Write what you know

I was watching Merle Haggard on YouTube perform his song, “Sing Me Back Home.” The idea of writing a song about a man being led to the gas chamber is not what comes first to mind as a subject for a song. Unless you’re Merle Haggard. Haggard spent time in San Quentin, and in other prisons, and he knew what he was talking about. He wrote and sang what he knew, and that’s one reason this song sends chills down my spine. It’s hard for me to listen to that song without tearing up.

I thought while I watching him sing: well, what do I know? What can I write about? I don’t know prison. I don’t know war. I don’t know poverty. I don’t know profound illness.

What do I know?

I know loneliness. I know fear. I know cruelty. I know longing. I know abuse. I know the Flying Dutchman-like search for my father. I know shame. I know as a child wanting to kill myself. I know being beaten and humiliated by my father. I know being abandoned by my mother while she’s still in the house. I know running from love. I know telling my young child that her mother and I were divorcing. I know the look on her face. I know being laughed at. I know self-loathing. I know being a coward.

I know feeling dirt on my hands in a garden in the South of France. I know walking Paris when it’s brisk and cloudy, a black-and-white film. I know the excitement of living in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I know living cheaply and happily in the East Village in New York in the 1970s. I know getting a phone call telling me my first book had been accepted for publication. I know a lifelong friendship with a remarkable person. I know finding true love for the first time when I was in my 70s.

I know my hand moving a pen across the page writing sentences that people tell me they like to read. I know a wren’s song in the early morning. I know the briny scent of an ocean breeze.

I know turning 80.

I’ll write what I know.