{"id":653,"date":"2026-06-12T23:34:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T04:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/searchingwithin.com\/wordpress\/?p=653"},"modified":"2026-06-23T23:57:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:57:50","slug":"he-wrote-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchingwithin.com\/wordpress\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"He Wrote Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Cartoon<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One sure way to get over a crush is to embrace someone new and let yourself be drawn into their life. From the outside, his looks perfect \u2014 family, following his dream, asking for support and giving back work made from the heart. Personable and humble. And cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jared Halley is an a cappella artist. He builds an entire song by himself \u2014 every vocal part, even the percussion, recorded separately and assembled into a split screen of as many as fifteen squares, walking into frame for each part when it’s that square’s turn to sing, sound, or dance. I’ve watched for months. I follow him, click like on nearly everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was deciding whether I could afford the Escape, I canceled my monthly gifts to two artists on Patreon. Jared was one of them. Not a high dollar amount \u2014 but giving gifts while I’m struggling felt like a luxury I couldn’t justify. Then I thought through it, and I wasn’t comfortable having stopped. So I re-upped. I started watching old recordings of his live events, the ones where he just talks to people. Which led me to his newest original, “Rescue Me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote about what it meant to me, and I posted it \u2014 publicly, on his page. Everyone else will hear “Rescue Me” as a love song to a person. I swap the “you” for a place. Rescue is the town in California where I grew up. Before the first verse ends, I’m nine years old again in El Dorado County, drowning in a loneliness that was true then and is true now \u2014 and the thing I’m reaching for was never a person. It was the foothills, the oak trees, the horses, the clean straw late at night. I used to say “Rescue, rescue me” to myself as a kid, because I wanted the name of the town to have power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, he wrote back. Not a generic thank-you \u2014 a real reply. He had read it. He quoted my own line back to me, “a ghost made of foothills,” and said that once a song is released it stops belonging only to the writer; it becomes something a listener can pour their own story into. He said a song becoming a vessel for someone’s memories like that was the kind of gift he most hopes his music can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cried the hardest I have in months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not because I asked. Not because anyone is paid or obligated to. A person I respect read my words, was moved, and told me so. I have been wanting that since I was seven, carrying a drawing to my mother \u2014 the overlapping shapes, the little hole you could see the next shape through \u2014 and watching her enthusiasm thin by the third one. The armor I wear held all day. This is what finally broke it. I let it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a smaller thing I can’t stop noticing. After I quoted his lyrics, a few lines of my own came out without my meaning them to \u2014 “Standing on top of sadness, being loud and grumpy, the only way to keep myself from drowning” \u2014 and they fell right into his meter. His song opens “drowning in lonely.” My ear caught the rhythm and my words followed it home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I listen to that song maybe ten times a day. Some things you support because you love them. Some things you say out loud because, for once, somebody heard you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Look for him…<\/p>\n\n\n\n