Recently I’ve been writing this music for piano, clarinet, and cello, with the intention of entering it into the composition contest held by the NYC Contemporary Music Symposium. Today I officially entered the competition. If I win, this music will be performed at a concert in New York, and I’ll get a professional recording too.
The first draft of this music came about in 2007, after reading the dark and mysterious novel The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, which filled my head with strange colors. I sketched out the basic shape of the piece, but then discarded it as I got swept up in writing Jackdaw.
I revisited the music after returning from my honeymoon in 2012, and built it into a more sturdy shape. Because of the energy and emotion I was feeling during that incredible time in my life – when I had just returned from Europe newly married, when I was so obsessed with creating art and so hungry for life, and in many ways mixed up – this music (which was a by-product of that creative energy and emotion) will forever remind me of that time. To be specific, this music reminds me of the city of Prague, where I drank absinthe and played piano at a pub, and felt myself sink into the Great Human Experience. Read more about that here.
Even after all that, I still couldn’t be bothered to actually finish the music, so again it was discarded and left for dead. Then nine years later, in April 2021, when I decided to enter the NYC Symposium contest, I chose the Bowery Trio as the ensemble I would write for, and resurrected this music that has always meant so much to me. First I changed the instrumentation. The original instrumentation was piano, oboe, and bassoon, which certainly gave it a funky flavor (as I mentioned earlier, I was trying to express some strange color)! But once I switched over to the much more standard piano, clarinet, and cello, the music took on that rich and loving sound that it always wanted to have. While the original instrumentation was unique, it didn’t fit with the sections of the music that were more tender, the love themes. The new instrumentation brought those themes to life, and welcomed more diversity of color into the music as a whole. Oboe and bassoon can become a bit monochromatic after a time, but cello can sing forever.
This music bends genre a bit. It’s classical for sure, but also infused with blues. I also wanted certain rhythms to sound metal, but not metal in the sense of Metallica meets the symphony. I wanted the metal-esque pieces to be fully baked, or interwoven, into the framework and form of the classical music (as opposed to simply taking a metal song and performing it with a classical ensemble). Therefore this music doesn’t really sound like authentic metal in any sense, but certain sections were inspired by the genre, and these moments make an impact on the ear as they pass.
This music has followed me through multiple stages in my life. First as a student striving to expand my creative palate, trying to understand the world but falling far short; then as a young husband, traveling in a haze from country to country, stateless but full of love and optimism, bursting with creative energy; and lastly as I find myself today: a father, trying desperately to prioritize art creation during a very busy year of a very busy life, still nurturing that spark. This music somehow reflects all of that. Or at least that’s what it means to me.
I set myself a goal in January to enter two music competitions this year. One down, one to go.
I’m writing a road trip-themed partita for solo violin. Here are the first two movements, which portray leaving the city for a long trip into the country, and the sense of otherworldly tranquility that settles in once you hit the high desert and find yourself truly alone.
Many more movements to follow, each one a short vignette from my road trippin’ days. My goal for this project is to write music that will appeal to anyone who has ever enjoyed exploring one’s own country, and bring out the sense of wonder that comes from getting out into the wide open spaces.
I like to picture a violinist performing this second movement outside in the high desert, with the wind and the sun and the single violin voice singing a solitary song.
1. Memories of the Ghetto – Read about this movementhere.2. The Metamorphosis – Read about this movementhere.3. A Letter to my Father – Read about this movementhere.4. Milena – Read about this movementhere.5. The Hunger Artist – Read about this movementhere.
I have long been fascinated by the connection between music and literature. My favorite pieces are the ones that tell real stories, or convey a timeless message to which we can all relate. For example, in Schubert’s “Der Erlkonig” and Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz,” the listener hears the devil’s laughter and knows the human characters will not survive. These scenes are profoundly tragic in ways that all humans can understand and relate to, yet all we hear are the musical notes. This is the power of art.
