The Sting & I | The Dreamweaver

At a party, I was introduced to Sting. Almost immediately, he seemed genuinely eager to know everything about me, firing off question after question. At one point, he looked me straight in the eye and asked whether I had ever written a memoir—pronouncing it, very distinctly, as “mem-wah.”

I told him about my novel, half-expecting that I was about to over-explain it. Instead, the more I told him, the more interested he seemed to become.

We talked for what felt like a very long time. Eventually, he said he had to leave, but told me how glad he was that we had met and asked for my personal details so he could get in touch.

He then asked someone to bring him paper and a pen. A young woman who seemed to be one of the party organizers returned with an oversized sheet of paper and a marker. Sting placed the paper on the floor and, one by one, asked for my name, address, telephone number, and email address. To my surprise, he spelled it out my nom de plume correctly, letter by letter––U-S-A-T-I-N-S-K-Y––on the very first try.

When he had finished, he folded the enormous sheet of paper and handed it to his wife.

Then he hugged me.

The hug seemed to last for several minutes.

While we were still embracing, I gestured to a woman standing nearby to take a picture with my phone. I wanted a keepsake of the moment I had met one of my musical heroes—a man whose music, films, and life I had followed for more than forty years.

Then I woke up.