by Rick Boling
That morning—as we lay quietly awaiting the sunrise, with the lingering fragrance of night-blooming jasmine wafting in from an open window—would change my life in more ways than one. As if obeying some unheard command, a robin perched on the windowsill and began to sing; then another, somewhere in the trees, answering. Soon the air was filled with the music of springtime: the rustling of squirrels and chipmunks; the plaintive cry of a mourning dove; sounds I’d no-doubt heard thousands of times, but that had always been obscured by the ambient noise of civilization. Here, however, there was nothing to dampen those sounds, and among them I heard the strains of melody lines, the poetry of nature in all its pristine and lyrical beauty.
It would be some time before this experience would manifest itself in my music, but whenever I think back to where it all started, what led to the compositions that would define my career as a singer-songwriter, I always end up at that morning, and the miraculous awakening of my soul to nature’s symphony. Until that epiphany I had lived in an emotional cocoon, insulated from the real world by the hustle and bustle of civilization and nurtured only by the marketing dictates of a heartless entertainment industry. For the first time I learned to be still, to bask in the quiet security of love and open myself up to the spiritual richness of the world around me.
Although I would struggle at first to translate these revelations into music, Robin’s unwavering confidence in my talents led me through the wilderness of self-doubt into a new landscape of creative freedom, from which would emerge the songbook of my life. Among the pages of that book was the song that eventually propelled me from anonymity to international recognition. However, even though nourished by my growing love for the woman who had become my savior, Robin’s Song was one piece I would never play for her, since I only managed to finish it in the melancholy wake of her disappearance from my world.
But on that morning, the thought of losing her stood no chance of intruding on the sanctity of our newfound love; a love so sensually overwhelming it left no room for doubt or worry of any kind. No longer plagued by the anxiety of waiting and wondering, I experienced a surprising burst of energy that immediately obliterated the lethargy of withdrawal and set me on a new course of action. After all, there was work to be done, discoveries to make, a new level of intimacy to explore. And I set about these tasks with a renewed sense of purpose and a clarity of mind I had not known since I was a teenager.
First, I needed to set up the shop and make some contacts in the music community. Being basically in the middle of nowhere, I had to travel south to Atlanta, where I approached several music stores with an offer to do stringed-instrument repairs. Many of the larger stores had their own in-house repairmen, but I managed to get an occasional job from the smaller ones. With little money to spare for gas, the travel back and forth became burdensome, so I came up with a plan to carry some tools and supplies with me. This saved time by allowing me to handle the less complicated repairs right in the stores. Still, the jobs were scarce, requiring only a couple of days work each week, plus a trip into the city every ten days or so. I felt bad about Robin being the main breadwinner, but she ignored my apologies, encouraging me to use the free time to try and write some music.
We were sometimes so broke we couldn’t pay the power bill or buy heating oil, so I learned how to chop wood and feed the fireplace, which sometimes also served as source of heat for cooking. And since our water supply came from a well, when they turned the electricity off, I had to use the hand pump and haul water in buckets for drinking, bathing, and filling the toilet. It was a primitive existence, made bearable only by our deepening love for each other and Robin’s upbeat attitude and gentle encouragement for me to write. She even managed to sneak enough from her tips to buy me a used typewriter, and her patience in teaching me how to touch-type bordered on the miraculous.
I soon began to explore the property in search of ideas for songs, wandering through the woods and following an ancient Indian trail to a fast-running stream, where I would sit on a granite outcropping and contemplate the unspoiled beauty of the wilderness. I became so attuned to the nuances of my surroundings I could sense subtle changes in the environment: slight alterations in temperature and humidity signaling an oncoming storm, or a whisper in the underbrush that indicated the presence of animals whose habitats I’d become familiar with. Other than the occasional flyover by an airplane, the only sounds were those of nature, and I began to wonder how I’d ever been able to tolerate life in the city.
Still, I was having trouble putting these things into words and setting them to music. Then one evening, while Robin and I were conducting our ritual of sitting on the steps in the early twilight, I started complaining about not being able to write.
“This place is so fantastic,” I said, fiddling around with a new fingerstyle riff on the guitar. “I ought to be writing reams of music. But for some reason, I can’t really be here.”
“But you are here,” she said. “I like that a lot, by the way. That thing you’re doing on the guitar.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s something making me feel like I don’t belong here. As much as I want to, I can’t seem to stop thinking of myself as an intruder: a city boy who doesn’t fit in. It’s like there’s some kind of invisible string tying me to the past.”
“Well,” she said, “why don’t you write about it—that string, I mean? Maybe about trying to break it.”
