I rarely remember to sit down while I’m eating, and this morning was no exception as I wandered the house munching a bowl of fresh oatmeal, almonds, and bananas. As I strolled into my bedroom I saw, as though for the first time, a stack of CD cases that had been stashed under an end table for years. They’d been left there “temporarily” by some wandering buddy or ex-girlfriend so long ago that they belonged to the bookshelf, or the world, more than either of us. They were clearly waiting for their chance to have meaning again.

I wandered over, eyed them for a moment, and then tipped out a random case with my thumb, grabbed it, and held it up. It was a John Prine collection. Now I know someone reading this is thinking to themselves, “ah HA! That’s where it’s been you son of a…” and, very likely, their initials are those scrawled in blue sharpie across the front: “CAS”. What grabbed me was not that this had been there so long that I’d forgotten who CAS was, but rather that suddenly, for little reason at all, I was standing with a two disc collection of John Prine tunes in my hand.

About ten years ago I began my first feature documentary project, joining director Kevin Triplett on what turned out to be an epic journey that I’m told is, no really, actually nearing completion this very day. This project about the itinerant musician Blaze Foley has shaped my life in a way that no other project ever has. It kept me in the U.S. several times when I would have otherwise fled. I met countless incredible people as we tore through Texas, Colorado, Louisiana, Georgia and more to visit cockfighting farms, dilapidated trailers, mansions, and hippie communes. At least one marriage formed because of this project. People we’ve spoken with, or wanted to, have died. One day I’ll sit down to write out my own “making of” story, but suffice it to say that it’s been a huge part of my life.

Despite all of this, I had never actually sat down to listen to John Prine, one of Blaze’s idols. And yet here it was before me, my thumb leaving a print in the thick dust, clearly containing some kind of powerful message that was waiting for just this moment to emerge. I handed one CD to my laptop to consume for later ambulatory listening, and put the other onto the waiting tongue of my old black CD player. The room filled with John Prine’s voice.

I listened, eagerly waiting to see if this was the song. It was about a little boy being sent away to work on a film project tour. Apt. But it didn’t ring with me. I tried another. It was a terribly banal collection of rhymes that didn’t have enough to say. Click. Click. I pulled out disk two and dropped that in. I immediately skipped to song seven. In my experience, one, five and seven are the ones to hit first. Sadly, nothing, and in fact my old loathing of the sound of country music began to stir again within me as his sound got twangier and the lyrics refused to engage and sooth or inspire me past the sound. I stabbed the eject button with disappointment and my CD player stuck his tongue out at me again.

It took me a few minutes, but eventually I caught the lesson of the moment. I keep my life so full that it is overwhelmingly rich with magical moments of synchronicity. I long ago gave up caring whether a god, gods, a muse, statistics or my own brain, trained so well from years of literature study, created these moments. But I had come to expect them. I had come to expect them so much so that I was now disappointed when a moment so thick with possibility failed to give up the goods.

It was then that I realized that, ironically, I had just imparted this realization in a phone call before going to bed the night before. There was a guy I used to live with who refused to open up to me. The way people have been able to share with me, feel comfortable with me, and have great revelations in my presence has been nothing short of magical. But it took having that magic stop, break, end to see it for what it was. I was tormented by my inability to make this person see. He was clearly so hardened, broken and distant that he was unable to face even himself. I had to learn to let him go on that way. I had to learn that I couldn’t expect the magic every time. And it helped me see those former moments for what they were. Beautiful. Uncommon. Magic.