Previous Articles

Dec 02/Jan 03:
The Beating Heart: Music and Healing
Randi Israelow

Oct/Nov 02:
The Healing Power
of Poetry
Joy Sawyer

Feature Article

Soul Song
by James Eugene Robinson

About the author:
Jim Robinson has written songs for numerous artists in country, Christian, and pop music, including John Michael Montgomery, The Martins, Asleep At The Wheel, Al Denson, Neal McCoy, Restless Heart, Van Zandt, and many others. He performs and teaches in churches and treatment centers around the country, and has recorded two of his own CD projects with a third on the way this year. He also works as a Recovery Counselor on staff with PowerLife Resources in Nashville. His memoir, ProdigalSong, will be published this summer by SonLight Books. http://www.ProdigalSong.com

These days, whenever someone casually asks me what I do for a living, I take a deep breath. This was once a relatively easy question; for a dozen-or-so years, my response was always—and not without some degree of pride—“Songwriter.” As a staff tunesmith for one of the largest publishers on Nashville’s Music Row, I felt both blessed and honored to have finally found a way to turn my lifelong passion into profit. And people from all over the world always perceived my profession as a fascinating one. At the very least, telling people that I had actually written songs that had been played on the radio made for some colorful conversation. Unless of course the person happened to be from Nashville, in which case nothing could have struck them as more mundane.

But over the last few years, things have become a bit more complicated. Today, I write songs, travel, operate a non-profit ministry, perform in churches and treatment centers, run a music publishing company, write books, and work as a professional Recovery Counselor with a team of therapists in private practice. Oh yeah, I’m also a husband and father of two kids. Every now and then, I even get a chance to sleep. So, usually when someone says, “What do you do for a living?” I say, “How much time do you have?”

When God first called me into this frantic, frenzied existence, I blinked. After all, how was I supposed to be a songwriter and counselor at the same time? But as usual, things began to make sense as soon as I stopped struggling and obeyed. And now, I find that the two careers actually have far more in common than I’d originally thought.

My time spent on Music Row was a blessing in many ways. During my apprenticeship I worked with some of the premier songwriters in the world, and learned much about the craftsmanship and discipline required to create emotional magic in less than four minutes. And although I have come to see that the mainstream, commercial radio-driven approach isn’t really where my deepest desires or talents reside, I nonetheless gleaned enormous dividends from so long working in that environment. Now, in retrospect, I see that I not only learned from some of the world’s finest songwriters, but from some of the most talented psychologists, as well.

Great songwriters are often great storytellers. And a storyteller is usually an expert on human emotion. Knowing how to touch a nerve in the human psyche, to turn someone’s heart with the simple turn of a phrase, to use both words and melody to reach into the thoughts and music that makes up each of us—reaching into the secret places—these are the unique gifts necessary for healing. In all the ways we try to communicate with one another, reaching, touching . . . in all the awkward, broken attempts we make to comfort and connect, feel and be felt, hear and be heard . . . in all of this, since the very beginning, words sung somehow reach deeper into our wounds than mere words spoken. This is why music is so essential. On its wings we can rise above the futility of our own inner thoughts, and instead of succumbing to their loneliness, impart to them a common voice.

And so, these days I really don’t see myself juggling several careers. Instead, I simply try in my own stumbling way to tell a story, my story. Because God has shown me that my own brief verse is one that might somehow ring true to someone else. I have reluctantly come to believe that my song, like the song each of us carries through our lives, is one worth singing. And, ultimately, my story is your story. On its surface my tale is one of addiction and loneliness and loss, and then—as I have allowed Christ to finally turn the pages—one of recovery and faith and life over death. But in essence, my wounds are no different than are yours; we share the scars of being human, and of the brokenness that inevitably goes along with it. Ours is a story told in a native language, to a common melody. We co-exist within a tale of shattered dreams and tears and boundless hope and joy and, ultimately, healing in the arms of a long lost Best Friend. Ours is the story of the modern prodigal, and the singing again of a song from long ago thought forever lost. It is a soul-song, and each of us, if we concentrate, knows all the words by heart.