Matthew M Cornett

Category: Author Insights

  • “Love Untold”

    This week I am skipping ahead a chapter because I messed up. To prepare for my weekly blog, I start out on Monday thinking about the upcoming topic. I spend the week thinking about it off and on and come up with an approach to take. The problem is, I was thinking a chapter ahead to “Love Untold” and have been working it out all week. It’s fine and I’ll backtrack next week starting tomorrow. 


    I have always been a fan of the underdog in life and I spent this week wondering why off and on. Whenever I want to understand something, I think about it, read about it, talk about it, and eventually make sense of it for myself. In the Psychology Today article “Why do we love Underdog Stories? Psychology Weighs In” by Matt Johnson, the author said something interesting that really made me think. Halfway through he argues “The underdog story is one of the most classic storylines with a universal appeal, reliably driving feelings of empathy. They tap into the qualities we like best about ourselves and find most admirable in others.” I have to admit two things here: I am naturally a very empathetic person. I don’t know why but I have always been able to connect with people who are going through something and I promise, it’s genuine. I’m sure people can fake that but I genuinely do feel for people and their experiences so that makes sense to me. But the other issue is even more personal: I guess I have always viewed myself as an underdog too. 

    It’s not because I had a tough life or anything. Sure, we weren’t rich, but we certainly weren’t poor either. I had nothing like that as compared to my father. He grew up genuinely poor. I remember hearing stories about him growing up so poor he and his buddy would hunt for pop bottles to sell so they could buy a school carton of milk to split for lunch. He didn’t want the other kids to know he was poor so he wouldn’t eat the free lunch they gave to the poor kids and thought of that breaks my heart. Nobody expected that poor kid to do anything with his life. He was from the wrong side of town and a true underdog, but that boy grew up, joined the Navy, married the love of his life, made something amazing of himself, and has a family that loves and adores him to this day. How can you not respect that?

    When I was in 5th grade,  The Outsiders movie came out and it changed me as a kid. It cemented what would eventually become my identity. I became obsessed with it. I read the book over and over, watched the movie everytime I could on cable, and even did a book report wearing rolled up jeans, high topped Converse, and a cut off purple sweatshirt just like Ponyboy. I connected with those boys and now that I’m older, I know why. It’s because that’s how I imagined my own father’s experience. In my mind, my old man was born “grease,” and that’s what I was too. No wonder, I loved Elvis and The Outsiders. Heck, by the time I was a Junior in High School, I was greasing my own hair (actually moussing and hair spraying it…go ahead and laugh) and pulling it down in the front. I honestly looked like some scrawny Elvis/Rebel Without a Cause/Cry Baby rip off in the late 80’s but it was my identity and it stuck.

    So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the kid no one believes in, the kid who had no shot at success, yet somehow overcame those odds. Rocky Balboa, Daniel LaRusso, and Marty McFly…those guys were my heroes. And that love for the underdog even made its way into my musical tastes with one specific band- the greatest band that could have and should have been-The Replacements. They were a bunch of slackers from Minneapolis who formed a band in 1979. The problem for them was that everytime they got close to really breaking out into the “big time” they usually committed some act of self sabotage. Their early stuff was happily loud, obnoxious, and quite drunken. Their music matured by the mid to late 80’s much to the discontent of their early post punk fans. From 1981 to 1990 they made 7 albums and finally broke up in 1991. 

    I wasn’t introduced to them until the Fall of 1990 when I was sitting in ENG 101 class there at the University of KY. My TA’s name was Ben Webb and he was a really cool guy who made a comment about being excited for the new Replacements album (1990’s All Shook Down) which coincidentally was to be their last as a band. I checked it out and fell in love with it. Now some purists would say that doesn’t make me a true Replacements fan because by that time, it was basically a Paul Westerburg solo record and I understand that argument. But for me, I started with that album, then moved back to 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul, and finally to 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me. I loved those three albums and their “Bash and Pop” sound which bassist Tommy Stinson would later call his own band in the early 90’s. Paul was the genius behind that sound and he went on to have an amazing solo career as well. I personally believe that he is one of the finest underdog lyricists of my generation. His ability to write about everyday experiences in such poignant and playful, thoughtful and irreverent ways still blows my mind to this day. He writes about loners and losers, people who never had a chance or blew the ones they had. And he does it all with conviction and self deprecation. 

    A perfect example of this is the song “Love Untold” off of his 1996 album, Eventually. It tells the sweet story of a bashful couple who were supposed to meet but never did. He sings:

    They were gonna meet, on a rocky mountain street

    Two bashful hearts beat in advance

    Their hands were gonna sweat, it was all set

    She ain’t showed up yet, still a good chance

    It’s a love untold

    It’s a love untold

    As he sings the first verse, it’s hopeful and you can imagine these two getting ready with the sweet excitement of that first meeting. But as it develops you find out that it never happens. Ever. For some reason, they never meet or fall in love. By the middle of the song you get a sense that it was doomed from the start with “Games will be played, Excuses will be made, The stupid things they said, In their prayers, All about a love untold.” For whatever reason, it just doesn’t work out. By the end of the song the narrator seems crushed: 

    They were gonna meet on a crummy little street

    It never came to be, I’m told

    Does anyone recall the saddest love of all

    The one that lets you fall, nothing to hold

    It’s the love untold

    It’s the love untold

    Once upon a love untold

    To me, this song illustrates his genius. He takes these nobody characters that nobody cares about and turns their story into a tragedy, using it as almost a warning to us all. I love it and when it came time to pick a song for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Chapter 7 of my book If We never Meet Again, this song was perfect. If you haven’t read the book, it’s a chapter about a time I lied straight through my teeth to get a saintly woman back into the ER to see her husband one last time. It was right at the beginning of COVID, and she panicked, called 911, and he coded on the way to the hospital. They stabilized him, and put him on life support. I went with her to the hospital but they weren’t about to let her back in there to see him. I took matters into my own hands, and somehow after waiting there for hours well into the night, I talked the doctor into letting me take her back to him. We walked back there and I helped her stand there beside her husband so she could kiss him goodbye. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

    Let’s face it. Outside of their circle, they were nobodies. No one would ever hear about their love story. No one would ever care. Theirs was merely another story that was destined to be a “love untold.” But just like when they told that sweet woman she couldn’t see her husband, I wasn’t about to let that happen. The chapter ends with:

    “I was glad I didn’t take no for an answer from the hospital, and I am still glad and completely unashamed to this day that I lied to get her into that room to see the love of her life one last time. I have told some big lies before that I truly regret but not that one. I will gladly pay whatever price I owe for it and do it again without hesitation still to this day.”

    It’s one of the best things this underdog has ever done. And I think Westerburg would love that irony.

