather than their own family?"

"I imagine I'll tell them the truth. That when you are a creator - as they themselves may one day be - when you find a muse, it's hard to break away from that inspiration."