Webb was desperate to come up with some great lyrics.
The dark air felt like sweet clover.
No.
The dark air tasted like sweet clover.
No. Neither of those images was right. He wasn’t sure why. The verbs maybe? Felt was a useless word. How about The dark air enveloped him like sweet clover?
Nope. It wasn’t the verb’s fault. Okay, enveloped wasn’t that great, but it was the sweet-clover comparison that hurt the phrase. And maybe it should be dark night air, because dark air by itself didn’t convey the same emotional tone. Get shut in a closet and you’re in dark air. Dark, dry, stale air. Not at all like the still night air that surrounded him as he sat on the deck of the houseboat in a lawn chair with frayed nylon straps that had stretched with age. His butt was only a couple of inches from the deck, but he wasn’t going to write lyrics about that.
So there he was, just before midnight on a Monday night, sitting in a saggy lawn chair in air that was heavy with humidity and may or may not have felt or tasted like sweet clover. He shook his head and rolled his eyes, mocking himself and his cheesy stab at the beginning lyrics of a song.
He reached over to a plate on a nearby lawn chair and grabbed a chunk of watermelon, telling himself to enjoy the moment instead of trying to find a way to express how the moment made him feel.
He had no problem admitting that he felt amazing.
Most nights he sat in the same lawn chair in the same spot in the same solitude, looking through a gap in the rocks that led out to the deep brown waters of the Cumberland River. When it rained, he sat under a big umbrella.
The houseboat was moored in a small harbor cut into the banks of the river. About three miles downstream was downtown Nashville, and when the occasional barge passed by, he thought about the crew’s first view of the city skyline and wondered if the sight of it made them as breathless as it did Webb. Even after being in Nashville for weeks.
Nashville.
Webb thought it would be pretty cool if he could go back in time and visit the kid he was at thirteen—a kid playing the same J-45 Gibson acoustic guitar for the same reasons Webb played it now.
To get lost in the rush of music. To feel the scrape of the pick against nylon and steel, the pressure of callused fingertips against the frets, holding a chord the perfect length of time and letting the note of that chord meld into the next.
The difference was that thirteen-year-old Webb could only dream about Nashville. Seventeen-year-old Webb was there.
Webb bit into the watermelon and didn’t care that juice dribbled down onto his T-shirt. He was thinking about chasing dreams. There was a song in that. But it had been done a million times. So the big question was, could he write a hook excellent enough to justify yet another song about kids who yearn for bigger things?
It wasn’t just the still, scented air that made this moment amazing: it was the moon. Webb had been on the upper deck of the houseboat on dozens of nights, but this was the first time the moon had risen right in the gap in the rocks that led to the river.
It was kind of like Stonehenge, he realized. Mystical.
Warm night air. Chirping crickets. The slap of tiny waves against the houseboat. Slight swaying of the lawn chair as the water cradled the boat. The taste of watermelon juice drying on his lips. The aloneness that was bigger than loneliness. With that big, timeless moon creeping upward from the river, slowly pulling away from its reflection on the water as if even the moon was reluctant to leave Nashville and all that it promised.
Webb watched the moon and knew he’d never forget this feeling.
A swell of river water came from what seemed like nowhere, and the houseboat began to rock. That reminded him of all the times he’d heard the phrase “don’t rock the boat.” Like it was a bad thing to rock the boat. Because everyone wanted the boat to be safe and stable and predictable.
Well, Webb thought, he wouldn’t be here in this moment if he hadn’t been prepared to rock the boat. The moment he was living was one he’d remember when he was an old man. He didn’t want to look back wishing he’d—
Then he had it. Live in the moment.
The whole sweet-clover thing wasn’t working only because the lyrics were bad. The idea behind the song didn’t work. Sometimes you had to try something that didn’t work to find something that did. You had to rock the boat. Live life loud. Bring the roof down. Walk the high wire. Not look back and regret what you didn’t try.
It wasn’t a new concept for a song, but a fresh way of presenting it began to unfold in his head. He scrambled to grab his guitar, because he could already hear the melody to go with the lyrics that tumbled through his brain.
You have to know we’re gonna walk the high wire
Maybe playing with some hot fire
We spell our names like trouble
But you know we’re gonna love it.
Yeah, we’re gonna rock the boat
That’s the only way to know
We’re gonna have to rock the boat
Yeah, that’s the only way to go.
An hour later, long after the moon had climbed to the center of the sky, Webb had finished the entire song. He didn’t need to write it down. He knew every word and every note.
And felt great about it. A feeling that didn’t even last until noon on Tuesday.