  • “Simple Man”

    How do you define greatness in a man? Is it based solely on success, wealth, and powerful accomplishments? If that’s true, then only a few can be defined as great but that view is quite limiting and let’s be honest: it’s pretty arrogant. When Arthur Miller wrote The Death of a Salesman, critics were shocked that he implied a common man could experience “tragedy” in the classical sense (where tragedy is limited to those with nobility or high standing). In response to the critical attacks he wrote the essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” where he argued that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” This redefinition was a powerful moment both in the literary world and in mine when I first read the essay years ago. It broadened my own views and tapped into something universal within them. Following his logic, it doesn’t make sense to limit a definition of greatness, especially when you take into account the personal impact “common” people have on us every day. Sure, those individuals may never be recognized as great outside of our own spheres, but that takes nothing away. A great act done in anonymity does not change its greatness. And a simple man’s life that impacts you and makes you reflect on your own can be worth more than you could ever repay. 

    The fifth chapter of my book If We Never Meet Again is titled “Simple Man,” taken from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1973 album Pronounced ‘Leh-Nerd ‘Skin-Nerd. Whenever I think of Skynyrd, I think of my brother Drew. He’s five years older than I am and by 1984 he had a Blue, 1978 Mustang which I thought was the coolest ever. I couldn’t remember the year of it so I texted him the other week asking him about it. I could hear him laugh in my head when I read his response: “It was the crappy 78 hatchback model that looked like a pinto. It was a piece of crap but it was my piece of crap.” Maybe it was a piece of crap, but to an 11 year old kid who looked up to his brother and all of his friends, it was one cool ride. He was big into Bob Seger, Night Ranger, and had one cassette tape in there that I couldn’t get enough of:  Lynyrd Skynyrd Gold and Platinum. On side two was what would eventually become my favorite song of theirs, “Simple Man.” That opening verse where Mama told him to sit and listen to her advice, the second where she tell him what to expect, and that chorus of 

    Be a simple 

    kind of man 

    Oh be something 

    You love and understand 

    Baby be a simple kind of man 

    Oh, won’t you do this for me son, if you can 

    Dang. I used to go sit in my brother’s car and listen to that song over and over. In fact, I think I ran that battery out one afternoon which he and my father had to replace (and yes, this is the first time I am admitting to having done so.) Sorry man!

    I picked this song for chapter five because of  Mr. Miller. He was an old tobacco farmer who came onto our service in the springtime. He lived way out in the country on the farm he had worked his whole life on. He had passed it on to his son and daughter and was waiting for the inevitable. When I met him, he was in bad shape but he bounced back and lived for a few more months. In the chapter I talk about how he mistakenly thought I had been a tobacco farmer back in Kentucky and about the one day that impacted me most: 

    “He took me outside and showed me around. We stood underneath that pecan tree and he talked about how he used to farm all over these parts, pointing across the road and obviously remembering years of hard work he had done. I stood there beside him and watched him take in the view. It was like being there with an old soldier revisiting the battlefield of his youth. The memories swept over him like rain rejuvenating the dry summer land if only for just a fleeting moment. I thought of a line from an old Ryan Adams song that always stuck with me: “I work these hands to bleed, cause I got mouths to feed.” I stood there with that simple man knowing fully that I could never measure up to the greatness of all he had done.” 

    That was a powerful moment for me and if I could imagine any man living up to Mama’s instructions from the song it was him. He had lived through troubles, had found love, ignored the rich man’s gold for other kinds of wealth, and lived a hard working, satisfied life. What could be more honorable than what he accomplished? That man earned that song and in my mind, it’s his forever.

    Later in the chapter after I talked about his eventual death I wrote what is one of my favorite lines from my book: 

    “After they picked him up and carried him down those front porch steps and into the back of the van, I said goodbye to Junior and his sister, walked back towards my truck, and paused under my new favorite tree. As I looked out into that field,  I was mesmerized, and I think I finally understood what Mr. Miller was trying to teach me that day. I got into my truck and started driving down that winding stretch of South Carolina road, with my thoughts on him and the life he had lived. They buried him right there on that farm and the thought of that makes me smile. He’s right where he belongs.”

    William Jennings Bryan once said “Service is the measure of greatness; it always has been true; it is true today, and it always will be true, that he is greatest who does the most of good.” To me,  that’s the real key to being great: serving the ones you love in whatever way you can. If you have had someone do that for you, you have been blessed. When people think of great men, few outside of his own circle would pick Mr. Miller and that’s ok because his kids know what he did for them. He was never looking for fame anyway; just a simple man loving his own the best he could. I am just as lucky. I have a father who worked his “hands to bleed” so I could have the life I have had and in my own way, I tried to do the same for my own children (although teaching is nowhere as difficult as farming or plumbing). The key is a simple life of service to others. That’s what Mr. Miller taught me that day and what my own Father has taught me with his life. 

    In my mind, that kind of simplicity is where true greatness lies. We should all strive toward it. 

  • “Can’t Find My Way Home”

    When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the 1950’s. Maybe it was because of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, or eventually reading The Outsiders and seeing the film as well, I thought the 50’s was the coolest decade ever. Even as a little kid I wanted to be Elvis. I know it’s weird but it’s who I was. My love of Elvis came from my Dad and from our neighbor Mrs. Patsy across the street. Dad introduced me to his music. Mrs. Patsy introduced me to the wonder of his mystique. She had an Elvis shrine in her living room complete with albums, dolls, and all sorts of Elvis paraphernalia. I remember going across the street to look at all the cool stuff and talk to her about the man. I loved his music and even his early movies, especially King Creole for some reason. They used to show his movies all the time on WTBS and I loved all of them.

    But by the time I turned 15, my cultural interests moved up a decade. I still loved Elvis, but I also began to become fascinated with the late 1960’s. I know exactly when it happened too. My brother Andrew took me to see The Lost Boys in the summer of 1987. I wanted to be the cool older brother character in it but that was Drew. Alas, I was destined to be the dorky little brother reading comic books. I got the soundtrack and loved the songs “Good Times” by INXS and Jimmy Barnes, “Lost in the Shadows” by Lou Gramm, and “Cry Little Sister” by Gerard McMann, but the one that really impacted me was “People are Strange” by Echo & The Bunnymen. I absolutely loved it. One day I was in my room listening to it and Drew walked by and said “I liked it better when The Doors did it.” I had zero idea it was a cover but eventually got The Doors Greatest Hits on cassette tape and that was it. I became obsessed with Jim Morrison and the late 1960’s. I read his biography No One Here Gets Out Alive and explored all other kinds of related artists from that time period. Plus, it was a relief. You have no idea how disheartening it was to dream of being a rock singer in the 80’s with all of the hair bands and the singers hitting notes so high they seemed physically impossible. But here was this amazing baritone voice, almost a crooner in the realm of an Elvis, that changed my life. 

