The River

Funny thing about creativity...it doesn't always cooperate with our plans. Thinking I would be writing this trippy, chill music this fall I found myself laboring too hard and being too deliberate about the feel. In short, I can't "make" myself write something. Songwriting is more like dictation, I hear the song coming through and follow the lead on paper and piano. Or, like my latest work, I write down a line that leads to a great story that's waiting to be told.

Ralph and I had the great pleasure of seeing Vince Bell this weekend...Vince is a Grammy Award winning songwriter from Austin who now lives in Santa Fe. He hired us to do the postering for his show...and generously put us on the guest list. The show was amazing...Vince formatted the show to be a monologue with song. He told the story of his life...how he was rendered brain damaged and maimed after a serious car accident. He was told he would never talk, walk or write his name with his crushed hand and arm ever again. Vince refused to accept this prognoses and set out to rehabilitate his self back to the man he was. After 10 painful, less than encouraging years, he finally did just that. Not only can he walk and talk again...but this man is a world class guitar player with one of the most soulful voices I've ever heard. To say I was inspired is an understatement. Any one of us who has ever felt defeated must always look beyond that...call up our personal powers of determination and never let anyone else tell us we can't do what we really want to do!

The next day I found nothing but hope in my morning pages, and thought that I too, could create a one man musical...mixing story telling with music. I don't really have a song that recounts my young life in Hannibal, MO...so I turned the page in my journal and wrote the line "A two story house in the forest hills..." and I was off. It turns out there was a whole song under that line and I wrote it, words and music this weekend. I'll include the lyrics below...

The River
Music and Lyrics by Daniel Link. (Special thanks to Ralph who helped me find the ending to this song!)October 24, 2010

A two story house in the forest hills
And a road that lead up to the sky…
Cotton candy summers and a Ferris wheel,
And a boy who dreamed he could fly…

Two pretty girls lived right next door
Sweet laughter would carry in the rain…
They weren’t rich but they weren’t poor,
And he loved to hear them say his name…

Oh, the river…
Flows so far…
God bless the dreamer…
God bless the stars…

They would all climb trees and run barefoot
Catching fireflies like stars within their reach…
But then one day the boy found he could
Never touch the stars by climbing trees…

Oh, the river…
Flows so far…
God bless the dreamer…
God bless the stars…

Teenaged years brought much to learn,
For a small town boy who’s now a freak…
Staring out the window as the seasons turn,
With an outcast tear upon his cheek…

So much beauty yet so much pain,
Filled the landscape of the boy’s homeland…
Two pretty girls would have to sustain
The sweetness of the deep river sand…

Oh, the river…
Flows so far…
God bless the dreamer…
God bless the stars…

Chart the river…
To the unknown sea…
To the unsleeping lands…
Passage is not free…
The boy from the river…
Changed into a man…
In an Emerald City…
Still an empty hand…

Now he lives in the mountains were the stars are near…
The city had no answer it would seem…
Cotton candy summers and a Ferris wheel,
The broken hearted still dare to dream…

Oh, the river…
Flows so far…
God bless the dreamer…
God bless the stars…
Oh the river…
I’ve come so far…
The dreamer is the river…
The dreamer is the stars...