In Dialogue on Paradox

An original tune dedicated to the great John McGann. Filmed by Adrianna Ciccone in Brighton, MA. John Mailander - Fiddle Molly Tuttle - Guitar Brittany Karlson - Bass Joe Walsh - Mandolin www.johnmailander.com

I think alot about how to be in dialogue with the artists I most respect, writing lyrics and melody to the same level of nuance and contribution. At first this meant I was mostly writing on top of other people's melodies, a bit too sacred to experiment with my own voice. But now it's more like I'm standing on the layered bedrock of all of my heroes, adding myself to the landscape.

A few months ago in Brasil, my poet friend Osmar Coelho Filho wrote a poem in response to a conversation we had on one of the many stripes of cultural difference between our two countries: acceptance and intention and action (1). I've been writing in response it on and off for the past several months. And when my other friend, composer and fiddler John Mailander invited me to co-write a song, I was completely honored and excited, know we could write something in the vein of this nuance, this question of paradox. I wanted to write something in the feeling of his beautiful tune written in memoriam for John McGann, "Song for John." (2, above and below)

Here's the draft of what I'm sending over to John today (in all its slightly clunky seedling form), the start of me writing on the big paradox of being a human being. Eventually I'm imagining this will be a lyrical song, in dialogue with Osmar's thoughts in both English and Portuguese. 

I want to write about the idea filmmaker Silvio Canihuante Fernández and I kicked around a few months ago, the idea of the "two different jackets" we wear as humans, one of acceptance/intention and one of action. My godfather Dennis Rivers shared a fascinating quote last week from physicist Neils Bohr that seems relevant here: "The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. But the opposite of a great truth is also true."

Kinda a big undertaking, across 3 people, 3 continents, 2 languages, the idea of what it means to be human.. But sometimes I think only music is big enough for that. I'm up to try.

This is an progress recording/melody headed over to my friend John in Nashville, seeded from a poem written by my other friend Osmar. It it's nice, slightly muddy form. I'm so excited to see what comes of my first co-writing experience, across three cities and two countries.

(1) Osmar Coelho Filho Poem: On Decisions and Intentions
(2) JohnMailander.com,  and listeining here

Scientists, Musicians, Money

Rice Song, in its 3rd permutation, a song I wrote in response to reading about the forced urbanization of indigenous and rural cultures in China.

Today I went back, for the fourth or fifth time to tinkering with a melody I've been preparing to send over to my friend John Mailander, in the plans to play around with co-writing for the first time. I laughed a bit at what came out of today - after writing the first part of an A section, I had added a more adventurous leave-the-key ending section, which brought me to a much simpler start to the A section. And now, after sleeping on it, I'm tempted to pitch the other two and re-start from this new place. (I'll put that bit up on soundcloud as soon as I can figure that out).

I laughed in the same way a few weeks ago when Rachel and I looked at my Rice Song for another round - I had made a click track demo and didn't quite feel happy with the tempo. We decided to experiment with my original chords, suspending the arrangement my friend had lovingly crafted, change the time signature, and add an odd measure to explain the rhythm at the end of the verse. Phew.

I got to thinking a few weeks ago - maybe this is part of why there seems to be a culture confusion about artists and money. In a time when I can instantly download ideas/files/photos from the SKY, I hear many people muse about creativity as an instantaneous "gift" that must fall in my lap. A push-a-button-ATM-creativity, rather than a seedling-growing-bushwacking-looking-for-the-next-lantern creativity.  Something that is almost done requires an almost entire overhaul, pieces that start out being the center end up getting pitched halfway through. And sometimes I relate to Kurt Vonnegut: "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

This does not bide well to what I experience in a culture obsessed with timesheets and measurements of "efficiency" and productivity. And yet, isn't all work like this? I actually think that any level of work - any level of "let's make something that wasn't there before" - is a creative process of twists and turns, unknowns and false starts, good intentions but hazy on actual impact. I'm becoming close these days with a bio-chemist, and he talks often of science for science's sake, the profound measurable impact of what emerges from poking around in the unknown. He tells me the story of a several decades ago, when a lab could either invest in figuring out an affordable treatment for diabetes or investigating the long puzzling miracle of bacteria defending itself against viruses. They chose the "road less traveled" - the bacteria question - and decades later began using the answer (bacteria can cut DNA!) to produce human friendly insulin. Before then, insulin was a dangerous, unpredictable treatment that was harvested from cows! And it has now became the most affordable, sensible treatment for diabetes.

That's another essay - how I believe music and drawing are another form of life-giving insulin, and for now I'll close with this image - the musician and the scientist, each in our labs of instruments and questions, each of us polishing a question or idea into view so that in can we can more deeply understand and respond to this complex planet.

Life While-You-Wait

Each week I grow in gratitude for Maria Popova, the curator of Brain Pickings, a weekly email of thoughts on what it means to be human. I realized today it is a new form of what maybe church was as a child, touching through thought and poetry that which is much larger than myself, leaving me with a sense of belonging and wonder. This week she shared Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska’s Poem “Life While-You Wait" - it reminds me of Sir Thomas More's thoughts on the compassion that comes from recognizing our shared mortality: "We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how could I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?"

Life While-You-Wait

Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.