There’s a wall in my apartment that could use a fresh coat of paint. I didn’t paint the wall today. I didn’t do 50 pushups. Partially, because I can’t. I can do 20. I didn’t do those either. 10 days ago I ordered a gong from Nepal. It arrived, and it’s beautiful. I didn’t get …
Category: song
subject of a song
noun: a person, place or thing I gave my heart to
the order (in which things are broken)
Words like rescue and tenderness and forever and don't go. The things I experienced, written on my cells as memories and patterns, a record. All of them broken, all of them saved, in one- to two-minute narratives packed tightly into small spaces. It begs the question: Why did I save this? What is the value …
little things
I’ve learned to practice myself in little things. A good night's sleep: 7-8 hoursThe morning walk: 90 minutesA slow drink of room temperature water: 1 hourWarming the voice, stretching the range: 30 minutes (Humming and yawn-sighs, 20 minutes. Tongue twisters, facial exercises and sung scales, 10.)Finger stretches: hold for 30 to 60 seconds and then …
alone
Being a songwriter was never my ambition. It was and remains my way of being alone. It's an essential place if you want to make some meaning. It's where masks come off, truth is unveiled and you encounter the unforeseen. I love how Nick Cave put it : Like Jesus praying alone in the garden, …
beautiful days
Who’s to say the bicycle did not die of heartbreak from not being taken anywhere? Where will I go with my new songs? What is their meaning beyond the consolation they brought to me in writing them? Who are they for anyway? Does it matter if no one else gets to hear them? It does …
ritual
Some claim it takes 10 minutes. I don’t really know how other songwriters work. I'm just grateful that I can write one, after another, after another and bring anything to conclusion. I don't think about how long it takes me. It’s the finished-ness of the song that I really cherish. There's a reason why our …
last holdout
the window now, framing the steady gaze, the fenced-in beauty of horses. from Buckskin, Indiana, a poem by Roger Pfingston Here is an old song called Last Holdout:
light in odd places
I don't know how to understand the experience of losing someone you love. That which remains rises in time from the dark, spilling light in odd places. Another Sunday always comes. This is Sunday, wounded, from courts:
love, God + death
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed / You will never be lovelier than you are now / We will never be here again. ― Homer, The Iliad (Yes, the story with the big horse.) I knew at a young age that if I was going to be a writer, it had to be songs. My house …