When I began this string quartet, I was working at a book store. Everyday I would sneak into the stacks of literature and read as much as I could without getting caught. It was during this time that I was introduced to the works of Franz Kafka. Immediately upon reading his words, I knew I wanted to set them to music. The dream-like quality of his stories and the constant sense of anxiety in his prose put me on edge, and filled me with difficult emotions. I began researching his life, and found his real story to be almost as painful as his characters’ stories.
Born in a Prague ghetto in 1883 to an emotionally abusive father and bewildered mother, Kafka developed into a nervous, death-obsessed adolescent. He never married, and some of his most substantial female relationships were through innuendo-filled letters with married women. He eventually took a job at an insurance bureau, but began writing short stories on the side. Though rarely published, his stories were startling and unique. Dark, haunting, and non-sensical, each one feels more like a drug-induced nightmare than a short story. Kafka wrote hundreds of letters and diary entries as well, detailing his vague escape fantasies; possibly to Palestine where his Jewish brethren would welcome him, or to far-away America where he could reinvent himself, or anywhere that he could finally find a community that accepted him for who he was. Franz was brilliant, but neither his father nor turn-of-the-century Prague appear to have noticed. Regardless of his desires, he never left Prague, and died at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
I related to Kafka in a number of ways, back when I was obsessed with him, back when I was writing this music. I was about 22, in between school and whatever future career I hoped to build. I was working a part-time job, delaying the inevitable. I drank too much, stayed up all night, slept til noon, accomplished very little. I felt isolated and scared and indecisive and twitchy… not a great time. I was obsessed with my own impending death, with time ticking by, with the ever-present fear that I was wasting my life. Upon reflection, I realize now that this was just a transitional time for me, when my childhood had ended but adulthood had not yet begun. I did not have a community, I wanted to be someone else, I wanted to be better than I was, to have more skills and experience, I wanted to flee. At that moment in my life, Kafka’s strange voice reached out to me across the expanse of time and made me feel like maybe I wasn’t so alone.
Like Kafka, I’m also Jewish. Kafka seemed to vacillate between indifference to the religion of his birth, and the intense interest of one who tries over and over (in vain perhaps) to feel connected to his culture, his ancestors, his local community. In Kafka’s entire written works, there is only one, single mention of Jews or Jewishness. Yet Judaism permeated the culture of Kafka’s upbringing, and most definitely influenced his style of story-telling: his gallows humor, his affinity toward demonstrating the absurd nature of human existence, and of course the sense of “otherness” that all his main characters share. I have always felt similarly conflicted about Judaism. I have never been a true believer, nor have I felt much in common with those who take the dogmatic parts of the religion seriously, which made it difficult for me to find a home in the Jewish community of my birth. However despite this lack of faith or religious devotion, I am absolutely a byproduct of Jewish culture and upbringing. Jewishness is in my blood, as well as my way of speaking, my sense of humor, my cynicism, who I am and how I see the world. I may read about the history of Judaism as a way to feel connected to my ancestors, to understand all the ways the religion and history and culture shaped me, but (like Kafka) I have no community in the temple.
Kafka took this sense of “otherness”, this cynicism and love for the absurd, this desperation and loneliness, and rolled it all together into an alternate universe that flowed endlessly from his pen. In his dream world, everything is almost exactly as it is in reality, except nobody seems to act the way a sane person would act. Social cues mean something altogether different, and we the reader are lost in what appears to be a culture both foreign to us and recognizable as our own. People are cruel and stupid, rules that make no sense are enforced without empathy, the world appears to be a labyrinth of faceless bureaucracy, and we the reader are lost in it without a guide or a map. So in other words, it’s pretty much like the real world.
This music is about Kafka’s life and my own. It’s about feeling lost and alone and desperate and scared. It’s about reaching for love and hope and joy in a world full to the brim with unthinking cruelty. It’s about striving for connections to our own culture, which though it’s our own can sometimes feel so foreign and nonsensical. It’s about making art in a cold and indifferent world, art that attempts to tell a story that is timeless and tragic and messy and uplifting all at the same time, a story about what it’s like to be human, a story we all know.
