When I was in middle school, I had a lot of ideas for music videos. Generally these ideas were boring and tame – mostly because at the time, I was listening to a lot of really sappy, sad music (I changed from a private school to a public school between seventh and eighth grade and had a bit of a hard time with it). Most of these ideas consisted of one boring act, definitely not enough to sustain an entire video – a woman packing, for example. And instead of ever developing these ideas or incorporating others, I would just do it myself, without even filming. If my idea was a woman running through grass, I’d put the song on then run out on our lawn. If the song made me think of a woman cuddling by the fire with her cat, I’d turn the song on repeat, then do just that. It’s no mystery why I never tried to make it into the business. I’d be hard-pressed to remember any ideas that coordinate with songs now, except for one: Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs.”

Fleetwood Mac: “Silver Springs” (download)

I had a huge crush on a guy in 6th and 7th grade, and of course felt that I was mature enough to understand love and loss, being as we were so prematurely and painfully separated by my going to public school (our private school only went through 8th). Nothing had ever happened between us and likely the extra year wouldn’t have made a difference (our private school was pretty uptight), but I was convinced that this was a great tragedy in my life.

Around this time, the late ’90s Fleetwood Mac live album, The Dance, came out, featuring “Silver Springs,” which I hadn’t known was a rather rarely performed or even heard song at the time. It’s perfectly sappy and gut-wrenching, so I felt it was absolutely perfect for the romantic ordeal I was going through. My big “idea” for “Silver Springs” was a woman all dressed up with cheesy, cheesy surroundings: dim light, flowers, a breeze. So I’d go through my trunk of dress up clothes and put on a sea foam green (she mentions green in the song) satiny skirt, turn on the floor fan, arrange the flowers in the living room, then just stand there in the wake of the fan listening to “Silver Springs.”

While it’s debatable whether this silly practice was a plus or a minus, the upside is that every time I hear “Silver Springs,” instead of thinking of that guy and how overly upset I was, I think about myself in costume, attempting to be melodramatic.