Return

It appears I departed from this blog many years ago. But today I have been listening to Radiohead's new album, "Moon Shaped Pool," and I felt like I needed to write something down, even if just to mark the occasion for myself.

It's weird: any work of art is a kind of broken conversation in which the artist flings something -- a bit of meaning? -- into the void, trusting that it will be retrieved and that it will signify. When you look at a painting, no pure meaning transfers directly from the painter into your conscious understanding. Instead, you employ your own imagination, intellect, discernment to create your meaning.

Ditto a book, in spite of the illusion that language has intrinsic meaning. The author can pack in all the description, exposition, explanation she wants, but without a reader there are only dead words. This necessarily collaborative feature of art can feel upside down if you think about it enough: In spite of everything an artist brings to his work, it's still the viewer, reader, listener who has the last word. You could say creating and experiencing art involves a kind of power exchange: It is widely understood that "the submissive holds all the power." The artist is Dominant in relationship with the audience, initiating and establishing the terms of engagement. But ultimately inception must submit to perception; the artist is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of the audience.

Why is listening to Radiohead causing me to think through an obscure theory about audience and perception? I'm not sure, but maybe if I keep writing we can figure it out.

If the artist's vulnerability is key to a power exchange with the audience, this implies a further irony: The better the work is -- the more emotionally exposed, the more honest, the closer to the bone -- the greater the risk, the greater the vulnerability, and thus the greater the audience's power. Shitty, shallow work does not, after all, reveal or expose or risk much of anything, so the audience is just a consumer rather than a collaborator. Listening to "Moon Shaped Pool" I feel a sense of exquisite vulnerability. These songs offer themselves up anxiously in a "low-flying panic attack": Overwhelmingly powerful yet infinitely fragile, they drip quivering into the air around me, their perfection held only by the surface tension.

A Poor Finisher

I just read an article in which a well-respected artist referred to himself  a "poor-finisher," referring to the habit of starting and then abandoning many projects before ever completing anything. He asserts that this is a widely-shared characteristic among creative people, and that art is generally richer for it. Here is that article on line.

I needed to read that this morning, because if ever there was a poor finisher, it's me. Creative projects big and small take hold of me, and I may work obsessively until the idea peters out and I move on to something else. On the other hand, sometimes I can write complete, well-crafted songs, practically one after the other, in just hours or even minutes. Or I can produce complete drawings and/or paintings almost compulsively for days or weeks on end. But I have journals and notebooks and sketchbooks filled with starts and ideas and sketches and half verses never revisited.

Similarly, I started this blog as a "writing and recording project," but over time, I found it hard to complete posts, so I have come to rarely write anything. But perhaps I need to let go of trying to finish things and just post more of what's going on in my head on the "better out than in" principle.

Hemingway's famous advice to himself was, write one true sentence, and then go on from there." My true sentence for today is, "I am a poor finisher."

Just Noodlin'

I referred someone here today and just noticed I haven't posted in nearly a year. So this post is to preempt waiting until August and having to post a, "wow, it's been a whole year!" post. I've actually played out a bit since my last post, including at a wedding and a couple of school shows complete with bands. Added some new covers, dropped some others. And so on.

Been playing around the house a lot more these days now that my shoulder is better (I had a shoulder injury for over a year that caused me pain whenever I played). Enjoying digging out some of my old songs and trying to update them a bit. Now that we're all so wired up (or wirelessed up, as it were), I can pull out my smart phone and record stuff whenever I want. Not like the old days when I had to rig up a mixing board, mikes and a tape deck. As a consequence, seems like I hardly ever do record stuff. But I should, and then just wisk it right up here on the blog with all the immediacy of the Interwebs. Reckon I'll get right on that and make something of myself. And of this little blog of mine.

Well, okay; bye.

Memorial

My friend Cliff Tanner died a few weeks ago. The family asked me to play and sing at his memorial service this past weekend at Camp Lee in Anniston, Alabama. It was among the more moving, memorable experiences of my life, and I'm grateful to Marjory, Fara, and Seth for asking me.

Cliff was an adult friend to me at a time in my life when kids need the right kind of adults in their lives. I worked for him off and on painting houses when I was an older teenager (16 and 17 maybe?), and we worked together on "mission" trips like Appalachia Service Project and John's Island Service Project, improving and rebuilding houses. I can't really articulate how much Cliff meant to me, how much his influence shaped my life, but I can say that I only fully realized it when I learned he was gone.

Fara (Cliff and Marjory's daughter, who is my age) called inviting me to play a Brad Paisley song and to accompany and lead some other songs. I arranged to drive to Alabama on the day of the service with my Mother and Sister, and we arrived very early on that Saturday. Three hours early, in fact.