Fun fact: the keys of the five movements are C, A, F, C, A.
“This is not a city. It is a fissure in the ocean bed of time, covered with the stony rubble of burned-out dreams…”
Franz Kafka, writing about Prague
Franz Kafka grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Prague, one of the most ancient Jewish communities in Europe. My own Jewish ancestors also lived in the Jewish quarters of various European cities. The ghetto can mean so many things to the person who grows up there. It can mean a prison. It can mean the memory of one’s grandmother making soup on a Sunday afternoon. It can mean the cold, emotionless face of a police officer, or it can mean freshly baked bread, or a baby’s first breath. It can mean poverty. It can mean the language and hopes and stories and memories everyone shares there, and how those same hopes and memories have been shared by generation upon generation, leading backward into the endless abyss of time. The ghetto can house one’s cultural identity, one’s ancestors, one’s fondest and darkest memories. It can shape one’s sense of self and fears and hopes for the future. It can be detested and longed for all in the same moment.
I wanted this music to convey a sense of wistful nostalgia. The movement is a series of vignettes, or memories, that come and go as the music progresses. Memories of one’s own childhood, faces of people we’ve loved, a deep longing to return to a place and time that perhaps only ever existed in our memory. We smooth over the real details of our upbringing, of the culture that shaped us, until all that remains is a blurry recollection that is more feeling than memory.
Havelska Street Market circa 1900
I’m Jewish too, so of course the music is also about that. My own ancestors lived in the Jewish quarters of various European cities. For hundreds and hundreds of years they lived and worked and loved and laughed and built their communities. I stand on top of the rubble of those countless generations, and one day will become part of it. Yet despite that, I’ve never felt very connected to my ancestors, to their culture and memories and lives, to their religion and beliefs, to their struggle fleeing persecution, to what they left behind, to a way of life that is gone forever. I’ve always wanted to feel that connection, but it’s not something that can be forced. I grew up here in California in a secular family, far from the trials and rituals and religious teaching that my ancestors knew well.
This music is about longing: a longing to feel connected to something ancient, about a nostalgia for a world I’ve never seen, for a family I’ve never known, for a culture that isn’t my own. I can reach back in time and try to remember the Jewish quarter as it existed once, remember my ancestors as they lived and loved and prayed and raised children and died, remember my own heritage.
Freshly baked bread, a baby’s first breaths, a lover’s embrace, a tattered prayer book, my grandmother’s soup.
This music is the first movement from “Burning”: a trio for piano, clarinet, and cello.
Excerpt from journal. Dated July 27, 2012 – Prague
On a recommendation from a bartender, we headed toward a pub away from the city center, on some twisted alley or another. Our bellies were full of dumplings and gravy, our hearts starving for adventure. We waltzed into a well-lit bar and took a drink of the scenery.
The air was viscous with cigarette smoke. I immediately felt as though I were deep deep underwater, in a pub at the bottom of the sea. The rowdy conversations of the crowd drifted slowly toward me; from a distance I could see the words coming my way, yet still I couldn’t quite make them out. Men and women emphatically slapped the tables in laughter, rattling the half empty glasses and late night coffees and honey cakes, sending them floating away around the room. Others sipped their absinthes knowingly, balancing their cigarettes so delicately atop their outstretched fingers.
Ah Prague, ah absinthe. In honor of Bohemia we ordered two drams of the green concoction. Actually it wasn’t green… but it did smell like licorice, and it burned, burned!
It suddenly became very warm in that bar.
I was taking in my hazy surroundings when I saw her, sitting silently beside a red couch. She wasn’t outlandish, wasn’t putting herself out there, just relaxing and blending into the scenery. I’m not sure anyone else in the room even noticed her.
She was a thing of beauty.
She had a strong yet elegant frame made of fine wood panels. Her golden pedals glimmered and winked at me, beckoning me. Her keys were made of real ivory, an authenticity that can not be faked. This was no tourist attraction. This was the real shit, the soft underbelly, the pearl, that hard-to-reach part of your back. I was suddenly helpless against a mighty river of desire. I let it take me, wash over me, sweep me away.