And in a flash, my career as a successful singer-songwriter was born. It would be more than a year before my first national release, and it would not be the song I wrote the next day while she was at work. But City Strings served as the confidence builder that allowed me to write fearlessly, from my heart instead of my mind. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but when I played it for Robin the following evening she went crazy over it.
“I wrote something,” I said as we, again, sat on the steps in the growing twilight.
“Something?” she said, getting up to turn on the light over the front door. When I didn’t answer, she stared down at me, raising an eyebrow in mock impatience.
Surprised by the nervous stammer in my voice, I mumbled, “It’s nothing great, but at least it’s … well, it’s something.”
“I see,” she said. She must have sensed my anxiety, because she dropped the impatient look and returned to her seat next to me.
I tried to waste a little time by pretending to tune my guitar—which was already in perfect tune. And when I could think of no other way to stall, I sighed and began to play the intro.
Her face lit up as she recognized the riff from the night before, but after I’d stretched it out for a while with several variations, she said, “That’s nice, Rix. Does it have words?”
“Yeah,” I said, resigning myself to the inevitable. “I don’t know if they’re any good, but—”
“Would you please drop the introductory apologies and just sing?”
“Right,” I said. “Sing. Okay, it goes like this …”
Well I found me a place to sit
So I think I’m gonna sing a bit
About how I came to be here
I’ll start at the very end
And work my way back again
And watch yesterday disappear
I was born a city boy in the land of the sun
Where livin’ right meant stayin’ tight
Lookin’ out for number one
Like a puppet in a puppet show, with plastic tears to cry
And city strings around my mind
To hold me … till I die
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think,” she said, the words coming out slow and deliberate. “I think you’d better play the rest of it.”
“Okay. Hold on a sec.” I played long refrain on the guitar, watching an indignant look spread across her face. And just when I thought she was about to complain, I continued …
Well the strings turned into cables, and
the cables into chains
With links made out of ego trips, and locks made out of games
Till one day I found a way to leave it all behind
Now I’m breakin’ chains with every step, and man I’m feelin’ fine
Another short guitar break, then …
I cut me a walkin’ stick and found me a trail
And left all the ego trips behind
And I built me a cabin with my own two hands
From what God left for me to find
And I’ll touch only what I need to touch
And leave the rest just as it was
And lay back by a stream somewhere
And make sure that I take care
To break the strings as they unwind
As the last strains of guitar music faded away, she remained silent. I was thinking she hated it and didn’t know what to say, when she jumped up and almost knocked me off the stairs with a hug.
“Oh, Rix,” she cried. “It’s wonderful.”
“Whoa, there,” I said, scrambling to keep my guitar from being crushed. “Slow down a little, will you? It’s not that good.”
“It is, Rix. And I’m not just saying that to be nice. It may not sell a million records, but it represents something important. I heard most of your other songs at the club, and they were pretty and well-written, but they were all about other people and love affairs and things songwriters usually write about. This was about you, how you feel, what you’re struggling with. It’s authentic, and nothing beats authenticity. Besides, it’s the first thing you’ve written since I’ve been here, probably the first thing you’ve ever written sober. And that in and of itself is enough to celebrate. I’m so proud of you.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, as she untangled herself from the guitar strap. “But I can’t take all the credit. It was your idea, you know, the breaking strings to the city bit?”
“Those were your words, Rix. Not mine. All I did was suggest you use them in a song. Now we’d better get inside before the mosquitoes eat us alive.”
Whether or not she wanted to believe it, the song had been her idea. In fact, she was the inspiration for half the songs on my first album, and that album didn’t even include City Strings. No, the song that would lead to my first record contract was hers and hers alone, written from the memory of that morning after we first made love. Robin’s Song would be my first hit single, but unfortunately, Robin would not be around to share in my success.
It took another nine months or so for me to convince Robin I was serious about getting married, and even then she seemed doubtful. In the meantime, I spent every spare moment walking the woods and writing fragments of lyrical poetry. Eventually, some of those lyrics started coming together, and before long I had a dozen or so compositions set to music. The only thing I couldn’t seem to write was the song I’d promised her early on. Writing about things was easy, but writing to someone was a different story, especially someone I was so in love with I often found it difficult to express that love even to her. Finally, one evening, I confessed my frustration.
“I just can’t find the words,” I said. “In fact, what I feel for you … hell, I don’t think they’ve even made the words.”
“Listen,” she said, “you need to stop obsessing over this. You’re on a roll now, but you’re letting that promise you thought you made get in the way. You didn’t actually promise, by the way. All you said was maybe one day you would write me a song. So what if that day hasn’t yet arrived? More important by far is for you to keep on writing. Speaking of which, you’ve been so wrapped up in your quest to write my song, you’re closing your mind to other possibilities. You probably don’t even realize it, but you just came up with a great idea for another one.”
