Angela Correa

Correatown was a place that someone called her once. It was a funny name and a sad name all at once but it made sense at the time. You could ask for directions, you could stumble upon it, you could look and never find it. It doesn't really matter. You might find a house with a porch, a wall painted green, and an old sun bleached wooden swing chair. You might sit there awhile and then you might hear the stories and decide to sing along. There is a small mountain range called the Buttes where she's from, with quiet sloping hills just above the pastures and orchards.

Folks aren't generally allowed to explore those pathways, though nobody even knows why not. Once under cover of starlight, she went for a midnight walk with some friends through those forbidden hills, and in one moment felt more attached to where she was from- to the place that made her- than she ever had been to anything else in her life. You see those hills have stories- stories that make your eyes ache from looking, your heart swoon from feeling, your chest tighten from breaking, and your face light from laughing. And so those are the stories that become song- brought out with wood, strings, air, a little inflection, some sadness but mostly memory. Obscure. Yes. But what isn't?