Diamond in the Rough

by Shawn Colvin

  My mother was standing in the garage when I came home that first day. I’d held it in until then, but when I saw her, my mouth opened and no sound came out. I was sobbing so hard I simply put my head on her shoulder and drooled down her back. She was devastated to see me in such misery, yet surely it was something I would get used to and get over. But it wasn’t. I was literally Lincoln Junior High School–phobic. It felt like a cold, vast, prison, and I was a new inmate. I just couldn’t figure out what my crime was. The panic attacks started every morning in homeroom. All I wanted was to go home, back to my music world, back to my mother. I couldn’t take it. I began to feel dizzy and anxious, and I started calling Mom within the first weeks of school to come and get me because I felt sick. We had, I think, a white station wagon, and my little brother, Clay, must have been in the car, since he couldn’t have been more than three then and Mom stayed home with him. How often did I ask her to come get me? Once a week? It seemed like every day. For a while she would do it, and I don’t remember her being mad about it. When I was home, I became addicted to soap operas like Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. I read books and played the guitar. I was learning Simon & Garfunkel, specifically “April Come She Will” and “Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall” and “The Dangling Conversation.”

  I was taken to the doctor to figure out what was wrong, but they couldn’t find anything. So eventually my mom felt she had no choice but to refuse to pick me up anymore. It was my job to go to school—something I tell my own daughter—and it was their job to make me go. But once it became a battle, we were all screwed. Maybe I could have been homeschooled for a time. Or maybe a deal could have been struck whereby I would go to Lincoln for part of the day but not all. But there was simply no insight into my heart except to regard me as rebellious. Later my mother told me, “We didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t take anything away from you except television, because you had no friends and never went anywhere,” the implication being that punitive measures were the natural course of action, and at that time I suppose they were. I was in over my head, and so were my parents.

  I got creative, holding a thermometer against a lightbulb to feign fever. That wore itself out, too, and I knew that if I were to keep avoiding school, I’d have to up the ante. I would ask a teacher if I could use the bathroom, excuse myself, and just leave the building. I didn’t play hooky to do something fun. I would have preferred to be home with my mother. I’d wander the streets of Carbondale for a few hours and at around three-thirty I’d go home, where no one was the wiser until the school started calling there when I’d go missing. Sometimes I would leave school between periods and not go home at all until after dark, when I would lurk around the house until one of my parents came out and found me. After that I was driven to school every morning, where the staff was instructed to keep an eye on me at all times. I still found ways to get out.

  One of my favorite places to go was the strip mall near our house. There was a Santa Claus shack stored in the back alley, behind the supermarket. The Santa shack was a little building where Santa would take up residence in front of the grocery store at Christmastime, but it was kept out in back the rest of the year. I would go to the store, buy a bag of caramels and a crossword-puzzle book, head for the alley, and hang out in the Santa shack, having put on several layers of clothes, given that it was winter, and resembling nothing so much as a twelve-year-old homeless girl. I might just as well have had a grocery cart loaded with empty cans. But I did have a home.

  I suppose the worry to my parents was at a breaking point. In fact, I recently learned that a photo of me from that year, a black-and-white portrait that was taken by a professional, was arranged for the express purpose of identifying me should I really run away, or worse.

  Me at twelve—photo taken in case I ran away—1968

  The pinnacle of this situation occurred that winter, after I’d played out every trick, both at home and at school. Either Mother or Dad was driving me to school in the mornings now to ensure a safe delivery. So one day I got up before anyone else in the house, while it was still dark, and left. Around the side of the house was the pop-up camper trailer we used to take on vacations. It was all folded up for the winter, but there was still a small door you could open to crawl into. I let myself into the cramped space between the two benches and in front of the cupboards inside the trailer. I locked the door from within, and I stayed there. It was cold and dark and tiny, and it was better than going to school. Anything was better than going to school. I heard footsteps in the crunchy snow as my dad came out to look for me. He even tried the door on the camper, but I had locked it, and he didn’t pursue that idea.

  I stayed and stayed. I stayed so long that I peed on myself. I was afraid to get out, because I knew I’d have been made to go to school. A war had begun, and neither my parents nor I had figured on my being so formidable an opponent. Finally I estimated that enough time had elapsed and that school must be over. I crawled out of the camper, my legs hardly able to stand, and saw that the sun was heading west. So it was afternoon, and I’d dodged another day at school. I began my walk to the Santa shack, but a neighbor saw me, put me in her car, and brought me back home. My mother was there, and so was my father. When he saw me, he got that look, the dark scowl that meant he was extremely displeased and that most probably sparks would fly. And sure enough, Dad grabbed me by the arm and began to drag me to the car. It was only two-thirty. There was still an hour of school left, and he wanted to make sure I got there. But my mother stopped him. Did she smell the urine on my clothes? She stopped him and gave me something to eat.

  My hiding place, 1966

  It’s ironic that my father was studying psychology during this time and didn’t see what was happening to me, but you have to understand he was a Skinner man. It was all about behavior and positive and negative reinforcement, usually with M&M’s as I recall. Clearly what I was doing did not fall neatly under the heading of behavior that should be positively reinforced. No M&M’s for me. My father decided the only way to deal with me was to reverse the lock on my bedroom door and nail my windows shut when I went to bed at night. He would let me out in the morning and drive me to school, where he and my mother would take turns waiting outside each of my classrooms and walking me to the next one.