“I did?”
“You did. Think about it: City Strings came out of your trying to do something you were struggling with, so why not write about your frustration with writing a song to me?”
I sat in silence while what she said sank in and an idea began to coalesce in my head. After a few minutes, she leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Hello? Anybody home in there?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, reaching back to grab my notebook off the top step. “Turn the light on will you.” Fifteen minutes later, I had the song roughed out.
I was experimenting with the chord arrangement and humming along, when she said, “Hey! Are you going to sit there all night goofing off and mumbling, or are you going to play it for me?” I didn’t answer, just smiled and started singing …
It’s a waste of time I know
I’ve tried it a thousand times before
But a mocking bird outside my door
Said to come and try it just once more
So I grabbed my old guitar,
And walked out to watch the sun go down
Tried to sort the lines that were runnin’ ‘round
In my head –
But they just ain’t made the words for me
To write a song to you
And all them silly poets lines
Well Babe they just won’t do
They just ain’t made the words to say
The things I feel inside
And though you know I’ve often tried
The words sound old and cracked and dried
And that’s what led me to decide
They just ain’t made the words
I stopped and looked at her. “Go on,” she said. “I hope that’s not all.”
“Nope,” I said. Then my standard caveat: “It’s still rough, though, so—”
“Shut up and sing!”
So I did …
Well it’s springtime in the country now
There’s inspiration all around
I can feel the happiness we’ve found
In everything that’s goin’ down
And if all I had to say
Was I love you more than night and day
Or more than the smell of new-mown hay
I think I could probably find a way
But they just ain’t made the words for me
To write a song to you
And all the thoughts that springtime brings
Well Babe they just won’t do
They just ain’t made the words to say
The things I feel inside
It isn’t just that I can’t find ‘em
It isn’t that I couldn’t rhyme ‘em
I wrote a thousand songs to you and never signed ‘em
‘Cause they just ain’t made the words
It was rough; that would become evident several months later when the producer demanded I make many changes before he would allow They Just Ain’t Made The Words to be used as the flip side of Robin’s Song. But the saddest thing about it was that by the time I signed the record contract, Robin was gone.
We were married a month after I wrote They Just Ain’t Made The Words, in a small civil ceremony, and for two weeks I was in heaven. The music was flowing, and my confidence had never been higher. Too high, as it turned out.
It was only a little marijuana plant, stunted for lack of care and cultivation. I discovered it growing in a clearing near the trail I walked almost daily, and I felt sure that even if she found out it wouldn’t be a big deal. I was wrong, of course, not only about keeping it secret, but about how ironclad her drug ban would be.
After hanging the plant up for a while to let the THC drain into the buds and leaves, I smoked my first joint in over a year, and I was still a little stoned when she got home from work that afternoon. The next morning she said I should keep the car for the day in case I got a call and had to go into the city to do some repairs. I thought that was kind of strange, since the few work calls I got were never emergencies, but I didn’t argue. When I went to pick her up from work she was gone. The manager told me she’d left right after I dropped her off, saying only that she was sorry for leaving him in the lurch. She left no note, no message for me, and I never saw her again.
A
month later I got the annulment papers in the mail. The pending decree cited fraud and mental incompetence as the reasons for requesting dissolution. I called her attorney in Atlanta, and he said I was welcome to attend the hearing and argue the case, but he advised against it, especially if I couldn’t afford legal representation, which I couldn’t. He also said Robin would not be at the hearing, so if my purpose was to see her, I would be disappointed. He wouldn’t tell me where she was, except to say she had moved out of state and wanted no further contact with me.
Six weeks after the final decree arrived in the mail, I got a postcard, a touristy one with a photo of Cypress Gardens in Florida. A short note on the back said: “You won’t find me, so don’t even try.” No signature; postmark illegible.
As my depression deepened, I found it impossible to write. That is, until I realized my only hope of ever seeing her again was to somehow finish Robin’s Song and get it released nationally. Maybe then, I thought, she’d hear it on the radio and try to contact me. I’d been working on the song for over a year, aiming for a perfect ending that always seemed just out of reach. And, ironically, it was my sadness that eventually provided me with the final verse.
Excited again, for the first time in weeks, I sold all my tools and two of my guitars, and drove to Muscle Shoals, hoping my short visit with the three producers while trying to peddle Sunday Morning Sentinel would gain me another audience. It took a lot of patience, and many hours sitting in waiting rooms, but I finally managed to outwait one of them. And when I played Robin’s Song for him, he immediately signed me, this time with no talk about having someone else sing it.