CCosmo lives above a record store in a small town I had to take three trains and a bus to reach. He met me at the door of the shop. He was wearing the kaftan I had read about — burnt orange, paisley, open over a cream linen shirt — and tinted glasses pushed up on his forehead. I had never met a goat in his sixties wearing a kaftan. I had read about it. The fact of it is different from the description of it.
He showed me up the stairs to his apartment. Records on every surface. Two cats — one orange, one I never got the name of — observing me from positions of small power. He made tea. We sat in two chairs by the window. The conversation lasted three hours. What follows has been edited for length and clarity, and once or twice for sequence.
—Lila
LILAWhen did you decide to make the album?
COSMOI didn't.
LILA...
COSMOI mean it. There wasn't a day. There wasn't a moment. The songs were written. They had been written for years. Some of them I had played for friends and forgotten about. Some I had never played for anyone. There was no decision. There was a Tuesday where I started recording the first one and didn't stop until they were all done.
LILAHow long did that take.
COSMOThree months. Then a year of mixing. The mixing is where most of it happens.
LILAYou wrote some of these in the eighties.
COSMOOne of them. Mileage. It was about something else then. Different verses. Same chorus.
LILAWhat was it about then.
COSMOA van that broke down outside Memphis.
LILANow it's about your body.
COSMOThey're the same song. It just took me thirty years to realize I was the van.
Cosmo laughs at this, but it's not a punchline kind of laugh. It's the laugh of someone who had been turning the realization over.
LILAYou played on hundreds of records before this. How many of those records do you remember.
COSMOAll of them.
LILAReally.
COSMOYes. Not the names. I can't always tell you which album. But the sessions — yes. The room. Who was there. What I played. What they asked me to play that I didn't play. What I played anyway. All of those are in my body. They don't go away.
LILAThere's a kind of musician who hates that work. The session player who feels owed.
COSMOI know that musician. I am sometimes that musician. But mostly I'm grateful. I got paid to play guitar in good rooms with good players. That's a life. The fact that I waited to make my own record — that's not the music industry's fault. That's mine.
LILAWhy did you wait.
COSMOI didn't have anything to say.
LILANow you do.
COSMOI have a few things. The album is ten of them. There won't be ten more in two years. There might not be ten more, period.
LILAIs this the only record.
COSMOI genuinely don't know. I wrote Joke's on Me — the title track — last. After all the others. I wrote it in a single afternoon. It's the simplest song on the record. It might be the best one. If I write another that's that simple, that good, I'll record it. If I don't, I won't.
LILAThere is a kind of artist who can't stop. They make the second album because they have to.
COSMOI have nothing against that. I'm not that artist. The not-stopping was thirty years of session work. This is the stopping.
He gets up to make more tea. The orange cat moves into his chair. He doesn't move her. He sits on the floor.
LILAThere's a song on the record called Customer Service. The chorus is your call is important to us. Tell me about that one.
COSMOThat one wrote itself. I was on hold for ninety minutes one Monday. They had been playing the same forty seconds of music. By the time someone picked up I had the whole song. By the time I hung up I had the title.
LILAIt's about being on hold for ninety minutes.
COSMOThat's what it's literally about. The song is also about something else. I don't say what.
LILAYou don't tell people what your songs are about.
COSMOThe songs are about what they're about. If I tell you, you'll listen for the thing I told you and miss everything else. The not-telling is part of it.
LILADo you think about the audience.
COSMOConstantly. I think about one specific person at a time. Not a real person. Someone I made up. Sixty-something. Bad knees. Listens once on the kitchen radio, decides she likes it, listens again at night with a glass of something. I write for her.
LILADoes she exist.
COSMOI'm sure she does. I've never met her.
LILAWhat does she think of the album.
COSMOShe's still deciding. She's slow about these things. I am too.
There is a pause. The orange cat moves from the chair to the windowsill. The afternoon light has shifted while we've been talking. The records on the shelf catch a different angle now.
LILAWhen you played on other people's records, there must have been moments where you knew the song was good and the artist didn't.
COSMOA few. I won't name them.
LILADo you think about those.
COSMOAll the time. Everyone in the studio knew. Sometimes the artist figured it out three years later. Sometimes never. I thought about why for a long time. Why some people can hear it and others can't. I have a theory.
LILATell me.
COSMOMost people who make music don't actually like music. They like making music. There's a difference. The ones who like music — actual records, actual songs, the thing in itself — those are the ones who can tell. The ones who like making it — the process, the studio, the credit — they often can't.
LILAWhich one are you.
COSMOI like music. I like playing too. But if I had to pick, I'd pick listening. Always.
LILAThat's why it took you sixty years to make a record.
COSMOThat's part of it. Yes.
LILAWhat are you listening to right now.
COSMOA lot of things. Mostly old stuff. I'm in a Bobbie Gentry phase. The Delta Sweete. You should hear it if you haven't.
LILAI'll listen.
COSMOListen on the kitchen radio first. You'll hear something you wouldn't hear on headphones. Then headphones at night.
LILAWhy the kitchen radio first.
COSMOIt's how she listens.
He smiles when he says this. The smile is the first time I've seen his teeth — goats have teeth like ours, I had wondered. The smile is also the moment I stop having questions and just want to listen to him talk.
We talked another hour. About session work. About the cardigan he is wearing under the kaftan, which his mother knitted him in 1979 and which still fits. About the schnauzer downstairs who runs the record store. About the two-line lyric in Out of Office that he still isn't sure about.
I left at six. He walked me to the bus. He gave me a record — not his — by a singer I had never heard of. He told me to listen on the kitchen radio first.
I'm listening on the kitchen radio. He's right. I should have known he'd be right.
—L.