I could tell right away that she was played regularly; all the tell-tale signs were present. The keys were bare and open for all the world to see, draped flirtatiously like freshly painted fingernails. The bench was pulled out, a bare leg peeking from beneath a knee-length skirt. However refined she may have seemed to an untrained eye, I could see from across the room how much she loved to be touched, that her strings were tight, her music sweet and pure.
I realized I was in a conversation with a man at the bar. While pretending to chat, my gaze kept wandering to her quiet corner of the room. She stared back at me unabashed. I wanted to put my hands on her that very moment, to know her secrets.
Erica looked at my face and read me like a book. I was lost already and there was no point trying to pull me back. We locked eyes and she signaled that I was free to go. I immediately moved to the instrument.
When I touched, I fell into a trance. Twenty minutes of absinthe-fueled dream music left my body.
Dumplings and cigarettes and alleyways. Twisting streets and beggars with their faces in the dirt. Pianos and absinthe and my wife’s soft skin. Love and travel and hunger and… feeling so lost that you forget what country you’re in.
I learned this recipe in Rome. This dish tastes super gourmet, but it’s actually very easy to make if you give the sauce the time it needs to fully mature. Serve this dish to your friends, and forever after you will be able to make them call you “chef”.
Potato gnocchi all’amatriciana – like Grandma used to make
For this recipe, the quality of ingredients is very important. Try to get yourself to an authentic Italian grocery store if you can. Guanciale might be difficult to find, but can be substituted with pancetta if need be. If you can’t find that, thick bacon is ok as long as it isn’t smoked. If you have the time, you could also make your own guanciale, assuming you have a whole pig’s head lying around. The gnocchi should be freshly made if possible.
Ingredients
3 thick slices of guanciale (pork made from pig jowls), chopped into small cubes
EVOO
1 small onion, chopped
Chopped mushrooms
Hot red pepper flakes
One can of whole tomatoes with juices (again, choose a can with no added preservatives, as natural as possible)
1 pound of potato gnocchi
Fresh basil
1 half jar of filleted anchovies packed in oil
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
Directions:
Cook the guanciale in a large saute pan over medium heat and sizzle until just starting to turn brown. It should cover the pan with pork fat. Turn off heat and with a slotted spoon remove the guanciale bits.
If there isn’t a ton of rendered fat in the pan, add some EVOO. Turn heat back on and add onions, and cook over low until soft, but not browned. Add mushrooms and red pepper flakes for some kick.
Add tomatoes with juices and the guanciale to the pan. Throw in some anchovies. If they are high quality jarred anchovies, this won’t turn the dish overly fishy. They will actually disintegrate over time and become part of the sauce, and let me tell you, this will change your whole view of anchovies. Let the sauce bubble for at least half an hour. It will thicken quite a bit, but if it gets too thick add a bit of water. No need for any extra seasoning, this sauce will pack a lot of flavor from all that pork fat and those anchovies.
Boil some water and cook the gnocchi. When they float, they are done. Don’t overcook them or they will be too mushy. Pull out the gnocchi and add a dash of oil so they don’t stick together. Add a cup of the gnocchi water to the sauce and stir with some ripped up basil. This will meld all the flavors together.
Remove the sauce from heat and add the cheese on top. Serve it up with a bottle of Chianti Sangiovese. Congratulations, you will never eat jarred spaghetti sauce again.
One chilly December evening in 2012, while I was enjoying a beer at the Riptide bar in San Francisco, listening to the soft tones of an open mic guitarist, I encountered a man who told me about a new songwriting club that had just started in the city. He said anyone can join, you just gotta write songs. Little did I realize that this encounter would spark one of the most prolific stretches of songwriting in my life.
