A sheet of musical notes just looks like random “sticks and balls” to prolific composer Marc Jordan.

Letters and words swim about on the printed page. He can read a map but following written directions is a disaster and deciphering instructions in an owner’s manual is gruelling.

Sometimes, the meaning of what he has read eludes him and he calls his manager Kathleen Shea for an explanation.

“I don’t read recipes, I make everything up,” he says. “That’s what my life has been, a world of my own construct.”

This is what it is like to live with dyslexia — a learning disability that Jordan is only now talking about publicly as he prepares for his upcoming tour The Narcissist’s Guide to Songwriting. He will both sing and tell the back stories of his songs that made others famous.

The Ontario tour starts in London March 12 and arrives in Toronto March 27 and 28 at the Jazz Bistro.

Jordan, who burst onto the music scene with the hit song “Living in Marina del Rey” in the ’70s, has spent four decades writing hit songs without writing music — he records as he plays the melody and someone else does the music notation. He composes the lyrics the same way, recording first, then putting the final version on paper.

His dyslexia is a secret he has kept from the industry that has showered him with the gold records and honours that cover the walls of his Toronto home studio.

He wrote “Pieces of Ice” for Diana Ross, “Victorious” for Chicago, “The Perfect Kiss” for Bette Midler, “The Same Mistake” for Cher, “Take me Home” for Joe Cocker and “The Rhythm of My Heart” for Rod Stewart, frequently with collaborator John Capek. Stewart sang that song at the opening of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with “35,000 fans in the stands all singing,” says Jordan, who was there for the event.

It is Jordan’s time now to sing the song in his own show and open up to his fans about the challenges he faced following his creative dream.

“I never talked about it,” says Jordan, “I was so beaten up in the school system.”

He had a guidance counsellor who told him he had the intelligence “of a spider monkey” and he was constantly streamed into programs for low achieving students.

“It was embarrassing, shameful. I had to develop all of these strategies,” he says, citing his ability to memorize his piano teachers’ movements and recreate the music without being able to read the notes on the page.

When he became a bit troublesome in high school, subsequent diagnostic testing based on but conceptual learning rather than reading and writing, “revealed what I knew, that I was smart.”

He studied film at Brock University, then gradually became involved in the music industry and moved to California.

“When I write a song, I see a movie in my head,” he says, adding he has a knack for making up little stories about anything he sees. His hit “Living in Marina del Rey” came from a street sign he saw when he was in a taxi coming from the airport to his hotel in Los Angeles.

He didn’t go there, he just imagined the place.

Currently working on a musical Lulu the Acrobat, Jordan was inspired by a Jean Genet story of waking up in a drunk tank and seeing “I’ll always love Lulu the acrobat” scrawled on the wall.

“I found that fascinating, interesting,” says Jordan, who wrote a song first before collaborating on the larger opera project with his fellow songwriters Steven MacKinnon and Amy Sky, whom Jordan married 27 years ago.

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The two Canadians met in California where Sky was struck by his creativity, intuition and sense of humour. Jordan said he had difficulty with reading and scheduling but “we didn’t have a name for it,” says Sky.

She learned to give him information in small chunks, and check and double check schedules and dates, as Jordan has missed a flight or two. They were married on New Year’s Eve, partly so he’d never forget the date, she says.

Seventeen years ago, when their daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia, they finally had a name for the way Jordan processed information.

“I think it’s a gift he is sharing this struggle with people. I hope his telling helps people get away from personal shame and know they have other gifts,” says Sky.

Manager Shea, who has urged Jordan to talk about dyslexia, says she initially had no idea until one Christmas she gave him a 900-page book.

“He said, I’m sorry but I’m not going to be able to read this.”

She began to understand “the enormity of his success.”

“The sheer will of this person to overcome this particular learning disability and be a successful songwriter. This is a big deal.”

Louise Ward, director of the Canadian Dyslexia Centre which offers teacher training methods, says the visual, intuitive side of the brain is more developed than the reading part of the brain for those with dyslexia.

The alphabet, multiplication tables, telling time, knowing the date and year are all the “sequential” tasks affected by dyslexia but the major tools upon which early school success is dictated, she notes.

Multi-sensory teaching techniques can successfully teach mathematics and reading to these students, she says, adding that many people with this are exceptionally creative.

“I hope this helps somebody,” says Jordan, “There’s a lot of parents of underperforming children who really don’t know. Parents have to advocate for their kids.”

The social isolation of his high school years has left some bruises.

“It took a huge emotional toll on me. I am a total loner. I feel, on some level, unworthy. Kids are going through the same thing.”