  Given their strict midwestern upbringing, and what had to have been the limitations of their youth, my parents didn’t have a lot of resources available to them regarding a child like me. Nowadays we’ve got kid shrinks galore and private schools and Ritalin, but back then it came down to a battle of wills. Not giving up without a fight became my fallback position, even after I was long gone from my parents’ jurisdiction.

  My parents did send me to a therapist, but of him I recall very little. What seemed to help the most was my father’s telling me that if I would sew my own clothes, he would buy me all the fabric I wanted. I’d never had all of anything I ever wanted before, and I loved clothes—I still love clothes. And thanks to Mom, I could sew. I’d watch the clock at school as the day wore on, counting the minutes until three-thirty, when Mom would take me to the fabric store and I could indulge myself. I got into a matching-bolero-and-skirt phase, and I bought tweedy wools and lawn stripes and would work up in my mother’s sewing room after school as the winter days grew darker, until I was called down to dinner.

  I fell in with some girls at school—Gwen Geyer, Gail Parrish, and Peggy Cochran. They thought I was strange but befriended me anyway. I was the kid who didn’t want to go to school, whose parents had to accompany her to class. But between therapy and the sewing and the girls, I began to be able to tolerate Lincoln Junior High. I was allowed to stop going to therapy. It was enough that I was sent. There would be plenty more to come anyway.

  In the spring, with all the determination I could muster, I managed a perfect attendance record, wearing the bright paisley peasant dresses I’d made during that season in hell. The homeless girl was home again, at least for a while.

 
3

  She Opened a Book

  Geoff playing the guitar I learned on, 1963

  I live on a dream, it came to me when I was young.

  When I was fourteen, I designed my first album cover. It was a pencil drawing of two eyes, one open and one closed, with a tear falling from the closed eye. I thought it was very deep.

  The guitar had permanent residence at the foot of my bed, and when trouble came in the form of panic or pain, I reached for the guitar. I really turned a corner when I started to play. I didn’t have to be in the church choir or sing along to a record with a hairbrush microphone anymore. I could produce something totally complete with my voice and the guitar. I found my instrument and, along with it, another part of myself. I was becoming a musician.

  I learned “This Land Is Your Land” and understood by ear the general relationship of a key and the basic one, four, and five chords that went with it. With the help of a Mel Bay guitar book, I taught myself chords by attempting to play “This Land Is Your Land” in every key. I learned to play on a Harmony guitar with four strings, and then my parents got me a six-string Yamaha one Christmas. The first song I recall figuring out on my own—and this is infinitely embarrassing—was a Great Shakes commercial:

  Any place can be your soda fountain now,

  With Great Shakes, new Great Shakes.

  Mix it up with milk and make a real thick shake,

  With Great Shakes, new Great Shakes …

  It had sort of a Beach Boys–meets–Peter, Paul and Mary feel to it, and I confess to being somewhat smitten. Thankfully, I soon progressed to tackling some Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Judy Collins. I suppose I could have learned these songs on piano, but the guitar was better. “Blowin’ in the Wind” on piano was so cheesy. The same goes for “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” When I got home from school, I’d eat some ice cream or saltine crackers and peanut butter, talk on the phone, write poetry. Then I’d play the guitar, in my bedroom or sometimes in the living room. I didn’t hide my playing and singing; they were part of the sound track of the house.

  I met some other kids who played guitar, too. We learned old folk songs like “All My Trials” off my father’s Kingston Trio records, complete with counterpoint melody. “Sounds of Silence” was huge for us. In fact, Simon & Garfunkel were a real mainstay, but our big hit was “Atlantis” by Donovan. We couldn’t wait for the end and the anthemic refrain of “Way down below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be …” The beginning of the song was all talking, and it was kind of a chore to get through. And no one wanted to chirp “Hail, Atlantis!” but the ending was worth it.

  My friend Janey’s older sister, Robin, introduced me to Laura Nyro. Then, at summer church camp, an older girl (fifteen) told me point-blank to get “Clouds” by Joni Mitchell. It was like an edict, should I ever want to understand anything. Not since the Beatles had my world been so shaken by music. Joanne, my closest guitar-playing pal, and I set out to learn Joni Mitchell’s entire catalog, but because Joni never played in standard tuning, we were stymied. Then a miracle occurred. Joanne met a college student named Vicki who gave guitar lessons at the local music shop—and she knew Joni Mitchell tunings. We practically moved in with her. The code was cracked, and the gates of heaven flew open.

  Joanne and I took turns meeting at each other’s house, all through junior high and high school. We played “Rocky Mountain High,” “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” by Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” and “Chelsea Morning,” “Someday Soon” and “My Father” by Judy Collins, and Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” as sung by Judy Collins. Joanne had an older sister, Tina, and she could sing, so sometimes we’d add a third part.

