i had a friend a songwriting mentor and
a great songwriter john stewart
who told me
just before he died
we are all just radios
hoping to pick up each other's signals
i found that to be true
and profound
and i've spent my life trying to clear
the static
the strongest signals that come to me
are musical in the form of songs or
stories told in rhythm and rhyme
sometimes i can
tune into a revolution in the heart
sometimes i hear a keen
from my celtic ancestors
and some songs have been postcards from
my future
[Music]
in my family there was a song for every
loss every celebration every unspoken
need every longing
but there was also so much chaos that
often i was the only one who recognized
what was being communicated
my
grandmother carrie cash
moved with my grandfather
and their five children into a new
deal-era colony
created by fdr for poor families
in the uh sunken lands of the arkansas
delta in 1935.
so they moved into this freshly painted
cottage
and she gave birth to two more babies
there
with the assistance only of a doctor who
came by in a horse and buggy
and pulled two loose aspirin from his
pocket to give to her
the same pocket in which he kept his
fishing worms
that's true
i read once that every time an old woman
dies
a library disappears
and before her library disappeared i i
tuned into my grandmother's signals and
gleaned her
tenacity
which i borrowed
and her long suffering and her life of
constant work with seven children
six of whom made it to adulthood
in a house
without electricity
in the sweltering cotton fields
and i wrote these words about her
[Music]
five cans of paint
in the empty fields
and the dust reveals
and the children
cry
the work never ends
there's not a single friend
who will hold her hand
in the sunken lands
[Music]
[Applause]
in the mud and
tears
melt the cotton balls
it's a heavy toll
[Music]
his words are cruel
and hasting like fire
like the devil's choir
will hold her hand
in the sunken lands
[Music]
the
river rises and she sails away
[Music]
she could never stay
[Music]
alone
now her work is done
in the sunken lands
there's five empty cans
[Music]
[Applause]
in 1992
i was writing a song about my divorce
which hadn't happened yet
but which i saw coming like a a
freight train
[Applause]
so i was stuck in this song like i was
stuck in my life
and
at the same time across the country
my mother was going through a box of my
school assignments and
childhood drawings
and she sent it to me
so i started going through this box and
i came across this yellowed paper this
school assignment
i had done in the seventh grade
in catholic school
on metaphors and similes
now i vividly remember the pleasure i
took in that assignment because it was
literally the only thing the nuns had
ever given me to do that i enjoyed
so this line i had written popped out at
me
a lonely road is a bodyguard
what did it mean
i had even pasted a picture of this
empty road next to the line
is a metaphor
it wasn't
a lonely road is like a bodyguard a
simile
it was the much more poetic a lonely
road is a bodyguard
uh
as painful
as that was then and as it still could
be painful now
i knew what she was telling me
that
solitude
can protect the seeds of creativity
and that
loneliness
contains a priceless gift
if we can tolerate the initial
discomfort
and avoid the seduction of despair
so my 12 year old waved at me across the
decades
saying
that who i was was who i would become
and i waved back
and i dropped her line right in the song
i was writing
i'll send the
angels to watch over you tonight
and you send them right back to me
[Music]
a lonely road is a bodyguard
if we really want it to be
we're all just
radios
hoping to pick up each other's signals
and some of those signals have a
backbeat and a melody
and they're universal
and music can unlock a frozen memory
that melts into the seeds of our
creativity
and the reverse is also a true
a memory
can unlock a song that's waiting to be
written
it can reveal us to ourselves
across time
and generations
in community
in solitude
some frequencies are sound
and some frequencies are light
and some
take a half a lifetime
to reach their destination
[Music]
light
is particle and wave
our history is written large upon the
page
the star in middle age
the love that fades to black once
revealed won't be taken back
light
nothing
can escape
the ignorance we once forgave
in the future
if we don't decide to change
the things we cannot save
but it slows to shine upon your face
we owe everything
everything
[Music]
everything
to this rainbow of suffering
[Music]
light
is particles and wave
[Music]
refractions of this place
[Music]
reflections of our grace
it reveals what we hold dear
and it's slow so i can hold you near
[Music]
there's one thing i know for certain
that we clear the static
by being vulnerable
and by telling the truth
and here we are
doing just that
thank you
you