It was nice to be at Camp Lee with lots of time on our hands. While Meg and Mom went for a walk, I got out my guitar and found a shady spot to sit down and play awhile. By and by, it started to rain really hard, so we gathered on the screened porch of the dining hall and whiled away the time till the event rocking and talking.

When people started to arrive, it was clear there was going to be a really big turn out. Ended up there were a couple hundred. When it came time for me to play, the mood was downright funereal. Which is appropriate for a memorial service I suppose, but it felt like it was time to lighten up a bit. Not least because the song I was about to play had tearjerker potential, and that wasn't the way I wanted it to go. So I felt compelled to crack a joke or two before playing to ease my own anxiety as much as anything.

As it happened, the song went fine, and the rest of the service was moving without being maudlin. At the end, the family had asked me to lead a "camp" song of the type we'd have sung when I was a kid playing guitar at youth camp. And we closed by singing together the "Irish Blessing," "May the road rise to meet you," a song that we had alway closed vespers services with in my youth, when Cliff and Marjory led all us gangly and uncertain teenagers through the maze of doubt and awkwardness into adulthood.

After the service, I realized that having the opportunity to participate in the service in that way had been a great gift to me. From the time I first heard of Cliff's death, I had struggled to say what he had meant to me. By giving me the chance to offer music to his memory, Marjory, Fara and Seth allowed me a rare chance to say goodbye in a way that really meant something to me, and I hope helped others to say goodbye as well.

Injured Reserve

A couple of nights ago Shelle was out with some friends so EW (who's five now) was snuggling up with me to fall asleep. She asked, "will you play, 'You've Got My Brown Eyes' for me Daddy?" A sure enough lullaby I wrote for her, and the which I like to play at times like these. If you've seen my little girl, you would know that any daddy would walk barefoot through hot coals for those little brown eyes, let alone play and sing a song.

I got out my old Taylor and lay back to play a lullaby or two. And I did play the song she asked for, and then "Hush Little Baby" and "Amazing Grace." But the hell of it was, I've got this rotator cuff injury? and man, it hurt! I guess this was the first time I've played lying on my back like that, but I just could not find a way to get comfortable. I tipped the guitar up into all kinds of weird positions to find a way I could play it that didn't force my right arm into a weird angle, but most things I tried either left me unable to play or left me aching something fierce.

If anyone has any ideas about playing a big, wide-bodied dreadnought guitar with a torn rotator cuff, please send them along. Otherwise, I might have to start playing lullabies on the Stratocaster.

Live music coming up

Wow, we have another gig coming up.What are the chances?

As last year, we're playing a lunch time show at the Druid Hills Artist Market. This is a great opportunity to cut work, see some great visual art and listen to good music. There'll be a nice big shady tent and good food where you can relax and let the tunes wash over you.

Part of what makes this so much fun is the great cross-pollination of musicians. Coincidentally, the line up includes a bunch of people who know each other, so we end up sitting in together and creating some interesting collaborations. Last year Shelle was unavailable to sing, but John Willingham joined me on classical guitar. This year I'm going to play drums for my friends Bob Ballou and Sarah Dmitri-Carlton, who are on just before Shelle and I play. John follows us, so with any luck we'll talk him into joining us for a song or two.

Come out if you can and bring the party with you!

Druid Hills Artist Market
1410 Ponce de Leon Avenue
Friday April 16th 
11:30 am (PB to play percussion with friends)
12:15 Shelle and Patrick play

Invitation Only

People ask me "d'you ever play out anymore?" or "what's happening with your music?" or similar daggers to the heart. I tell them, "these days we really only play when we're asked." The truth is, practicing and playing are great fun and don't intrude too much on our very busy three kid/two career life. But the work of promoting music is a different story altogether! emailing, calling, visiting venues and asking if we can play there, and then promoting shows, printing and hanging posters, blogging, sending email, and all that to get people through the door. Now that's a lot of work! I'll venture it's virtually impossible to successfully write music, play and record music, and promote music while holding down a demanding job and being even remotely attentive as a husband and father. But I could be wrong: maybe I'm just lousy at it!

Unwilling to give up music (or our family or the means of providing for our family), Shelle and I have settled on a fairly meager compromise: when an opportunity to play comes along, we take it! But we rarely seek out opportunities. I have my guitar and a drumset and my son's upright bass sitting in our bedroom to remind me I'm a musician, and we'll be playing a lunchtime show at the Druid Hills Artist Market in April. But we don't have a plan beyond that. I guess we'll just take it as it comes!