    When the film 1969 was released in November of 1988 staring Kiefer Sutherland, Robert Downey, Jr., and Winona Ryder, I was so into the 1960’s there was zero question if I would love the movie and its soundtrack. While honestly the movie was forgettable, the soundtrack was unbelievable. Hendrix, Cream, The Animals, CCR, Canned Heat, The Zombies, The Youngbloods, The Moody Blues, Crosby Stills & Nash and The 5th Dimension…wow. It’s still an amazing soundtrack to this day and a snapshot of that moment in time. But like other soundtracks for me before this one, there was a song that truly stood out for me: Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” and I know exactly why. I was about to turn 17 years old and all of my siblings had moved out. Looking back, it was like my Mom and Dad had a full house one day and then the next, it was almost empty save me. It affected the three of us. They went through their own mid life experience and for the first time in my life I honestly felt alone. It was no one’s fault…it’s just life and how we all are forced to grow up one day. But I do remember that hollow feeling that only the words of that song could capture: “Well I’m near the end, and I just ain’t got the time, That I’ve wasted , and I can’t find my way home.” 

    There’s a powerful scene from the 2004 film Garden State that perfectly sums up that feeling I had until I was well into my twenties. I never had the talent to express it the way Zach Braff’s (Andrew) character did to Natalie Portman’s (Sam) character, but the first time I heard it I was blown away. 

    Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.

    Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

    Andrew: You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

    Sam: [cuddles up to Andrew] Maybe.

    Honestly, we all go through it and the joy of it is that it comes right back around when you have your own kids. It happened to me and my wife in the summer of 2019. Years and years of kids in the house and then suddenly, nothing. It was jarring and probably the thing that sent us to South Carolina six months later. And after all these years, that song still resonates.

    I first met Mr. Johnson in May of 2020. He taught me the importance of caregiving and the need for Hospice to be there for the caregivers, even if it was just in a small way. I started going over to his house once a week so the family could get a break. In the chapter, I talk about how the two of us bonded over his love for John Wayne movies but it was a comment of his that has stuck with me all these years:

    “Every once in a while he would ask about my shoes and say he needed a pair like them, or he would ask for a bottle of water. Sometimes he would start asking questions about where he was and wondering why he wasn’t in his old home. I would just say “You’re living here with your daughter, Mr. Johnson. She’s taking care of you now.” He would look around at the unfamiliarity of that house and then go back to the movie” (25).

    I knew that feeling. I had lived it years before and there I was watching an older gentleman with dementia have that same feeling race back briefly through his mind and then disappear. Honestly, it broke my heart. I knew what he was feeling because I had felt it twice before in my own life. Here he was at the end of his, struggling with those same feelings if only for a brief moment.

    But here’s the thing that makes it ok with me and the one way I differ with Zach Braff’s character in that scene: there is nothing imaginary about those places for me. That house I grew up in is a real and defining place for me. Even if it didn’t exist today that wouldn’t change that wonderful moment in time that my parents gave me. And it’s the same with the house where I raised my children. No, I don’t live there anymore but those moments still exist in my memory and I visit them often. I still see my wife, my little girl, and my little boy there around that table, sitting in that basement watching movies, and opening Christmas presents there in that living room. Those are the memories that give my life meaning. Yes, those times are over, but Mr. Johnson taught me something important that day. We may always miss those moments even as our own minds start to slip away, but I am truly blessed to have lived those days and to be able to carry those memories until the day I die. 

    I guess that’s the curse of this life but I’ll take it no matter how much it hurts. 

  • “Long As I Can See the Light”

    When I woke up this morning, I began thinking about what approach I would take to today’s blog entry. I’ve been a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival for as long as I can remember, but I started thinking about where it all started, which led me to sharing a story with my wife that I have never shared with anyone. I’ve started to put the pieces together and decided to share it here as well.

    I’ve already stated that my musical tastes were shaped initially by my family. When I think about CCR, I think about my older brother Gary. In 1982, I was 10 years old. He was 19, driving a cool 1965 El Camino, and dating the love of his life. He was always a cool, eclectic guy and his musical tastes were no different. When he wasn’t around I would go in his room and raid his cassette tape collection. One that I listened to all the time was his copy of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Creedence Gold. The second side of that tape began with the one song of theirs that I truly loved as a kid: “The Midnight Special.” 

    Honestly, I have no idea why but I loved that song. Maybe I was introduced to it through Twilight Zone: The Movie which came out that year and had the “You wanna see something really scary?” segment that had the song in the background. Or maybe my brother was just playing it randomly…either way I loved it. I remember this one time (here’s the story I told my wife this morning) I took my other brother Drew’s big gray boombox, threw Credence Gold into it, and walked around the neighborhood with the song blasting. My neighbors must have wondered “what is wrong with that kid?” but there I was grooving down the street with my skinny little arms hauling that boombox around blaring “Let the Midnight Special, Shine a light on me!” I played the song for my wife this morning and imitated what I must have looked like as that kid walking down the street. I’m not sure she was impressed and we both agreed I must have been a weird kid.

    As I got older, my love for CCR never went away. When I started buying CD’s in the late 80’s, the first one I bought was The Who’s Who’s Better, Who’s Best (another band whose love I got from my older brother Gary). The second one I ever bought? CCR’s Chronicle: 20 Greatest Hits where I discovered “Long As I Can See the Light” for the first time. It instantly became one of my favorites and found its way to “My Favorite Songs” playlist eventually where it is still there to this day. For me, it’s one of those songs you want played at your funeral. It’s just powerful, at least for me. 

    I do have one memory that made the song stand out to me and came back to me years later when I was driving to a death. When I was an 18 year old kid I had a close group of friends. We didn’t drink, or do drugs but what we did was bond over was driving and listening to music. I think for us that was our drug. We used to head out into the country late at night driving down Bryan Station Road late on a Saturday at 2:00 am blasting out our music. There was something about being out late on a summer night with some of the trippiest music we knew such as “No Quarter” by Led Zeppelin or “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd. The cool summer air, the small two lane country road out in the middle of nowhere. Man. That was it. 

    There was this one area that had this dead end off one of those roads. We used to park, hang out, and just enjoy the music. One night I remember leaning against my car and looking way off into the distance where there was this house on a hill with one light in a window. I went back around and switched the CD and listened to the lyrics:

    Put a candle in the window

    Cause I feel I got to move

    Though I’m going, going

    I’ll be coming home soon

    Long as I can see the light

    I loved that song, but that moment gave it new meaning for me. John Fogerty once said that the song was “about the loner in me. Wanting to feel understood, needing those at home to shine a light so that I can make my way back.” For an 18 year old kid about to start college in a couple of months, that song was the perfect moment for me..one that came back to me 30 years later.

