Page 71 of Night Songs

The sound was dissonant, hard on the ears, lacking any melody. It made my skin crawl. It was like receiving a letter from a self far gone, and I imagined her still in Europe smoking junk in a bathroom while the building burned down around her, awaiting my response.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was pure dog shit. This wasn’t music. This was the sound of a hammer flattening a mind into a thin disc.

I put logs and old newspaper in the fireplace and lit it with a match. I watched the flames catch and grow, and when it was big and hot, I tossed the record in. It melted slowly, the black goo hissing as it covered the wood, banishing that terrible sound back to wherever it came from.

Tate stepped out of the bedroom for the first time and sat next to me in a pile of blankets.

Neither of us had anything to say.

Instead, we watched the fire together, and we lost ourselves in its shifting, primal power.

23lulabelle

1975

SEVEN YEARS LEFT

For the first few weeks, we floated around the house, avoiding each other. I worried if we got too close, I would feel his need and he would feel mine, and the power of it would pull us both under.

The only thing that kept me going was the hope that the music would return once my body was clean and ready to receive it again. I woke up every morning and craned my ear toward the heavens, listening for the golden sound.

But it never came.

Tate got himself some religion to get through it. A preacher drove the devil from his body and introduced him to the healing power of Jesus’s love. I was happy for him, but I didn’t have the stomach for church after the way I’d been treated as a child. I was truly afraid that God had forsaken me for my sins—why else would he take my music away? And I didn’t think going to church every Sunday would fix it.

I needed to heal my soul.

So I threw myself into the study of music. I had to relearn it from the beginning now that I no longer had a direct line to its source. I took lessons in piano to understand composition, and in drums to understand the beat. I read books about music history and theory.

I listened to the symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler, Renaissance church choirs, and the rock operas of Queen. Ethiopian jazz, tango, and Tibetan chants. This was grand, lifting music that captured and transcended existence, that connected with the divine. I’d always relied so heavily on the sounds in my own head, that I hadn’t truly explored the music that lived outside of it. As my world opened up, I became obsessed with creating a large, all-encompassing sound.

After I sobered up, I also apologized to my friends for the way I’d treated them. It was easier with Phoebe and Tima because we hadn’t toured together.

But Martha had seen the worst.

Sometimes I would get a flash of one of our arguments from her last days on tour, and my own words would turn my stomach. I couldn’t believe some of the things I’d said to push her away. I’d disrespected her and put her career in jeopardy. I’d taken her hard-won trust, and I’d thrown it in the trash. Even after she forgave me, there was still a distance between us.

I tried to reach her through music, which had always brought us together, but when I went to a bar or a venue, all I wanted was a drink. The music scene in Nashville was not a dry environment.

Undeterred, Tate organized these sober music nights at my house. It was amazing how much the sound in Nashville had changed; now everyone wanted to be an outlaw. I watched this skinny young thing play in our living room one night, and I could tell she was shaking a bit. It reminded me of when I was starting out, and I’d wanted it so badly. I’d been filled with this light of music that I’d squandered. But I tried not to wallow in self-pity. Instead, I talked to the girl afterward and offered advice. I made new friends.

Drugs have a way of turning you in on yourself, of flattening your emotions and your interactions with other people. You become gray and solitary, despite the colors that surge inside when it hits. An illusion of vibrance.

Now, I was finding new colors. I was returning to people.

But if I’m being honest—and that’s what I want to do, be honest here—some days the music and people just weren’t enough.

I only had seven years left. Did I really want to live my last years denying myself pleasure? Or relief? I understood it for Tate, who could live for fifty more years if he wanted. But for me, I was starting to question the point of it. Sobriety and goodness hadn’t returned my music or God’s light to my life.

One night I walked in toe-numbing cold to our usual diner. I sat in the booth eating pie and ice cream and staring hard at the table’s glitter-flecked linoleum. The pie was flavorless, and I was empty. Not even Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time” playing on the jukebox could provoke a feeling. It was music, goddammit, the one thing that had always fed me. And I feltnothing.

I wondered if I’d ever feel good again, or if this was as good as sober got.

I thought about the plans I’d been making. The tricky part would be hiding it from my people. I imagined a double life, where I could have everything I wanted, and no one would get hurt.

I felt the table tilt, and I looked up to see Martha sitting across from me with a stony expression. I glanced around the diner to see if anyone else had noticed her; I thought I was hallucinating.

“Tate called. He woke up and you were gone.” She lit a cigarette. “Thought I might find you here.”