It’s Saturday night around 22pm. Although it’s dark already I take one last stroll through the garden. Todays rain sprinkled glimpses of autumn on the lawn and the late blooming borders. Just when I’m about to go back in, my phone indicates a new notification from Twitter: “Jackson Browne followed you”.

“Jackson Browne followed you”….I’m modern enough to suppress the urge to stare through the bushes down the street to see if he’s still there. I know it’s just the push of a virtual button by him, or maybe his crew, that triggered the notification on my side. But to say I was unmoved by this, no….

“Jackson Browne followed you”…. Of course Jackson Browne is quite the name in music. He’s an inductee in the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the Songwriter Hall Of Fame. A distinct name in the record collection of my parents and, later, myself. But as impressive as that is, it’s not what moved me on that Saturday night.

“Jackson Browne followed you”…. Maybe it was influenced by my hesitant anticipation of autumn, just around the corner. Almost like a schoolboy on the doorstep of his classroom on the first day of school. But what the notification did above all was open my musical diary. It opened the musical dairy in my memory and instantly started flipping franticly through the pages until it found a page and a song it was, apparently, satisfied with: Fountain Of Sorrow.

“Jackson Browne followed you”…. Back inside I looked up the song on Youtube and found this live performance of it by Jackson Browne and JD Souther. Then it was just a matter of closing my eyes and drifting away. Easy enough.

“Jackson Browne followed you”…. When the song was ending, and I was returning from my trip down Memory Lane the Youtube-algorithm flexed its muscles. It choose a follow-up song so fitting that I’m having a hard time not believing they somehow snooped into that diary firmly locked in my mind. And then another one….

“Jackson Browne followed you”…. Yes, in case you wondered, I followed him back. Not expecting the notification he will get, as a result of me following him, to trigger any travel down Memory Lane in his mind, I kindly share the videos of my little trip. Maybe those will trigger his musical diary and surprise him with memories, maybe long lost. For that is what music can do: it can just grab you and take you away. For just a few minutes. Somewhere beautiful, somewhere sad sometimes, or just somewhere unexpected…