    In the third chapter of my book If We Never Meet Again, I talk about my experience with Arthur. He was a very poor patient who lived in the middle of nowhere between Conway, SC, and Georgetown, SC. It’s a very rural area and he lived off of what his wife called a sand road (which I mistakenly called a dirt road). He was my second death ever. I met him a month or so into COVID. Medicare had shut down the volunteer program but the wife still needed to be able to go into town to go grocery shopping once a week. I ended up going every Tuesday at 10:00 am for about six weeks. In the chapter, I talk about how that experience taught me about the mundane life of the caretaker who had to watch their loved one die with no relief at all. Toward the end of the chapter I stated “ I’m glad I did sit there with him for those weeks. It taught me more about the psychology of hospice than I ever could have learned reading or watching training videos. Doing that gave me a glimpse of the loneliness a caregiver must feel while watching someone die.” 

    When he did finally pass, it was in the middle of the night. When I drove down that road it hit me how isolated that place really was. It was pitch black and for a city boy like me, it was a little unnerving. But as the road turned toward their house, off in the distance I saw a single light in the window and I knew where I was. I got to the house, called the funeral home, and waited for them to pick him up. My nurse was inside with the wife and I was out by my truck waiting for the transport service. It was a beautiful, cool night just like those from 30 years ago. I was there in the darkness and could see the brilliance of that single light in the window. When it came time to write Arthur’s chapter, there was only one choice for the title. The lyrics “Pack my bag and let’s get moving, Cause I’m bound to drift a while, Though I’m gone, gone, You don’t have to worry no, Long as I can see the light” belong to Arthur as much as anyone else. Everytime I listen to them, I still think of him. 

  • “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

    “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

    I was truly blessed to grow up in the 1980’s. Although I was born in 1972 and events of the late 70’s impacted me, it was my coming of age in the early, mid, and late 80’s that shaped me into who I was to become. Many aspects of that time period influenced me, but it was probably the movies and the music that shaped me most. They created a love for both that still endures in me to this day.

    The movie soundtrack played a very essential role in helping me to expand my horizons as a kid. While I had MTV and “Casey Kasem’s Top 40,” both of those were designed around what was popular on the charts at the time. The movie soundtrack contained those popular hits also, but the extra tracks took you somewhere else entirely. For example, in the fall of 1986, as a 14 year old kid, I went to Northpark Cinemas in Lexington, Kentucky, one afternoon to see a double feature of Ferrris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink. What a time to be alive! Ferris had some great music in it but it was Pretty in Pink that introduced me to OMD and The Psychedelic Furs. You never saw them on MTV or heard them on the Top 40. For a kid living in Lexington, KY, this opened up a whole new world of possibilities. But not only them…it also had INXS, New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Smiths. I had already liked what we now call the “New Romantic” bands like Duran Duran, The Human League, and A Flock of Seagulls because bands like those were in regular rotation on MTV, but the Pretty in Pink soundtrack and many others like it introduced me to so much more. I remember going to Musicland in Lexington Mall and Camelot Records in Fayette Mall searching for the back catalogs of these bands we had no idea even existed. These albums came to define my experience and still live on fondly in my memories and on my Spotify playlists.

    When I turned 16, I got a job working at the Lexington Mall Cinemas and had the time of my young life. I remember waiting on the film credits to end so I could quickly clean up the theater before the next showing. As those credits rolled, there was always music playing. In 1989 we had When Harry Met Sally and by the time that film left I knew every one of the classics that Harry Connick Jr. performed. I remember picking up empty popcorn buckets and singing “It Had to Be You” as loudly as I wanted. I eventually picked up the soundtrack cd and am still a Harry Connick Jr. fan to this day. Not to mention, it led me to Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald, all of whom are still in regular rotation for me as well. Don’t discount the power of a great soundtrack.

    That same year, there was a film called New York Stories. It consisted of three stories that revolved around New York City at the time. The segment directed by Martin Scorsese was the one that stands out to me because of one song: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” by Procol Harem. The segment was about an artist played by Nick Nolte. As I remember, the opening had him painting and listening to the song. I have no idea why, but that song entranced me. It was beautiful. I really don’t remember much about the movie, but that song found its way onto “My Favorite Songs” playlist that I have been making for the last 20 years. 

    The band released the song in 1967. Rock music was changing at that time into much more of an art form. The Beatles and The Beach Boys had been going back and forth creating masterpiece after masterpiece, each of them pushing things forward.The Beatles started it with Rubber Soul in 1965. That album pushed Brian Wilson to create Pet Sounds in 1966, which in turn pushed the Beatles to create Revolver. By October of 1966, Wilson released “Good Vibrations” and in 1967 The Beatles released Sgt. Peppers. And none of that even begins to acknowledge what Dylan, the Stones, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, and Simon and Garfunkel were also doing at that time. Rock music was being pushed into a whole new realm and Procol Harum were part of it as well.

    They considered themselves a “blues band with classical influences.” In fact, the melody of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was created when organist Gary Brooker was trying to play J. S. Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No 3.” He started on the right note then couldn’t remember the rest. Brooker once said “it does a bar or two of Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’ before it veers off. That spark was all it took. I wasn’t consciously combining rock with classical, it’s just that Bach’s music was in me.” The lyrics are vague, seemingly about a drunken party, a “seasick” protagonist, and a girl with a “ghostly” face that “turned a whiter shade of pale.” Whatever the song is about, for me it has always been the feel of it with that beautiful organ melody. 

    When I was writing the second chapter to my book If We Never Meet Again, there was never a question as to which song on my playlist would anchor it. The chapter is about the first death I ever experienced in the world of hospice. In that chapter, I refer to it as my initiation:

    “My first death was quite the experience. Now you have to remember, the only place I had ever seen a dead body was at a funeral home all dressed up and on display. I certainly had never touched a dead body. As a teacher I had seen my share of crazy moments. I broke up fights, managed students during emergency drills, and dealt with my share of crazy parents. But this was different. Seriously, you don’t have to make up what happened to me” (11).

    He was my first death and nothing had prepared me for it. In the chapter, I describe the horror of the moment. The wife was screaming, the coroner was cussing me out and it was a truly dizzying moment:

    “I walked in the house, turned the corner, and there was Albert laid out on the floor, eyes wide open in a look of complete disbelief, naked, with arms and legs opened wide. He still had a tube coming out of his mouth where they had intubated him with blood splattered across the floor. I had never seen anything like that moment. It was a scene out of a horror movie to me, or a bloody picture from a crime scene. He looked terrible and it was certainly not the way I would want to go out” (13-14).

