When I was 4, my Dad would have me stand on his feet and help me lean over and into our 1967 Zenith console record player. He would have just asked me to pick out an album from the shelf.. (50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong OR My Mary Poppins movie soundtrack with illustrated cover design.. were my “go-to” choices) and then Dad would patiently instruct me on how to gently lift the arm from the bottom and “slowly..slowwwwllyyyyyyyy……SLOWLY!”..place the needle on the outside grooves of the record.

The very first needle drops of the soundtrack to my life started in that wood paneled, Elizabeth, New Jersey living room. I went and sat on the orange bouclé sofa behind the glass topped boomerang coffee table to draw on the yellow legal pads Dad would bring home from work.

From records to eight tracks to cassettes to CDs to Napster to iPods to playlist.com alongside Blogger to Spotify, the 50 years of my life can be rewound to a song and a moment that corresponds to it. Music is essential. I NEED music. I feel it, physically. I need it to motivate me to get up, to shower, to clean, to cook, to calm down, to rev-up, to go for a walk, to spin on a bike and most importantly? I NEED music, to draw.

Some people have prayer to get them through the night. (I now am singing John Lennon’s .. “WHATEVER GETS YOU THROUGH THE NIGHT, IT’S ALRIGHT, IT’S ALRIGHT” ) - I have music. I have lyrics instead of Our Fathers and Glory Be’s and I have back up singers Show-dope-and Showby-dohing and Ramma Lamma Ding Donging away like Pentecostals speaking in tongues. I sing out loud and I am moved to stand up sometimes in the studio as if there was a pew underneath me to rise off of.

**Dad and Mom at their engagement party.**

I got the music in me. Thanks to my Dad.

SO, When I get a book idea in my noggin, pretty early on, I make a playlist. Do You?

I wonder how many creators do this. I’m curious. Let me know in the comments. Share with me your playlists!

I will add other playlists from other book ideas or trips or moments when I can not get my BUTT to move!

I have written a picture book / love letter to my Dad, who I lost in 2016. I grew up from the age of 5 to 11, in my parents’ Diner in Manasquan, N.J.. Just a Skee-ball roll away from Asbury park. It was a childhood that looked different from many other kid’s but I loved life at the Diner. I loved the kitchen and dinging the bell and the aprons and the chocolate milk machine and all of the different plates and bowls, each for very specific foods. The chores at the Diner that were mine did not feel like work. I would fill the napkin holders, the straw holders, the salt and pepper shakers and put down the place mats. Sometimes, Dad would let me fill the squeezy bottles of ketchup and mustard (messy) and I roller skated the delivery orders to the shop owners close by. For all of this .. I got TIPS. Dimes and quarters that added up to a whole lot of Pin Ball and Space Invaders. BUT I didn’t have to spend my hard earned, cold hard cash IN the DINER Jukebox. Dad had a jar next to the cash register where he threw change through out the day, so I could drop that magic metal into the slot and punch in those LIT UP letters and numbers. I DJ’d the Diner in 1977 when Dancing Queen was Abba’s new single and when Meat Loaf was not just on the menu but was..like a Bat Outta Hell and gone to the morning comes.

Thumbnail from my Diner book. Kelly Light

So I made a playlist of the years we had the Diner before I started to write and thumbnail. I put the music on loud and I sang and I cried and I spent two weeks with my Dad while I wrote this book. I hope it gets published. It could not be a bigger piece of my heart , so take it.. take another little piece.. well, you get it.

Here is that playlist on Spotify. I hope you enjoy it as much as a side order of gravy fries. Ding! Order up!