Sometimes a song I’ve been listening to intently for ages suddenly rolls past in a different setting, the studio rather than the live performance, or another performance of it at some other gig somewhere in some other dive across town… and I all of a sudden realise, unwelcomely, that favourite line I so exquisitely cherished is in fact a simpler, balder statement or plea than what I had heard… and what I’ve been singing all of this time. Whenever this happens I wish I could take it back, unhear it I mean but also take it deep into myself, have that line – which in a kind of unintentional way, perhaps I wrote, or cowrote – for my own and smuggle it into some other song, illuminating some other life. I guess you could do this (I could, I mean) if you acknowledged the spurring accident… as in a piece of poetry or a painting made in response to something made by someone else, a work that brings to conscious light an insight some artist you are not has already articulated. Maybe then.