A wedding celebration in the antebellum Hay House for two friends newly allowed to marry. Fred Schneider takes to the dance floor. Mike Mills performs “Nightswimming” with students from the McDuffie Center for Strings. I’m standing by the crudités. Groups drift back to the dance floor. I’m left with a colleague from another department. “You’re difficult to get to know,” he says. “I know.” “I’d really like to get to know you.” I’m caught short. While the dancing continues, we go sit on the front steps. I learn others have discussed this distance. I thought listening was the gift. I thought withholding was generosity. I’d never considered letting yourself be known is also a gift. Years later, five strangers gather under the barn loft stairs at the songwriting retreat. Mandolin. Acoustic guitar. A vocalist. And two tuneless writers. I’m sitting at a keyboard I wish I knew how to use. We’re all collaborating, scribbling furiously, voices overlapping, pointing at instruments—“yes, that!”— as disjointed words and melodies find their match. The Hay House resurfaces in the chorus: “Let your voice be known The gifts and wounds we share Let us know we’re not alone” As the song comes together, my fellow writer’s lines get dropped. She quietly suggests adding a verse. Her voice isn’t heard. I stop the room. Her words become the bridge that completes the song: “The joyous union of unknown friends— What was broken now can mend” Maybe I’m learning.
Written after an Over the Rhine Songwriting Workshop; the previous post written during the retreat. Lyrics from “We Belong Nowhere Else,” collectively written by Caroline Crow, Eddie Dickerson, Sara Lambert, Anne Pinnau and Tim Regan-Porter. Photo by Linford Detweiler, under the barn loft stairs.
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