“…and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should…” (desiderata by max ehrmann)
when i listen to tracks i have recorded i can either picture the time i spent writing at the piano or the time i spent in studio recording. this piece drums up the same image; in a time of pronounced inspiration and the transferring of much emotion into music, this was simultaneously written and recorded at yamaha artist services in nyc back about 15 years ago.
even then, i could see the willows-bending-in-the-wind characteristic of life – it will unfold as it should, despite our best efforts to stymie it or change it or enhance it. and so i loved when ken, my truly amazing producer, added a bended electric guitar line, arching and buckling, flexing around the melody line, a musical painting. even now, and i suspect as will always be, i try to be that willow, bending as the wind takes me, allowing the universe to unfold.
“unfolding: trying to trust that life is unfolding the way it should be”(liner notes)
“…a chance to really mean something to someone…” (judy noerr, cherry hill guest experience officer.) every year in westminster, colorado (one of my favorite states) “roughly 800 naturally bearded santas” -who work for the cherry hill program of santas (people representing the real santa!) placed in retail centers around the country- have an opportunity to attend the training session that convenes annually. i read about this in aarp magazine last year and saved the article; it was touching…an article about such a positive impact on others.
there were three santa secrets shared and, although they went into more relevant santa-detail, they are worth repeating here: 1. keep up your appearance. 2. keep egos in check. 3. speak another language. ahhhh. staying healthy and aware, remaining grounded and compassionate, making an effort to embrace others not-like-you. amazingly simple. these are simple-santa lessons. worthy of our taking notice.
it is this season….a season of hope, of joy, of miracles. a season of simplicity and compassion, of giving and generosity, a season of really meaning something to someone, a season of love.
may this season bring you all the gifts the universe has to offer you. with great love.
right at 2:08 in this recording is an ambient sound. it is a sound that my producer and i deliberately decided to leave in the recording, an audible sound of divine, a tiny punctuation in our project from across the barriers of physical being-ness.
we were recording remotely on one of the northwestern university stages, ken (my amazing “it’s fine” producer) having built a small studio off in the green room, separate from the stage space where the piano was. everything was moved or padded so as to avoid interruptions or rattling or vibrations or overtones, anything we didn’t want included in this solo piano album. it was a tedious process and we recorded straight through a twenty-three hour stretch. with me were items – totems of a sort – to keep me company as i recorded this first album. one was a stuffed animal i had given my beloved big brother during his chemo treatments, three short missing-him-years prior.
divine intervention was the last piece up. the last piece of the very first album i was recording, released 23 years ago november 11 on my sisu music productions label. teetering on that balance point, no idea of where i was to go next or what would become of this album, i was emotional and exhausted, determined and vulnerable. i spoke words of prayer and began the next take of this piece.
at 2:08 i heard a sound. it sounded like an old wooden screen door closing, but i didn’t really know what it was. i was sure, however, it would be on the recording since i could hear it on-stage. i kept going anyway, thinking we’d go back and re-record the piece. when i finished playing, tired tears in my eyes, i walked into the green room to find ken standing in astonishment. there was an empty can of pepsi in that little studio, one i had put in there and secured by towels deep onto a shelf. at 2:08, the can somehow moved out of the spot it was nestled in and clattered onto the floor. the sound. even without listening to the cd i can hear this sound in my head every time i play this piece.
we listened back to the raw recording. sure enough, it was there. and so was something else. a feeling that somehow, some way, the divine interrupted. intervened with a small nod. perhaps it was my big brother, in jest, stopping by in the middle of the last take of the very last piece of my very first album, to make a little noise. perhaps it was something else. either way, we knew. and we left it in.
i still have the can.
15. divine intervention (3:16): the feeling i have about this whole project. there really isn’t any such thing as chance. those who are just on the other side sometimes help us to sort and place the clues of our life’s story. (words from released from the heart jacket)
in all the chicken-scratch-notes i have about this piece of music, i have written in the presence of a heartbeat. the pulse that spans the entire 6 minutes 14 seconds, this heartbeat starts the piece. it is throughout the piece. it ends the piece. it is no accident that this composition seems interminable, ever returning to the theme; figuring “it” out often seems that way, a curse of perseverating analysis paralysis, depending on what “it” is.
i just erased what i had next written about this. i couldn’t help but talk about my repeated use of a rising leading tone gesture in the theme, f# to g, f# to g, off the beaten major root path, but instead the path of starting on my ever-loved ninth in the e minor key, a key that resonates so often with people. then i thought, “blahblahblah!!” geeeesh. that’s way too much information. so i erased it. (yes…there were even more details before i erased it!)