This bar, a crucial landmark of the far west, shines like a proud beacon in the foggy, grey, windswept outer reaches of the Sunset district. It’s the perfect place to seek shelter from the ocean breeze and enjoy one of the chillest open mics in the universe. They even have a piano. The Riptide has since burned down and been rebuilt from the ashes, like a f*cking phoenix, and it’s still just as grand as ever! On the night I first heard about the Songwriting Club, I was alone at the bar, sipping a beer and reflecting on life, asking the universe for inspiration. When I learned a bit more about this new creative endeavor, something inside me clicked.
Best place ever
Here’s the gist: write one new song a week, based on a title assigned by the creator of the club (a local musician and concert promoter named KC Turner). Each week a new title and new song. Only rule: don’t miss the deadline. It wasn’t a competition, just a personal challenge. By the end of the week, a video of the new song must be posted on the Songwriting Club’s Facebook page for all the world to see. The first title was “Find Your Own Railroad”. Ready, set, go.
I’m not sure why this particular challenge burrowed so deeply into my head, but for whatever reason I went home that evening with an agenda: I had to write that song by the end of the week. I started thinking about that title and what it could mean, and a story began to take shape in my brain. An alcoholic father encounters his alcoholic son at a saloon after many years apart. The son realizes he has become just like his father, and pleads with the old man to come away with him over the hills. Together they can reform their lives, put down the bottle for good, rebuild their tattered relationship.
The jaded old man tells his son that that’s an impossible dream, wishful thinking. He’s going to do what he’s always done – drink until he passes out in the street – and his son had better go find his own destiny: “Find your own railroad, don’t get off until the track runs out. And if you ever come back to find your old man, you better look six feet beneath the ground.”
Here is the first performance of the song at the Hotel Utah Saloon open mic, with Erica singing harmony:
At the end of that first week, a TON of local songwriters had posted new work on the page, each with the same title. What a unique opportunity to listen to so many composers tackle the same theme. Everyone’s work was special in their own way. Some were blues, some country, some spoken-word, some undefinable. I left encouraging comments on various performers’ posts, and they did the same for me. I wanted to stay a respected part of this community for as long as possible, but the only way to keep that going was to write write write!
The next week’s title was “One Thing You Can’t Lose”. My first thought was to do a love song, something like “my love is the one thing you can’t lose”. I tinkered with a bluesy vibe, but didn’t love it. This is where a challenge like this can fall apart. You lose your confidence and that’s it, that’s the end. But this also happened to be the week of my ten year anniversary with my muse and life partner, Erica. I think her muse powers were off the charts that week, because this strange little love song just seemed to emerge from nowhere.
The song is about love aaaand also about the Titanic. Love is the ocean, and there’s no keeping it out. We sink into the black, deeper, deeper, into oblivion. We let it swallow us. We burn with a red heat that even the empty nothingness of the ocean depths can’t extinguish.
That song is called “Here Comes the Flood”. The lyrics really captured how I was feeling that month. It was such a mixture of dark and chilling with excited for life and full of love. In the previous months I had had a major falling out with an old friend and had not yet recovered from that sad episode. Yet celebrating a decade with the woman I love, and coming up on our first New Year’s as a married couple, I had much to be grateful for. I was swept up in love, but also questioning myself, my life, my purpose. Luckily I was able to harness some of this energy into a creative outlet.
I am thoroughly sold on the Songwriting Club method of art creation, especially for any artist struggling to find inspiration. Adding boundaries and restrictions can be a surprisingly effective way to force an artistic brain to create. When our options are limitless, sometimes our brain will languish in indecision and self-criticism. No idea is profound enough to satisfy the mind. Should I write a love song or a techno song or a classical piece? How can I say something that’s never been said (impossible)? Where do I even begin when I have no idea what the final product should look like? These questions equal paralysis for the artist, who will probably just walk away from his pile of half-finished work and go watch Game of Thrones, wallowing in self-pity, crying out for a bolt of inspiration.
