Best Compliment I Ever Received *edited*

What was the best compliment you’ve received?

I’ve had some kind words over the years… but one stands above the rest…

It came through a window…

Back in the mid 90s… I was living in a little downstairs apartment outside Atlanta… just me… a guitar… and a lot going on in life…

Most nights I’d sit by that open window and play… sing… pour it all out…

What I didn’t know…

Was that someone was listening…

There was a girl in the neighborhood… and for about a month… she would come by at night… lean up against the outside of my building… just out of sight…

And listen…

She told me later… she’d wait, hoping I’d be there… that my songs helped her get through things she was dealing with…

That she would just stand there… breathing it in… and for a little while…

She could forget her life…

One night… she finally said hello…

And I’ll never forget all the things she said to me…

That my music gave her peace… even if just for a moment…

I’ve never had a better compliment than that…

Not applause… not praise…

Just knowing that something coming out of my heart… reached someone else’s…

And helped them breathe a little easier…

That’s everything to me…

If you want to read the full story, it’s here…

https://loia.blog/2025/12/21/the-window-song/ 👈

This was the apartments and that summer

Proverbs 25:11 (KJV)
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”

© 2026 Bryan Loia Hudson | All rights reserved

`’.,°~

Midnight Guitars

No Curfew in Sight…

It was the summer of 1995…
I was 21…
going through much…
trying to figure life out…

I’d just moved in with a guy I worked with…
only been there a few weeks…
it was the weekend…
I’d been out late hanging with my friends…

when I finally came home…
I headed down the hall toward my bedroom…

As I got closer…
I could hear a guitar playing…
a girl singing…
the sound was coming from my room…

I was like wth!?…

I opened my door…

There on my bed…
a black-haired girl I had never seen before…
strumming my guitar…
singing…
completely lost in it…
like she owned the night…
no curfew in sight…

she wasn’t wearing any clothes…
my brain just blue-screened…

I was frozen…
my tongue super stuck…

she looks at me…
with friendly eyes…
smiles and says Hey

“your roommate said it was ok…”

Her name was Rachel…
she and I became friends…
we often jammed together…

she was a part-time exotic dancer…
aka…
a stripper…

my roommate was dating her friend…
so many nights…
she and her friends…
plural…
ended up at my house…

but she never wanted to hang out with the rest of them…
she just wanted to chill…
sing songs…
play guitar…

She was a great musician…
had a great voice…
music was her dream…

Many times I’d come home late
find her in my room…
doing her thing…

I’d grab my other guitar…
and we’d play for hours…

I had a small recording studio
we’d lay down tracks…
we recorded all kinds of covers…
had these freestyle…
ad-lib jam sessions…
just chasing whatever sound showed up…

It was definitely a crazy summer…
but also kind of holy in its own way…

it’s beautiful how musicians can come together and bond…
doesn’t matter who or what you are…
your background or anything…

musicians and artists just immediately have that thing.
that links us…
that invisible wire…
heart to heart…
song to song…

what I remember most those nights…
isn’t the chaos…

it’s the music…

two guitars…
chasing songs in the middle of the night…
letting the sound carry through a messy season of life…

I did much praying that summer…

cryin’ out in the night…

sometimes with words…
sometimes with songs…

finding healing…

wherever I could…

..

Oh yeah I might be crazy…
But that’s not the same as insane…
And I’m scared…
But that’s not the same as being afraid…

© 2026 Bryan Loia Hudson. All rights reserved.

🎧… 👗…

`’.,°~