i composed this at a time that was laden with things to sort, to figure out, to resolve. it is one of the longest pieces i have recorded. there are moments you can hear the almost-there-ness of it, but, like life, it reverts back to the initial themes, the initial questions. and then, punctuating it, from time to time, a firm melodic gesture (f#-g-f#-e) where you can hear the lyrics in your head, “figure it out.” much easier said than done, eh? but our hearts keep beating.
yesterday, the senate passed the Music Modernization Act, a complex bill that is supposed to help songwriters in these days of streaming. as quoted in one article questioning the feasibility of pushing through this bill as is: “…niche labels and independent musicians face either a zero, or statistically insignificant, chance of a return on their investment through streaming. many report barely paying for a sandwich with their royalties.” (maria schneider, musicanswers.org) yes. creatives are still facing a grotesque misalignment of power and income despite an effort to supposedly be “helped”.
i didn’t know, back when i released my first album, that there would be another…and another…and another…
i didn’t know how vulnerable i would feel each time i released a collection of my soul, turned into tracks of music.
i didn’t know how grateful i would feel each time i stood on stage and spoke to an audience that was there to hear this music – my music.
i didn’t know how many stores, in the early days, would carry these cds (and cassette tapes, way back when), how many times i would be live on QVC-TV, how many radio interviews i would be relishing.
i didn’t know how humbling it would feel that many people would respond to something in my music, something would resonate with them, something would be healing or heartening or touch them.
i didn’t know, through the years, how many thousands of cds would sell, how many boxes i would carry, how many wholesale shows or retail shows i would be present at or how many phone calls i (or wonderful people who worked with me) would make or receive, taking and shipping orders.
i didn’t know that the BMI royalty statements i was getting earlier would soon decline as our world and the internet changed them drastically. the one i got two days ago for a period of the year included 59,000 performance counts and a $47.47 check. streaming has made it unnecessary to purchase a physical cd or even pay for and download an artist’s music and so i agree with the writer who said: “streaming revenue for most independent musicians doesn’t even amount to pocket lint.” (m.schneider)
i didn’t know that the yearning inside me to compose and record more music to be released on cds would be stymied by the cost vs earnings debacle that has been created by an industry that doesn’t lift up the independent, while the behemoths remain behemoth.
i didn’t know how sad it would make me. i didn’t know how it would change me. i didn’t know i would keep wondering ‘what next?’ i didn’t know i would be seeking answers to where i stand as a composer. i didn’t know my piano would call from my studio and i would ignore it, feeling betrayed by a profession that should pay my bills like any other.
paper and pencils strewn about, guitars in hand, i sat in los angeles with cliff, the producer of this album, as we penned this new song together. long a solo artist and songwriter, it was my first full collaboration, a visit to high energy and laughter, a rhyming dictionary (every songwriter’s friend) at our side. we reached into our own lives and experiences to write.
when we finished recording it in nashville, the duet touched me as a poignant reminder of steadfast love.
i drove back and forth and back and forth to nashville when i recorded this album, each time returning with a cd of the work we had done on the album. i’d play it numerous times, taking notes to share with my producer, re-writing, practicing, sometimes sharing the songs-where-they-were-at-the-time with others.
joan was the one who told me i needed a “strong woman” song included on this album. so i walked across the street home, directly into my studio and wrote one.
now, this isn’t my favorite song – it’s a little kitschy if you ask me – but i have had many tell me how much they like it and one of my favorite performances of it was when beth’s students sang it. (i was long-term-subbing for her. she’s a dear friend and an amazing choir teacher in a middle school in our district.) those kids really rose to the occasion and kitschy fell by the wayside in favor of strength and power and belief in themselves.
recently d and i listened to some of my first recordings. they were from 1979-80 and recorded in a studio in a town called port washington on the north shore of long island. i had found a cassette (now isn’t that retro word dating me!) and we have a boombox (another retro word) that plays cassettes so we settled in to listen to the three songs on what would now be called an EP.
one of the songs is called leaving and is a song i wrote for my parents as they retired and moved from our long island home to florida. i remembered that song well.
