Semi quaver

Music welcomes everyone.

You don't have to be gorgeous, hip or suave. Music asks you to be authentic and maybe a little bit crazy. It takes a kind of deranged love for your instrument to press on until anyone besides your loyal friends will listen.

People do listen to exceptional music in any genre. It reminds them of something. It remembers them to love. Strange love, desperately wanting to cohabit the molecular space of an other. Truthful, vulnerable trust of atoms smashing. Kids know this. Teenagers surely know it. Old people -- I think they do too. It's the vast middle earth of our lives that deflates love, dispenses it in cannisters.

Enter music. Throbbing sound waves crash against our ear drums into self. Legions of composers juxtapose intensity-duration-pitch -- endless variations of the vibratory muscles of our minds. This, when executed skillfully, unfetters our desire for the wordless union.

Some praise the lyricist for haunting images or exquisite rhyme. But words, in the signature of music, are also sounds that break the barrier of thought. Songs don't speak, they sing. They're less tasted by reason than swallowed whole by desire.

Certain music sweeps you off your feet in a ball room crammed with strangers you could love if you were younger or older or merely intrepid enough to feel. The tipping point between caution and candor is a billion angels dancing on a pin. And the pin -- you know it anciently -- is extraordinary music that will touch you like a hand along your spine. This is the pin pulled out of your elaborate headdress. The pulling lets the mind relax. Its raw heat tumbles down your shoulders into hurt and laughter as you slip into the world.

Leadership

I think we have to rethink the concept of "leader." 'Cause "leader" implies "follower." ...I think we need to appropriate, embrace the idea that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
-- Grace Lee Boggs, Bill Moyers Journal

This interview is worth watching -- I recommend it highly!

When I can devote myself to the pleasure, I'm going to dig into this as well.

There are cells in my brain, sleeper cells, awakening to this exceptional woman's clarion call.

Rock solitude

I’m a performing songwriter who craves solitude and adores the stage. Fronting my rock band feeds all that.

Monet’s Orbit is the name of my new CD. It’s a distinctive sound imbued in the songs we play. Monet’s Orbit is my bandmates, my audience, myself and all our respective muses.

Until recently, solitude was hard to come by. Making a CD -- my mind was a swamp of details. When it was done, acres of psychic real estate opened up. This is where the muse lives, where songs erupt and evolve.

Surprisingly, there can be a lot of solitude happening in performance. At our best, our shows create a transcendent space for musicians and listeners. Solitude is where you ask who you are, what you love, what you want and what you’re going to do about it.

In my case, rock music answers those questions well. I grew up playing classical piano, then took up the acoustic guitar, followed by electric guitar. Rock feels more native to me than classical or acoustic guitar based music. But my classical and solo acoustic roots inform the rock songs I’m writing now. Acoustic music honed my lyrical side, classical immersed me in sonic complexity. I give all that to the genre of Rock, this majestic ode to life. Passionate and humble, both.

Inspiration is humbling because the only part of it you can take credit for is being prepared to receive it, then keep running until you fly. Here I am with my Strat, writing a song that seems to have a pulse and purpose of its own. Here we are performing for an audience that amplifies the intensity of the show. Inspiration is humbling -- and electrifying.

If you ask me about the relationship between my experience and my imagination, I’ll say you’re talking to a person who sleeps in her tree house, swims in the rain and wonders out loud if literature’s best characters have souls. Imagination and experience are one. Don’t be afraid to befriend them relentlessly. Separate them at your creative peril.

I remember the first time I performed a song of mine in front of people. I was so nervous, I had no voice -- gasped out every note. That’s kind of a metaphor isn’t it, when you’re silenced by your own fear? I love the positive impudence of rock. It pushes fear aside, will not be silenced.

I swim almost as fervently as I create music, and there’s a synergy between them. Practically speaking, rock musicians schlepp a lot of gear. So fitness helps. It’s a physical job, before, during and after the show. Swimmers breathe deep, so do singers. Swimmers desire the water; musicians need to play. Both practice discipline, but the payoff is huge. There’s a community around a pool, a locker room, a clan of water rats not so different from musical kinship.

One thing that motivates me to expand the audience for this music is the response we have noticed so far. People use words like positivity and connection. Anything that strengthens our best impulses gives us more freedom, and a lot less fear.

Fighting absurdity

I don't spend any time thinking about what I am or what we do means. I spend my time doing it. I focus on the task and try to do it as best we can...

I think that, if we do anything in a positive sense for the world, is provide one little bit of context, that's very specifically focused, and hopefully people can add to their entire puzzle that gives them a larger picture of what it is that they see.

...this is how we fight back. I can only fight back in a way that I feel like I'm talented. And I feel like the only thing that I can do... even a little bit better than most people, is create that sort of that context with humor. And that's my way of not being helpless and not being hopeless.
-- The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, Bill Moyer's Journal 4-27-07

Mr Dime

You sometimes see your friend through new eyes when the shutter speed stretches out over time. Back in the Concord Coffee days, I was singing treble clef; you were up there with the bluegrassers, high and whiny like the wind. Gold pans in our patient hands, we sifted well through chicken scratches, flummoxed chords, believing there was treasure in the wild.

They say silver turns to fuzzy globules in the hold of a ship lost at sea while gold coinage gleams as the day it was forged. A rather risky method of detecting counterfeit but no far cry from the performer's gamble with time.

Listening to you last night, it was clear to me the years have brought a luster to your holdings. Your definitive essence speaks through your taut frame and intelligent glance out over the proceedings; your amber toned guitar fills in the crevices of your deepening voice; your listeners, we lucky ones, rise up to grasp your thoughts without a drop of vanity between us.

The best part about your show, for me, was the certainty that this man I know so well has found a way to voice his goodness to a world broken and afraid to be.

Hank, God rest his soul, is likely proud, with just a touch of envy on his wings.