    Still to this day, I cannot think of him without seeing that look on his face. It was horrible. I later stated that the experience was my “trial by fire into the world of hospice; none of the online training I had completed remotely prepared me for such insanity.” Later, I continued “The memory of Bert splayed out there on the floor with that terrified look in his eyes…I don’t think I’ll ever shake it. It’s still just as vivid to me as the morning it happened.”

    I guess that for me the “Whiter Shade of Pale” line initially applied to the look on his poor face, but honestly, it could have been and probably was on mine the whole time. 

  • “Coastline”

    I have always loved classic guitar driven singer/songwriter music. From my father, I was given a love for Jim Croce and from my mother, Simon and Garfunkel. As I grew older, I explored Van Morrison, James Taylor, The Beatles, David Bowie, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, and of course Bob Dylan. By the 1980’s, I was listening to The Smiths, R.E.M., and The Replacements, and by the 90’s it was Morrissey, Paul Westerberg, and Jeff Buckley. If it was guitar driven with amazing lyrics, I was all about it. It’s still one of my favorite styles of music to this day. 

    I’ve always tried to pass along my love of music to others and as a teacher, it was always fun dropping hints to a much bigger musical world than my students usually knew. I’m sure you remember being young and listening to a “modern” song only to be told by some old geezer that it was actually a remake. I think those kinds of moments are some of the ones that force us all to begin growing up. I never tried to be rude about it and it was always fun watching them realize that there was a much bigger world out there. But the cool thing is that for me, it was also reciprocal. My students introduced me to stuff that I still listen to regularly to this day. I remember in 2003 a student told me to check out Damien Rice and David Gray and both of those guys are still in my regular rotation. 

    But in 2004, a cool student of mine walked in my classroom, handed me a cd, and said “check this out Cornett.” It was the Garden State Soundtrack and it introduced me to the Indie Pop movement of the early 2000’s. Zach Braff’s musical tastes had been influencing the show Scrubs for about 3 years by that point but it was his creative control over the 2004 film Garden State and it’s soundtrack album that really pushed things forward for me. Artists like The Shins, Cary Brothers, Remy Zero, and Iron and Wine spoke to me. It even had Simon and Garfunkel on there and I was completely sold. I started exploring these and many other artists from 2000-2010 who were generically lumped into this category for better or worse. On a side note, if you like Simon and Garfunkel, check out Kings of Convenience, especially their songs “Homesick” and “24-25.” You won’t be disappointed.

    Hollow Coves is an Australian Indie Folk band. It consists of Ryan Henderson and Matt Carins who have been recording music together since 2013. Apparently, they recorded music together before parting ways. The music was uploaded to Spotify and their popularity soared. Sources state that they recorded long distance for a few years but now they are both back in Australia and doing well. Their song “Coastline” was released on their 2017 EP Wanderlust. I have a playlist called Indie Mix that I made a few years back and “Coastline” came up as a recommendation. I first heard it long after we moved to the coast of South Carolina but it was eerie how much it applied.

    The song starts with some ambient sound, a single acoustic guitar, and some straight forward lyrics:

    I’m leaving home for the coastline

    Someplace under the sun 

    I feel my heart for the first time

    Cause now I’m moving on

    And there’s a place that I’ve dreamed of

    Where I can free my mind

    I hear the sounds of the season 

    And lose all sense of time

    I’m moving far away

    To a sunny place

    Where it’s just you and me

    Feels like we’re in a dream

    You know what I mean

    When I first heard it, I was blown away. If you’ve read my book, you know that’s basically our story. In January 2020, we sold our house, packed everything we could into the largest rental truck I could legally drive, and moved 600 miles away to the coast of South Carolina to start over working for a small hospice. I left a 24 year old teaching career, my wife left behind her job as a fitness instructor and trainer, and we completely started over. Where I’m from in Kentucky, everyone seems to say they would love to sell everything and move to the beach but few ever do. It’s really not that difficult. Living here is like anywhere else. Get a job, find a place to stay, and just live life. The biggest difference is that on the weekends, we get to go to the beach, which to be honest, is the best reason to live where we do.

    But as we started to work the job, the beach actually became more than that for us. Going from me teaching and her doing fitness training into the world of hospice with all of its grief and sadness was honestly a shock for the two of us. The beach became our savior. There were days that left us so drained we just stopped, grabbed a burger and a drink, and sat on the beach for 30 minutes decompressing before heading home. The song actually talks about this:

    The summer air by the seaside

    The way it fills our lungs

    The fire burns in the night sky

    This life will keep us young

    And we will sleep by the ocean

    Our hearts will move with the tide

    And we will wake in the morning

    To see the sun paint the sky

    I’m moving far away

    To a sunny place

    Where it’s just you and me

    Feels like we’re in a dream

    You know what I mean

    Seriously. I couldn’t have imagined better and more fitting lyrics to accompany the first chapter of my book. It’s the chapter that tells about how we ended up here on the coastline, but if you listen to the song, you can learn so much more than I ever could have written in that short space. That’s what good music does for us. In the extras of the 2002 film Hero, composer Tan Dun said “Great film music is words the director has no space for.” Exactly. Toward the end of the book, I did try to state it though:

    “In the span of a few weeks we became empty nesters with both kids living out of state. That alone should have put me in a tailspin and maybe it did. Maybe that scared me so much I ran away from everything we had known for the past 26 years. Either way it brought us to the coast of South Carolina to discover who we were going to become.”

    Just like the theme song “If We Never Meet Again” said, we were the guy and a girl “dizzy cause we’re just not spinning with this world.” Moving here was probably the craziest thing we have ever done. Thankfully, we had each other, the beach, and great music to help calm that dizziness which allowed us to go back each week and try again.

  • “If We Never Meet Again”

    At this point, I want to spend the next 8-10 blog entries talking about each individual chapter and provide some insight for the reader into what I was trying to do. To accomplish this, I will need to start with the songs. When I released the book back in January, I made an announcement on Facebook and even provided a link to my Spotify playlist that accompanies it. One of my former students hilariously commented, “Of course, there’s a playlist.” Music is a huge part of who I am and has been for as long as I can remember.

    I was blessed to grow up in a music loving household. I am the youngest of four children and had the benefit of each family member’s musical influence. My dad loved everything Elvis and classic country and  my mom loved the Carpenters and John Denver.  My oldest brother was all about Classic Rock like The Who and Bruce Springsteen, my middle brother liked the Southern Rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special and “Modern Rock” like Foreigner and Night Ranger, and my sister had Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna all on vinyl. I soaked up every single one of those influences and hundreds of more. The first album I ever bought was Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack in 1980. Epic. 