the other two? well, it’s funny. i could sing every word, but i didn’t remember the intense emotion behind them. THESE were my #metoo songs, i discovered (rediscovered?) as i listened. one of these days i might share these songs, not because they are great songs but because they are truth and every artist has songs that are life-defining. not the ones necessarily that chart (although those are lovely, indeed!) but the ones that speak from deep inside, with lyrics or music that must be spoken. these two songs were written by a vulnerable (and pretty angry) young woman who wanted to unleash the power of her crayon and live out loud, who definitely wanted to live without fear, who tried hard to break away from an experience i still would rather forget and who prayed – alone at the time – beseeching words. all this is what i wrote about in this week’s melange.
my heart goes out to all those women who are also card-carrying #metoo survivors. the out-loud ones and the silent ones. my wish for each of you: unleash your crayon, live without fear, break away, pray with another, count on you.
from this song of today’s melange post COUNT ON YOU, which may be more #metoo and less kitschy than i thought, “just move forward and then believe – you gotta trust…in you.”
along with the portable record player we take out on the deck, we have the you-remember-the-case-with-the-handle box of 45’s. with titles like sugar sugar and IOU and julie do you love me and….the side A of these records are the likely hits. but if you turn it over and play side B you can often be surprised by a song you like even more than the touted “side A” song.
when david brought up this canvas to photograph the painting on the front side, i was reminded of what we had seen when 20 so generously gave d a slew of his dad’s canvases. on the side B, his artist dad (richard “duke” kruse) had written, “welcome to the 21st century” on the back of the canvas he had so meticulously stretched. we laughed when we first saw it, but it remains a mystery as to why he wrote it; we can only guess…maybe he was bemoaning the loss of something of the 20th century; maybe he was truly welcoming the next. either way, we get it. we are both 20th century artists.
as a painter, david uses actual brushes to apply actual paint to actual canvas, a process that doesn’t necessarily need explanation, but, in the 21st century art world, isn’t necessarily always the trend. with computer design and sketchpads -aka graphics tablets- the feel of bristles can become foreign to a contemporary artist. what about the smell of the paint? the light from the window on the canvas? the spatter of acrylic matte medium on your clothes? the wooden brush handle in your hand?
as a composer, i use paper and pencils and erasers and a piano. i have a couple of keyboards that have traveled all over with me, but the piano that takes up an entire room in our house is my tool of choice. it is stunning how much time it took me to write a full score way back in college compared to the ease of scoring on the computer. if i made a mistake on the score, i had to -with my pencil and then calligraphy pen- redo the whole page. then i had to write out all the parts individually. the 21st century has advanced the ability to have a computer generate all the individual parts off one score that is online. pretty amazing and time-saving stuff. not to mention the “playing” factor. the computer program will “play” the part you write; you don’t have to. but what about all the pencil eraser dust that falls on the keys of the piano? what about the scraps of paper spread out all over the top? what about the feel of the action below your hands, the response, the whooshing sound of the pedal?
acoustic vs plugged-in, analog vs digital. kind of old-fashioned. that’s probably why i like to sit in one of the rocking chairs in david’s studio and just watch. and why he will come into my studio and just listen. we don’t need a lot of fancy stuff. he just wants to hang his paintings and i just want to sit at a piano on a stage with a single mic. pretty 20th century.
i distinctly remember recording this. i was at yamaha artist services in nyc and it was winter. the word “peace” was on a list of words i wanted to use as titles for pieces. “peace” is a big word for me….i’ve talked about how there are peace signs and the word peace all over our home and it was no different when i wrote this. the trouble with writing and using a big word is that you feel an imperative to make it count. there is a kind of heavy emphasis on this choice to use THIS word as a title – that you write well enough to support such a big word, that you do it justice, that it FEELS what the word feels like. it’s super-charged with self-induced pressure.
but the moments i spent composing this were extraordinarily special and i was wrapped in a cloak of peacefulness and love. it is not a complex piece of music; it has a repeating theme and, like a song with lyrics, returns to that theme again and again. like statement-question-answer-lift-statement-question-answer-lift structure.
“it’s fine” ken, in his infinite wisdom, orchestrated this so my heart weeps with gratitude each time i listen. cello lines and strings and french horn pull the simple melody out of the place of simplicity and reach, for me, a depth of being.
every artist has compositions that are their favorites, the ones that really express who they are. maybe it’s because i can so distinctly remember initially recording this. maybe it’s because i remember being back in the studio in chicago with ken as he tracked the other instrumentation. maybe it’s because it’s THAT word, the piece with THAT title. regardless of the reason, THIS is one of mine.
download PEACE track 5 on AS IT IS on iTunes or on CDBaby
