The Rhythm and Rhyme of Memory, Solitude and Community | Rosanne Cash | TED

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 in to a revolution in the heart.

Sometimes I hear a keen from my Celtic ancestors.

And some songs have been postcards from my future.

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 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.

(Laughter)

That's true.

(Laughter)

I read once that every time an old woman dies,

a library disappears.

And before her library disappeared,

I tuned into my grandmother's signals

and gleaned her tenacity

which I borrowed,

and her long suffering in 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)

(Singing) 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?

And the mud and tears melt the cotton balls

It’s a heavy toll

Oh, oh

His words are cruel

and they sting like fire

Like the devil’s choir

Oh, oh

Who will hold her hand

in the sunken lands?

(Music)

The river rises and she sails away

She could never stay

Oh, oh

Now her work is done

in the sunken lands

There’s five empty cans

(Music)

(Music ends)

(Applause)

In 1992,

I was writing a song about my divorce,

which hadn't happened yet.

(Laughter)

But which I saw coming like a freight train.

(Laughter)

So I was stuck in this song

like I was stuck in my life.

And 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.

(Laughter)

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.

It was 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.”

As painful as that was then, and as it still can 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.

(Singing) I’ll send the angels to watch over you tonight

And you send them right back to me

A lonely road is a bodyguard

If we really want it to be

(Music ends)

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 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)

(Singing) Light is particle and wave

Our histories 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

Everything

To this rainbow of suffering

Light is particle and wave

Refractions of this place

Reflections of our grace

It reveals what we hold dear

And it’s slow so I can hold you near

(Music ends)

(Applause)

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.

(Applause)