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 …
don’t tell me
don't tell me / I have lived without names before
in another California
the words: California, your heart is beating you / you had me in a rented room / can't speak of the redwoods, you're cruel / with a gift for burning what you love the song: the story: We were staying in California. Lies spread like wildfire. End of story. I just didn't know it. …
rooms
All of my songs are little rooms. One- to two-minute spaces made of memory and life. My job as a songwriter is to build them nice enough the spirit of music will come and live in them. The new record of demos and first-takes is called courts. This is rooms:
house guests
My rooms are filled with instruments. Dreadnoughts. Concert guitars. My beloved '67 Harmony Bobkat. But no one owns a guitar, a piano, a mandolin. The drum. They're just house guests. Guests who will survive us and pass to other hands, the way they passed to mine. You can hear some of them way over here. …
why don’t you
Where did her letters go, notes from far-away places written with care about her work and little everyday things. How light the paper was on which this all was drawn. How eager I was to know what might be, and what might have been, and what is, and it was all beautiful to read. And …
jane
Jane Street’s complement of Belgian block pavement begins at Hudson Street and runs three blocks to the end of the street at West Street. This is Jane on Jane Street:
