When you're an author, people ask about your influences: what inspires you? Formed your character? Made you a writer? My biggest influences were easy to figure, I used to think. My mother, with her love of books and liberal sensibility. J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings gave me not only a world to escape to when things got rough, but taught me something about perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle showed me that people can live their lives on their own terms and still find happiness. A not-famous-enough book called The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope gave a terrific lesson, right at the end of the book, in keeping your integrity in the face of an almost irresistible temptation to cheat to get what you want.
Then I came across a particular cd compilation the other day, and realized that there was something else that cast a shadow forward onto my writing, way back when I could barely spell out my first words. Music. Specifically, my father's music.
Now my Dad, he listened to what the guy in The Blues Brothers called both types of music: country and western. But his records were filled with stories, stories that gripped me by the hair and made me the writer—and maybe even the person—I am today. Songs that began: Out in the West Texas town of El Paso. A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm. Kawliga was a wooden Indian, standing by the door.
What did I learn? That if you make stupid mistakes, you pay for them. That whether you're a hot-headed Texas cowboy or a desolate Indian named Running Bear, true love is more important than life itself. I learned you'll live a much longer life if you listen to your mother: when she tells you don't take your guns to town, for Christ's sake, listen. And speaking of mothers, Mrs. Johnson, too, gets credit for providing a valuable lesson in standing up for yourself when she took on the Harper Valley PTA. In a mini skirt, no less.
Oh, my Mom listened to some great stuff: Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra. Those people could sing, but they couldn't tell a story for a damn. People who need people? Name names, dear: give me Kawliga pining for an Indian maid, and I am there. Strangers in the Night had potential, but when it turned out neither one of them had a gun, I lost interest.
No, it was my father's records that first gave me the essential building blocks I use today: honor, justice, tragedy--and yeah, always--romance. You know, the stuff stories are made of. Dad's been gone for nearly ten years now, and I've often wondered what he'd think of my writing. Listening to his music again makes me believe maybe he'd understand, after all.
The cd, by the way, is called Country Classics: Great Story Songs. Highly recommended.