Composed: A Memoir

by Rosanne Cash

Someone once told me to perform to the six percent of the audience who are poets. I have this in my mind at some point every time I sing, but I often have to find that six percent by looking past those who are yawning, glazed over, distracted, unsettled; those who come to try to look through me to see my dad; and those who can’t respond to music but like the experience of sitting in a crowd with those who can. Sometimes, onstage, I am also one of those people who are yawning, glazed over, distracted, and unsettled. At some concerts I have felt as transparent as a pane of glass and haven’t been able to hear the music I’m making. Sometimes music has been so painful to me that I want nothing more than silence and the sound of waves. Sometimes the need to please the audience rises in me like bile and ruins everything. T-Bone Burnett, an old friend, once told Joe Henry, “Don’t stop working, just stop worrying,” advice that Joe passed on to me that has since become my mantra. Now, even when I do worry, I keep working. Work, I remind myself, is redemption.