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The
funny thing is that I am asked to write some words on writing
when I feel as dry as an autumn leaf. It is now late summer.
Writing, and particularly songwriting, has always had a
cyclical rhythm to it, one that I am finally identifying
as I push my way through my most ambitious songwriting and
recording project to date, Still She Moves.
I remember when
I recorded Lady of the Green in early spring of
1997. I felt bouncy and full of a life that was both intense
and magical. March and April were the wind behind my sails
while I was at the helm of my first Wisconsin winter, the
longest and harshest winter I’d ever experienced. I
felt a bountiful ease of creativity then. When I look back
on all my notes and journals, I understand that the period
between late spring and late summer is not a very productive
time for me. I don’t necessarily know why, but I’m
finally beginning to honour it. I look forward to relaxing
into my next dry season rather than forging songs out of
an iron will.
I’m understanding
that I am not alone in having an on/off creative flow. I
asked some of my musical friends whether they felt it too.
Not all were aware of a specific time frame, but all agreed
there was something timely about the muse’s visitations
. A few were aware of theirs, including my studio engineer
whose catharsis usually blows its flower in mid-spring,
when mine begins to fade. I don’t know why autumn and
early winter should be so fruitful. I fancy it may have
something to do with growing up in Chile, where July is
the dead of winter. Our family succumbed many times to a
Christmas in July, when my parents and a few of their friends
with children would rent a 4 story mansion by the thrashing
Pacific Ocean waves and bring out gifts and seasonal foods
and music. But in reality, I think I was born this way.
I think we all are born into our own season.
I recently asked my
eight-and-a-half year-old son Gaelan a question. He
and I are so much alike in our innate musicality that I
already knew the answer. I asked him, “Gaelan,
when you are sitting by yourself and singing a song you’ve
never sung before with words you are making up as you go
along, how do you do that?”
My answer, though less
colourful and endearing than his, would have carried the
same message. “Well Mom,” he answered without
pause, “you know how there are people who’ve never
been to Wisconsin and they don’t know that Wisconsin
is all about a project of cheeses. All kinds of different
cheeses. That’s what people in Wisconsin do.
And then a person who’s never been here comes
and they see all these cheeses and they say, ‘Wow,
look at this cheese! And look at that kind!’ And everywhere
they go there’s a different kind of cheese. Well, to
us who live here, its just cheese! Well, anyhow Mom, if
you ask me all these questions, most of it is useless because
I really don’t know how I do that.”
Song writing comes
to me in exactly that order – first the song,
then the writing. I remember the first song I ever wrote
which I believed was worthy enough to record. It was called
Winter’s Run. It tumbled out of me like laughter
while I was in West Virginia at a music festival with my
partner at the time. I was inspired by our imminent departure
from the Northeast, and I was high on music and people.
We lived in a school bus then.
Summer is spreading rumours
Of coats of many colours
But the dew is holding,
While the sky is folding
I’m making my migration
Down to Arizona
Where the days are longer
And the days are warmer
Summer is dropping shadows
And harvesting it’s secrets
Wrapping them in paper
To present them to winter
The mist has closed it’s curtain
On flowers in the meadow
But the stars grow bolder
As the night burns colder
The melody and the words came out simultaneously as I picked
out a rhythmical pattern on my 6-string. It was all immediately
sensuous and poetic while I was caught in the midst of experiencing
a sort of creative “falling in love.” This falling
in love feeling is the high most artists I know seek. For
me it is an exhalted state of being where I sense peace,
joy, fullfillment and a sort of oneness with everything
around me. Or it could also be an emotional state where
I find myself releasing, for example, sorrow or grief or
even laughter all the while that words are flowing out of
my pen to mark the moment. There is something beautiful
in those tragic moments. The songs Loved in your
Arms and Breathless Dancer on the album “Still
She Moves”are examples of this state of creative
being.
Wordsworth once
said : “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of emotion
recollected in tranquility.” Yet not all songs present
themselves to me like kings bearing gifts. I polish my share
of floors and dwell on stubborn scrubsome stains. In fact
I have reams of unfinished songs or works in progress, half-full
or half-empty. I don’t really know how to categorize
them (after all, I’m an artist,) but many of them are
words that came without music. And many of them are ones
that were born of music but which aborted themselves mysteriously.
Or maybe not so mysteriously. Perhaps I was in the throes
of creativity when I came to and sheepishly tended to the
bills I was supposed to write checks for. Procrastinatus
interruptus. And the moment is gone, stamped in invisible
ink with the face of a chiding sheep and kicked quietly
under the rug.
I sit down occasionally
with one of these unfinished things and see if I can activate
my imagination and tap into that creative “falling
in love” feeling. Leo Kottke’s advice a few years
ago was to just write without thinking about what you’re
writing. And then to go back and make sense of it. I use
this method sometimes. It works occasionally, but I’m
often left with an aftertaste which is never quite as gratifying
as a song that tumbles out. Of course, I’m the only
one who detects any. I know this because of the feedback
I get from varied audiences for various songs I write, tumbled
or scrubbed.
One song, Stranger
Stranger, is about a relationship that I walked away
from because it was too topsy-turvy and painful. I laboured
over the song because I didn’t want to place blame,
although I was drawn to doing so like a kid to peanut butter.
I wrestled with it as if I were pulling a team of horses,
so that I could get to the lessons that were in it for me.
Songwriting can be much like journaling, where ideas and
statements suddenly galloping onto paper take on whole new
meaning and can be very helpful to understanding situations
with other people and patterns with myself. I enjoy seeking
lessons from my writings which I believe bring me closer
to a higher state of spiritual being. Funnily enough, Stranger
Stranger is one of Gaelan’s favorite songs.
Don’t brush my tears
before they fall
Nor bless my eyes with shameful kisses
Why won’t you softly close the door
My love, my love before you go
I won’t take your storms upon my soul
I raise my shield against your defenses
And roll your thunder out my door
My love, my love before you go
I don’t know that I have any advice for anyone. I often
feel as though I could benefit from some writing class,
although I have benefited tremendously from teaching songwriting
classes and presenting workshops at festivals. But to be
honest it’s the music that draws me in, really. I love
the music of “Dead Can Dance” and yet I
don’t understand a word of their wanton warblings.
I also limit the amount of music that I listen to in order
to fully realize that which is within me. And I rarely read
books. I feel rewarded by the challenge of weaving my own
webs with whatever materials I already have, without getting
into the trap of waiting for mystical tools to fly into
my creative space. I’d rather go for a walk with my
friend Asparagus Joe among the udder-laden hills and swallow-filled
bluffs of Wisconsin.
I believe each of us
has our own walk to the beat of our creative expression,
a walk that goes hand in hand with the people we surround
ourselves with, the environment we live in, and the life-adventures
we chose. But these are all choices we are always making.
Sitting here, I chose the life-adventure of writing.
Then there are the
other aspects of living on this planet earth that we have
no saying over—the moon’s unfluence over all
things watery, the sun, wind, rain, seasons. There are so
many variables. Sitting here, writing now in autumn, I am
moved in this moment by the way the silver maple leaves
on the tree in the backyard are just windlessly plopping
to the tangled grassy floor and catching light on their
way down. Its impossible for me not to link that thought
to my own life and death. To the life and Dutch-death of
the neighbouring elm tree. And, today, to the decisions
being made regarding, for instance, our involvement with
Iraq. Questions arise all by themselves. Sometimes answers
arise from the questions, sometimes answers need to be sought.
It’s all part and parcel of the life adventure of the
song writer caught between his own will and the incessant
forces of the Muse. 
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