    But just as big of an influence on me was the early days of MTV. I watched it all the time from 1981 when it first appeared until the late 80’s. MTV introduced me to so much music that became the soundtrack for my life. And it was all over the spectrum which is why my tastes are the same. Classic Rock, New Wave, New Romantic, Early 80’s Modern Pop, Metal, Hair Metal, Rap, Mid and Late 80’s Modern Pop, Thrash Metal…man, the 80’s were all over the place and I loved every second of it. My tastes were all over the place and still are.

    I started writing my memoir in the summer of 2023 and I don’t know when it hit me to use “My Favorite Songs” playlist as a way to structure the individual narratives of my book, but it really worked. It was probably because of the long drives I often had to take for the job and the thoughts about the patients going through my head as I listened to whatever playlist I had cued up, but slowly I started to piece it all together. The songs were all there in my playlist and something weird happened. As I was putting everything together, each individual narrative started to claim its own song from the list and they worked perfectly, even providing clues, context, and insight into the various individuals.  

    So what about the theme song? In 1988, I saw the video for “If We Never Meet Again” by Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers and I immediately connected with it. I have always loved Roots Rock and their bluesy yet modern sound spoke to me so I went and bought the cassette tape (yes, we used to do that…hear one song and then go buy the album). That song made it to My Favorite Songs playlist eventually and I still listen to it today. When it came time for me to name the book, it was my first choice and just clicked.

    Most would say that the song is about a break up and trying to move past that but context matters. I love the fact that a song can have meaning beyond its own limitations, and with a different context it can mean something no one intended. You don’t believe me? Take Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” It’s a song about female empowerment right? Where she’s “about to give you all my money, and all I ask for in return honey…” is a little respect. Wow! A woman in 1967 saying I have the monetary and sexual power here and if you want it, you’d better show some respect. That’s amazing. But guess what? The song was written by Otis Redding and when he sang those similar words in 1965 it wasn’t exactly about female empowerment. Now, does that take away from Aretha’s amazing rendition and its meaning? Absolutely not because of context. Even Otis realized that before the tragic end of his own life when he finally accepted that “it belonged to her.”

    One thing that I really like about this song is that even with its subject matter, it’s not a sad song. In fact, it’s actually quite upbeat which for me makes it less sad and more contemplative, and even celebratory, which made it perfect for my book. For me, “If we never meet again,” isn’t about a break up. It’s about finding a way to move forward after something powerful ends:

    If we never meet again, 

    If goodbyes remain unspoken, 

    I won’t glorify our past, 

    But our bond remains unbroken, 

    If we never meet again

    When you work in hospice, you inevitably have many powerful moments and connections. It doesn’t matter if it lasts 2 weeks or 6 months. Having to say goodbye after connecting with someone so intimately can weigh on you and you go through it over and over again. For me, it’s that unbroken bond that I get to carry with me that helps me make sense of it all. When you sit beside someone in their final moments, try to comfort them as best you can, and then walk away, you can’t help feeling a bond with that person. It’s powerful, and the song captures it perfectly which is the reason why I made it the theme. 

  • Themes, part 3

    I’m a little weird academically because in a lot of ways I am very traditional but in others, I’m probably a little profane. The other night we went and saw comedian John Crist who had a bit in his show where he talked about having “these thoughts that just pop in out of nowhere.” He gave some funny examples and as we were laughing my wife leaned over and said ‘you do that all the time.” I couldn’t deny it because it’s true. I like trying to think for myself and have no problem asking questions most English teachers wouldn’t. For example, take The Great Gatsby. It’s an amazing work or art and not even his best if you ask me. But if you’ve ever had to study it, inevitably, you came to the discussion about the green light Gatsby sees off in the distance. Much has (deservedly so) been made about that light and what it represents. For me though, I remember thinking “what if the city got a really good deal on green bulbs that year? What if we are making way too much out of this?” I mean, if it had been red, what would we be saying? I’ve always wondered about greatness in the literary world. How much of it is intended and how much is what we make it out to be? I know…I’m not supposed to have those kinds of thoughts but I do. 

    Writing the book If We Never Meet Again was a very interesting experience for me. I can honestly say that there are things I planned and things that just kind of developed as it went. And in retrospect, I do love how it all came together. Honestly, it all started out of me telling stories about the people I encountered in hospice, but as the book began to take shape and grow, it became so much more for me. And the weird thing is how things just fell into place as if they were part of a greater plan all along. There are many things about the book that I love, but the first and biggest hint toward what I feel is a primary theme of the novel is the cover. I even had to fight for it and I’m glad I did because for me, it would be a very different book without that cover.

    On January 6, 2020, at exactly 7:10 am, I took that photo on my phone at Huntington Beach State Park (a little south of Murrells Inlet). That was my first official day of work in the world of hospice. I was staying with my in-laws (we wouldn’t officially move to the area until February 1), got up early before heading to the office, watched the sunrise, and took the photo. I loved it so much, my wife had it enlarged into a canvas that we have in our bedroom. When it came time to design the book cover, I was adamant that it had to be that picture. Initially, my publisher said no because it didn’t have a high enough quality (dpi) to be the cover. They assured me that they could find a similar stock photo but I said nope, did some quick research, and found a site that allowed me to increase the picture quality. I sent them the new version, they said it looked good, and I got what I wanted. 

    Why was it so important? First of all, it’s a sunrise and not a sunset. If it had been the sunset, it would be something totally different. And to be honest, it would have worked given the stories. Perhaps a sunset could have represented our patients and their passing. But that’s not what I intended. I have always said that it’s not a book about death. Yes, that happens a lot in my book but that’s not the focus. For me, the focus is the lives they lived in their final moments and the lessons that they each taught me. I state this pretty clearly at the end:

    “Each of the people on these pages have impacted me in their own unique ways and I will never forget them. While I may have had to change their names and certain identifying characteristics, they are forever imprinted on my soul and have remade me into who I am today. As Dylan once said “He not busy being born is busy dying.” I always liked that line but now I think I finally get it. That’s what this entire experience has been for me (135).” 

    After all, my book is a memoir about the experiences I had and the lessons I learned from the individuals I met in the world of hospice. For me, the book is all about my own “journey of becoming” and rebirth. Yes, the sun eventually sets. But my hope is that the inevitable sunset will always inspire a new sunrise in each of us the way my patients did for me. But that’s only my take on it. And don’t for a second think that I haven’t wondered what if I had got up late that morning and never taken that picture. We would be having a totally different discussion now wouldn’t we? 

  • Themes, part 2

    I was a high school teacher for 24 years and had some great experiences all along the way. For the last 14 years of it, I taught Dual Credit English (ENG 101 in the fall and ENG 102 in the Spring). The curriculum determined that we had to write 3 specific types of essays each semester. The textbook was divided into chapters that discussed the essay type and then provided examples that could be discussed and analyzed. When it came time for my students to write their essay, I never dictated the topic. For me, they could write about whatever they wanted as long as it was the type of essay required. 

