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After finishing Parker Posey’s memoir I thought that I might never read anything so deliciously oddball and earnest ever again… until I picked up the Sincerely, Melanie album at Hi-Fi Records just a day later.

It reads:

There are so many people who could use this space to better advantage than I will, just think of all the great “Letters to the Editor” that never made the New York Times. On a 12x12" surface Erich Fromm could have fit at least thirty strong excerpts from “The Art of Loving.”

I did just about everything to avoid doing this myself. My natal chart served as a sort of do-it-yourself liner note on my first cover, and I thought this time it would suffice to put a full-size photo of my palm, emphasizing the important lines—but all too many people told me that having my 26-degree in Aquarius, my rising sign, didn’t mean a thing to them, so I would imagine that even fewer would be phased by the length, number and position of the lines on my palm—and even if they were, that’s pretty intimate stuff to be giving about one’s self on the first or second introduction—especially on the outside of the album where millions of uncaring record touchers and album cover readers, would at a glance know vital secrets about me, and maybe never get to hear my songs or my singing.

So now I think back to the day I failed English Composition, because I didn’t turn in an autobiography. Oh—I really want you to know me—but I remember how long it took me not to write the autobiography.

It would probably be easier and a lot more impressive to write a kind of stream of consciousness poem, dressing up the words a bit—but I want you to see me naked here, with my limited vocabulary and perhaps my poor sentence structure—unrobed and unadorned in music, without sounds that protect and cover, but in the end, probably tell more about me than my horoscope or my two palms put together, ever could—you must know, I think of you all the time even if you’re just album touchers.

Affectionately, Melanie