In This Room
Bob Nolan
Original copyright: March 29, 1976
This small hotel overlooking the sea
Now crumbling, condemned and alone;
I come not to watch it die but to walk inside of
And talk with, and listen to, just one very special room ~
This room.
This empty, bare, forlorn and alone room.
Where the sun calls each day but there’s no one at home room
Well, the years have been dragging their weary feet along
Every wall down, at last, to end
In the sunbleached path on the floor
From the broken window across the room and out the open door.
But I still can feel the warmth and glow
Where all the love this room could hold
Now falls into dust with the long ago
And so I listen.
But all I can hear is the muted sound of a lonely heartbeat crying
Somewhere in the shadows where you left it
In this room.
And the memories come tumbling through my mind
Like the fallen leaves in the autumn wind
And I open my arms to welcome them as they gather here
In this room.
In this room.
And I’m trying to remember how long it has been
And where did it start and how did it end.
I can’t seem to recall a tear or even an angry word
Or a broken vow, for none were made.
Or did someone just forget to come home to
This room?
This now is the start and the end of forever room,
Where tomorrow may come and again it may never room.
So, I walk to the window, look out to the sea
And the sea is the same as it used to be ~
So blue! So very blue!
And I let this tired body of mine fill the very space that once was you
And I feel you breathe inside of me,
And my mind is a tangle of hopeless dreams
And this longing within me has nowhere to go.
And so I listen.
But all I can hear is the muted sound of a lonely heartbeat crying
Somewhere in the shadows where you left it ~
In this room.
And the memories come tumbling through my mind
Like the fallen leaves in the autumn wind
And I open my arms to welcome them as they gather here
In this room.
In this room.
ABOUT THIS SONG
When Bob Nolan retired from the Sons of the Pioneers, he stopped writing western songs. As he expressed it, he took the saddle leather out of his work. "In This Room", so different from his western songs, is as apt today as it was when he wrote it. Perhaps one day someone will pick it up, create a modern arrangement for it and record it. It was registered for copyright on March 29, 1976 by Robert C. Nolan.
Who was this woman he was writing about? Many of Bob's fans have searched for clues but perhaps his grandson is right -
"I must also wonder where his music and lyrics came from at such an early stage in his life. Who was that love he longed for all those years? Or was it, as I've always thought, a search for a true love that he never ever found?
"I have a theory, though. He may have started to write about the love of a particular woman – maybe Pearl, maybe someone else before her or someone after her - his first love. But, as the years went by, he wrote about the love that he once felt; the desire to have that first love still in his life. That sort of love never comes twice in anyone’s heart, a love that is so clear and clean of all life’s trials and tribulations. In those younger years there are no responsibilities. Money isn’t factored into life yet. You are immersed in nothing but youth and love. That feeling and yearning after long years becomes an entity of its own. So, maybe there was no one woman he was writing about, rather a feeling that he had once experienced in his youth. And in his songs that feeling lives on."
(Calin Coburn, Bob Nolan's grandson)