    I always tried to make my classroom a fun place. For me, it was my home away from home so I decorated it to reflect my interests. The walls were covered primarily with my main interests- literature, film, music and art. I had quotes from classic authors, movie posters, classic rock albums, and art posters I picked up from various art museums (mostly Van Gogh but others as well). To be honest, I loved that classroom and most of that stuff is now hanging up in my garage. I enjoy going in there and reminiscing about the “good old days.” 

    Everything in that room had its purpose and I designed it as such. When it came time to write a specific essay, something in the room on the walls provided a jumping off point for that essay. My favorite essay was the Rhetorical Analysis from the Spring Semester and I tried to make it as fun as possible. Rhetorical Analysis is simply an analysis of the text of any work where you explore the various things used by the author to shape that text. For example, in my MA Thesis, I analyzed 3 Aurthurian poems from the late 14th Century, and discussed how each poet used the concept of Medieval Warfare to shape their own vision of King Arthur and his knights. It was kind of dorky but I loved it.

    To make the Rhetorical Analysis essay more interesting for the students, I developed a unit where we analyzed popular song and I even had a research article to back the approach up. Essentially, I had the students pick a song and analyze it rhetorically. To get them started, I gave each of them a song of my choice (which none of them had ever heard) and told them to determine its meaning. I forced them to go through three stages: Interpretation, Context, and Authorial Intent. First, I told them to listen to it and then guess what they thought it meant. Then, I had them dig into the background- who the author was, when was it written, and what events were going on at that time. Then finally, I had them look and see if the author ever stated what they intended. 

    By the end of the assignment, we had some great discussions. Some of the best ones were how things can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on your own experiences, how works can speak to new generations beyond their own place and time despite their own limitations, and how something can take on its own meaning beyond what the author intended if they ever stated it in the first place. It was always fun helping them realize that the world was a much bigger place than they ever imagined yet they also had a voice to contribute.

    When it comes to discussing the theme of any work, we are immediately faced with a problem. How do you determine “the theme?” First of all, there are always multiple things going on in any work. On top of that, how do you really ever know? Also, as an author, do you really want to dictate what that theme is, especially when readers will interpret it based on their own experiences? I know what I intended, but if you get something else out of it does my intention change that? For me, not at all. We all bring ourselves to any work and if a work can speak beyond its intention into an entirely different area, that is the beauty of any art. I love how a song can mean something to me the author never intended and I can only hope that my book could ever do the same.

    If you want to know what the theme of my book is for me, start with the cover. More on that next time.

  • Themes, part 1

    I went to college at the University of Kentucky from 1990-95 (yes, I was on the five year plan). My major was English Education which allowed me to become a high school teacher for 24 years. The first two years felt like high school part two with a few interesting things thrown in every so often. The high points for me were always the English classes. Reading, writing, thinking about, and discussing literature were the things I enjoyed, although I did have some good History and Philosophy professors too. Math and Science were necessary check boxes and although I still wish I was smarter in those areas to this day, they just never clicked for me. 

    Graduate School was where I really geeked out. It was all literature, all the time but it became much heavier. Back then, you had a week to read the novel, go to the library and check out the research the professor had on hold (yes, internet was relatively new in 1997 so you had to check out a physical copy), familiarize yourself with the research, and be prepared to participate in discussions which were brutal, especially if you weren’t prepared. And trust me: you never really were prepared enough and the professors always knew. Some were more gracious than others and it was tough but I loved it.

    Today, if you google “theme in literature,” AI gives you the classic definition in its overview: “the central idea or underlying message that an author explores throughout a story.” It lists examples such as “love, loss, redemption, power, coming of age, and identity.” If you read some of the greatest books ever written, you can see these kinds of concepts developed throughout. The question is how did they do it? There really are only 3 options: it was either (1) planned all along like a storyboard that becomes fleshed out, (2) it just kind of grows and develops as the writer naturally tells a story, or (3) there’s a mixture of the two. I have a feeling that in most cases it’s the 3rd option (it certainly is for me as a writer) but I’m sure it’s possible that there are some talented people out there who plan it all out and then simply execute. 

    For me, I like to see where it goes. Yes, I have a general concept or even a plan when I first start out but then I go where it takes me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, which is where revision comes into play. I learned this when I was writing my MA Thesis at the end of Grad School. I remember coming up with the concept, talking to my professor, and then going off for two weeks to write what would become the second chapter. I “finished” it, gave it to him, and then came back about a week later to hear his accolades for my work. I can still hear Dr. Hill in his quirky little voice saying “Well, Mr. Cornett, this is a good start to what will be a fine chapter.” I remember thinking, “Start? What the heck is he talking about?” I called my wife on my Unidon Brick cellphone with the retractable antenna and said “I don’t know what this man wants from me! I can’t do this.” She calmed me down, told me to read his comments and go from there. I went to the library, sat in my usual spot on the fourth floor, and realized that he was right. I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture, and I am proud to say that with his guidance, I was able to create something that went somewhere I never intended and I am truly proud of it. Ever since then, that has been my approach. Plan things out the best you can, execute that plan, but allow for the twists and turns to take you where it is meant to go. Sometimes you just have to get out of the way.  

    My initial plan with If We Never Meet Again was to collect the stories that people seemed to love to hear me tell. Moving from High School English Teacher to Hospice Associate Administrator doesn’t seem like a typical career path and trust me, that was never the plan. Whenever I would go home, people would always be interested in my new job, and I was always ready with a great story about typical hospice stuff completely foreign to most people. The more stories I told, the more people seemed intrigued. Little by little, the idea of the book began to take shape. Eventually, I had a plan and I went with it but it took me to a place I never intended. 

    More on that next week. 

  • Writing Style

    Bob Dylan was a master of messing with the press. Throughout his early career he was constantly hounded by them wherever he went. He was playful, sarcastic, and often bewildered by the constant attention. While on tour in Australia back in 1966, someone asked him why he wore such “outlandish clothes.” In a typical sardonic Dylan reply he said “I look very normal where I live.” Style is a fascinating subject, especially when you start thinking about it in relation to writing. When I taught writing to my high school seniors, inevitably, the topic would always come up. To me, writing styles are like flavors-some will naturally appeal to you, some can become an acquired taste if you stick with them long enough, and others will never connect with you no matter what you do. Trying to argue with someone about liking or disliking a style is like telling someone they are wrong for preferring one flavor over another. 