  There are artists who just seem to spring out of the wild with a ready-made vibe, but most of us have to copy people for a long time in hopes of developing our own style. James Taylor was one of those artists who seemed to have emerged fully formed. I remember baby-sitting one night when Janey tore over with the 45 of “Fire and Rain,” insisting that the second coming had arrived—and she was right.

  Me and Liz, 1975

  Me and Joanne, 1975

  Jane, 1975

  I went through this phase of writing songs when I was fourteen or so. I’d fallen in love with a guy who didn’t know I was alive, so I channeled my unrequited love into songs. I ended up writing maybe ten. They were based primarily on Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro songs. Some were about being home, at my parents’, and feeling misunderstood. I can still remember some of the titles: “Hey, J,” “Tell the Clouds to All Come Home,” “I Want War,” and “Thought of You.” They’re not anything I would play now, but back then I played them for Joanne, Liz, Mandy, and Jane. Joanne was writing songs, too.

  My repertoire was expanding, and I actually got a gig at a hippie-dippy student church called the Newman Center in Carbondale when I was fifteen. I think I played Joni Mitchell, “He’s a Runner” by Laura Nyro, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel. After my set I was too jazzed to quit, and my meager audience followed me into the ladies’ bathroom, where the acoustics rocked. But, mostly, more and more of us got together just to play, in our rooms, at Saturday-night church youth group get-togethers, and whenever our parents had parties.

  I took my guitar to school often, and I’d play with my friends, sometimes outside on the lawn at lunchtime or in one of the listening-room cubicles in study hall. Joanne and I even managed to sneak our guitars into French class, further goading poor Miss Crow, the most tortured teacher in the whole school. Phil Ochs, Dylan, John Denver, Cat Stevens, Dan Fogelberg, Elton John. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Jackson Browne. I learned songs by Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and the Eagles and realized that this guy Jackson was doing the same material. I thought, Wow, this fellow has good taste. When I finally put it together that he had written this stuff, I fell totally in love with him.

  There was no shortage of songs any of us wanted to learn. They were endless. We’d show one another different things. We’d work them out on our own and show one another what we’d learned. I knew that I was fast; I was a quick study. I had a good ear; I could hear when things were in tune and out of tune. And I knew I had a good voice, maybe one of the better ones. As a sophomore I auditioned for the school musical by playing the guitar and singing a song from Camelot: “I Loved You Once in Silence.” The Vanessa Redgrave–Richard Harris film was popular at the time, and we were all pretty into it. I knew the musicals really well from my parents’ albums. And I got the lead: Eliza in My Fair Lady. The next year I got the lead again: Anna in The King and I. Musicals required a lot of rehearsal, late into the evening, and my parents were supportive about it. They were very proud. To this day I have performance-anxiety dreams about acting.

  I was like a train. My recollection is that this is just what I was meant to do. I didn’t feel I had to ask permission. My parents bought me a reel-to-reel tape recorder for Christmas when I was around fourteen or fifteen. It was a big present. I didn’t ask for it—they somehow knew I wanted it. The way they gave it to me was that they hid it under a table in the living room and it was running all Christmas morning, and the end of that tape is me finding the tape recorder and screaming. I knew, of course, that it was for me.

  I was the only one of my friends who had one. And I could overdub on it. It was kind of intricate; it was difficult to do, but you could do it. I taught myself so I could overdub myself singing harmony. I still have some of those tapes. I had my friends sing with me on it, too. We sang the Beatles’ “If I Fell” in three-part harmony.

  It’s not easy to adequately describe my feelings about this period of time and my musical development. Playing and learning and listening were my whole life. When I went to sleep at night, I always played the same Laura Nyro song—“Save the Country.” It was my lullaby. When I heard “Friends” by Elton John and saw the film of the same name, it spoke to all my notions about rebellious youth and feeling misunderstood and the deep, deep connection I had with my friends, who really b
ecame my family all through high school. The song made me weep from the deepest place inside me. I played it again and again, a sort of cleansing therapy, a sense of belonging, and all the music I loved did that.

  I pored over every album cover, memorizing the lyrics, the players, even the photographers. The whole scene was a fairy tale. I was transfixed, obsessed, and, looking back, I realize I was also lucky. How much more fortunate could I have been, that the first album I ever got was Meet the Beatles? That in fourth grade I bought Rubber Soul? How lucky was I to grow up in the singer-songwriter heyday? Using the money I saved from baby-sitting, I eventually bought my dream guitar, a Martin D-28, the gold standard. I felt how some guys must feel about a car.

  My first concert was Judy Collins in Edwardsville, Illinois. I was probably thirteen or fourteen. My parents took me and Joanne, and I remember my father, as we sat on the lawn pretending to get high from the secondhand pot smoke. Judy was a hero of mine—“Someday Soon” was a staple in my arsenal, thanks to my folks, and I learned lots of songs off her records.

  Next I saw Simon & Garfunkel at the arena at Southern Illinois University. I believe I was fifteen and enough of a fan that I recognized Paul’s brother, Eddie, who walked into the audience before the show started. Like an idiot punk, I yelled, “Hey, Eddie!” I got him to look and then hid. I had made contact! If only with a blood relative.