Free Love, Me by Tiffany White

ago—or just lately?
    As they headed down the long drive, he saw her take out her lipstick and gloss her full lips with her signature scarlet hue. The atmosphere in the car was slightly tense, so he suggested turning on the radio.
    He hadn’t really wanted to ruin her birthday. Maybe some music would put them both in a more festive mood.
    But she stayed his hand when he reached for the controls. “No, let’s talk.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout the kind of song I want you to write for me. I want a special song. A song so special that no one else can sing it. A song about…”
    He waited, but she didn’t finish the sentence. She shivered violently and stared out the car window into the lengthening shadows of dusk.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asked, looking over at her.
    â€œI don’t know. I just got a chill. It’s probably nothing. This song is so important to me that I can’t bear to think you won’t be able to write it.”
    â€œI’m doing my best, but nothing’s coming.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œNothing worth putting down on paper.”
    â€˜Wow do you know? Maybe…”
    â€œNo, Ï know. It has to feel right. It has to haunt you.” He swore at a big rig that flew past them recklessly.
    â€œHow do you get your ideas for a song?”
    â€œI read a lot.”
    â€œYou read?” she echoed with unflattering disbelief. “Like what?”
    â€œEverything. I read fiction, newspapers and magazines. And I listen to talk shows on the radio and television. You need input for output.”
    She turned toward him in her seat. “I don’t understand how reading and watching television help you to write songs.”
    Pulling onto the highway, Dakota explained. “They help to fill my mind with images of the times and culture we live in. And stories set in the past are full of myth and legend I interpret for modern times. Newspapers are great for odd turns of speech. Songwriting is a lot of little details and observations put together around a theme.”
    â€œSo a song just doesn’t come to you, then. You set out deliberately to write it, to deliver a certain message in the lyrics.”
    Dakota shook his head. “No, it’s both. Sometimes, actually often, a phrase will come to me fullblown out of the blue.”
    â€œBut nothing’s come to you in the past six months….”
    â€œA phrase doesn’t make a song, Chelsea. I’ve got lots of phrases.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œIn my computer. I used to write them down on whatever was handy, but I kept losing the bits of paper, so now I keep the phrases I come up with stored in a file in my computer.”
    â€œWhat you’re really telling me is that you write with your head and not your heart. Is that right, Dakota?”
    He didn’t answer her.
    Instead he stared at the road, looking for the exit that would take them to the Whiskey River honkytonk, and wondering how she had discovered that in one conversation.
    She had him wondering whether, if he changed the process and started writing from the heart, his career might disappear. The one truism everyone in the entertainment business knew was: Don’t mess with what works for you.
    But who was he kidding? At the moment, nothing was working for him.
    â€œWhat about melodies?” Chelsea asked, shifting the conversation from words to music. “Do you write those with your head or your heart?”
    Dakota didn’t answer immediately. “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” he finally said. “I imagine you might say both as the melodies just seem to pop into my head.”
    â€œYou mean you don’t work them out on an instrument? Surely not?”
    â€œNo instrument. I don’t have that kind of patience. Besides, I find I get more original melodies without trial and error on an instrument where I’m sure I’d tend to repeat old