    I always told my students that style needs to suit the purpose. If you are writing something formal, then it makes sense to stay within that confine, but if not, then the style is up to you. I often joked with my students that there were English teachers who would correct the great writers of the past. If Hemingway sat in a modern writing class, most teachers would say “Ernie, could you maybe connect some of these short, terse sentence structures so things could flow a little better?” Hemingway would probably punch them in the mouth and go win a Pulitzer Prize. The same would have gone for Faulkner. “Hey Willie, do you think you could stop with the long, overdrawn sentence structures? I have to read some of your paragraphs twice for them to make sense.” He would ignore their suggestion like a southern gentleman, and go win a Pulitzer Prize of his own. 

    As an English major, I was exposed to all sorts of styles and I truly enjoyed discussing and analyzing them but when it comes to thinking about your own style? That’s a whole different experience. Remember, my belief is that style suits the purpose. I could have elevated the style and written a totally different book but that wasn’t my purpose. I wanted to convey my true experience so to be honest, this one is completely me. One thing that I have heard people say (especially those who have known me personally and professionally) is that when they are reading my book, they can hear me saying the things that I have written. That is certainly because in writing this book, I didn’t just use a conversational writing style (which is how I would describe it); it really is me “naked as a tree” as David Gray calls it in his 2015 song “Back in the World.”  

    I think that’s why it freaked me out a little early on. When they finally released it in mid January, it was only available for pre-order. A lot of friends and family told me that they had ordered theirs and I was very excited but no one had the book yet. It really didn’t hit me until my Aunt Leslie texted me the Sunday after its release. She said she had bought it on Kindle and was reading it at that very moment. Hilariously, I wasn’t ready for that. I got nervous, my hands started sweating, and I started pacing around the house. My wife asked me what was wrong and I said “Leslie’s reading it right now! She’s actually reading my book!” To calm me down, my wife lovingly asked “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Of course, it was what I wanted but for some reason the knowledge that someone was actually reading what I had worked on for the past year and a half terrified me momentarily. Thankfully, she loved it and she really went out of her way to encourage me which really helped ease my mind. I never thought I would be so neurotic about it but it was touch and go there for a moment. 

    When you write a book about your own experiences, you can’t escape the fact that there will always be a self-serving aspect to it. The sheer act of putting it out there is a supposition that people will be interested in your experiences. You run the risk of being pretentious and maybe you can never truly escape that. But I wanted my focus to be on the stories of the people I encountered who changed me and I hope that’s what has come across. And I wanted to share these stories to help others who have been or will be going through similar experiences.

    But where did this conversational style come from? In college, I took two “Modern” literature classes at the University of Kentucky. The “Modern British Novel” and the “Modern American Novel” both of which got me into literature from the early to the mid twentieth century. Of all of those writers, Hemingway probably influenced me the most. I love his simple, yet profound sentences that contain worlds. One of my favorites is “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Simple, direct, and everything you need to know, yet it leaves you with a world yet to be discovered. 

    I’m not arrogant enough to compare myself to Hemingway or any other great writer. I’m just honest enough to admit that what appeals to us is probably inescapable in its influence, consciously or not. 

  • Literary Inspirations

    In preparing for this blog entry, I have come to the conclusion that I am truly the sum of everyone who has influenced me over the years. The people in our lives, the events that take place, and the time into which we are born are things that are both defining and inescapable. They make us who we are, both for the better and the worse. Yes, we make choices and we eventually develop as our own individual, but can we ever escape those early influences? Thankfully, I have no desire to escape mine. I embrace them as they were and celebrate what they are.

    I love literature and have from an early age. When I think back to those times, I remember the people who shaped that love for me. It all started with my Mother. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on her lap and her reading to me. There’s a warmth in those memories for me and the lifelong gift that she gave me. I remember reading circles in 1st grade with Ms. Locker. Other than recess, that was my most favorite time of the day. In second grade there was Mrs. Bowles who made me memorize “When the frost is on the Punkin and the fodder’s in the shock” which I still proudly remember to this day. The sing-song nature of Riley’s language imprinted on me. By the fourth grade it was Ms. Fox who read The Hobbit to the class…a chapter a day, and that was life changing.

    Around that time, my older brother Andrew took over. He’s five years older than me and was always way cooler so naturally, I wanted to imitate him. One thing about Drew is that he was a reader and his room was full of books. He had The Empire Strikes Back novel which I devoured as a 9 year old kid. He also had the Narnia books, Tolkien, and then eventually, he had the entire Conan series that they republished in the 80’s. I was probably drawn more to the girls on the covers initially, but then I started reading those as well. By 1984, he bought the Dune collection and took me to that movie as well. I read the first three but then it got too weird by the fourth book for me. He shaped a love for sci-fi and fantasy that I still have to this day.  

    High School in the 80’s had a more prescriptive approach to English classes so it was mostly grammar with a little literature thrown in every so often but Mrs. Waller let us do book reports on whatever we wanted. I remember reading a lot of Shakespeare on my own my junior year. In 1989, I had the fateful job of working at a movie theater. We got a movie called Dead Poet’s Society, and the rest was history for me. I bought a book called Poems that Live Forever (which I still own) and began devouring works by Byron, Shelly, Tennyson, Thomas, and Frost. Those poets changed me. I started listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and began trying to write and publish poems of my own. They set me on a course that I’m still on at 53 years of age. 

    When I went to the University of Kentucky in the Fall of 1990,  I thrived in my literature and writing courses. Intro to British Lit and Intro to American Lit created a love for the classics. I ended up being so dorky with the classics, I even wrote my Master’s Thesis on Fourteenth Century Arthurian Poetry and I loved it. When I got to the point it was time to choose a career path, I realized that literature was one of the things I was really good at so I started teaching.

    As a high school teacher in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I had to eventually morph into a writing teacher so I didn’t get to teach much literature. And as for reading? All I read were essays. Six classes of 25 students each, three major essays a semester, and rewrites which were necessary for my students to grow as writers. Seriously…during the school year I ate, drank, and slept college essays and they always hung over me like an impending rain cloud. If I had free time, I had zero desire to read anything. People would always ask “So Cornett, what are you reading right now?” My answer was always “Essays.” 

    But moving to the beach and starting a second career where I didn’t have to read college essays every time I turned around allowed me to rekindle my love for reading. If you look closely at the picture on my webpage of my bookshelf you can see my inspirations. For my classics, I love Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dickens, and Wharton. My more “current” stuff is Chandler, McMurtry, and right now? A lot of Pat Conroy. I live in the perfect area for reading him on the weekends sitting down by the water. 

    Like I said, I am the sum of everyone who has influenced more over the course of my life. If you have people out there who did the same for you, reach out and thank them. You are more indebted to them than you may realize. I only hope that I have had that kind of impact on others as well and that they will pass it along to continue the cycle.