That bolt rarely comes. The reality of songwriting is the reality of all things of quality: they take time, hard work, and patience to do properly. If an artist gets trapped in this negative feedback loop (“I suck at music, so I won’t bother finishing anything. Because I can’t finish anything, I suck at music”), the artist does not progress. Add a boundary or two, and suddenly the artist can eliminate many of those questions that dog him when he wishes to begin a new project, and focus all of his creative abilities on solving a much more narrow artistic puzzle. If the musician knows he has six days to write a song based on a title he didn’t choose, he can get to work without asking if what he is doing is “avant-garde” enough, or what genre his music falls under. Just shut up and write. And if this week’s project isn’t perfect, who cares! You finished something. Now do another.
The next week we had to travel to San Diego to visit Erica’s parents during Christmas. Time for a road trip! Would we be able to continue our song writing streak? We would have to write this entry while on the road, with nothing but my trusty melodica to assist us. Would it be possible? When faced with a creative challenge (and a deadline), the answer I’ve always found is just sit down and work at it. Brainstorm and create drafts and play stuff over and over until you isolate something of quality, then exploit that little nugget for everything it’s worth. Just don’t give up. Harness the anxiety that comes with a deadline, and turn it into creative energy. We prepared to set out on the road.
It was at this moment that the songwriting gods blessed us with good fortune. This week’s title was going to be “Rhythm of the Road”. Forced to write a song about the road whilst on the road… is there anything better than that scenario? The sounds of the road weaved themselves into the fabric of the song. It was inescapable: this song would completely embody the spirit of the title, no matter what the final product sounded like. Whatever we created we would be true to the theme!
It also helped that I got to tap into the mystical power of the melodica. This particular melodica was very special to me, because I had purchased it in Venice, while on my honeymoon four months earlier. To this day, I really don’t feel comfortable playing this song on any instrument except the melodica.
Driving from San Francisco to San Diego gave us lots of time try different drafts, practice harmony, and finesse the song until we were in love with it. The final version is one my favorite things I’ve ever created, though to be honest I really can’t take much credit for this song. Erica created the melody and wrote most of the lyrics. It’s a song about this time we found ourselves drinking and telling stories at a sleezy little campground in Cody, Wyoming, far far from home, lost in a never-ending road trip across the vastness of the American West. This song was really Erica’s baby. I contributed the chorus and basically just sewed the nuggets she had already created into a coherent piece. This is truly a song written by Adventure Cat.
Now we were on a roll. Three weeks, three songs. We were flying high and ready for anything! The next title was “Mailbox Blues”. This one needed something new: Evan. We invited our trustworthy travel companion and fellow Adventure Cat to help us compose this week’s song. We sat down in his apartment and started cranking out ideas. The ideas flowed together into this little gem:
I don’t know who created which part. I don’t care. This song makes me happy, and very nostalgic. I also love Evan’s little solo in the video. We wrote the whole thing in one night. What a fun time that was.
The next week I got robbed. On a cold, clear night right before New Year’s, somebody smashed my car window and grabbed the first thing he saw. I didn’t have much of value in my car, only my melodica from Venice, which the thief dutifully stole. When he realized it was just a cheap, plastic instrument, I imagine he left it on a bus stop bench and ran off to find a more profitable mark. I never found her, but the melodica’s magic lives on in my heart, and in the songs she helped usher into the world.
It was the last memorable event of 2012, a rough way to end. That week’s title was “Last Day of the Year.” I condensed all of my sadness and fear and bewilderment into a little seed, and let it blossom into a song:
This song I wrote alone. I wrote it quickly. It poured out.
We had celebrated New Year’s Eve at a party full of people we did not know, at an enormous mansion deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Winding roads, shots of tequila, strange faces, the brisk mountain air, the smell of the ocean in the forest… all of it found it’s way into this piece. I wanted time to freeze, for the world to stop. I felt like I was slowly sinking into the Earth.
Though I did enjoy trying my hand at low-tech sound engineering, “Last Day of the Year” ended up with a lot of pops and clipping. I wanted to experiment with recording more layers, but one week was no longer enough time, especially once I went back to work. I wanted to really do something fancy for the next piece. So when I learned the next title, I relaxed my one week deadline and took my time with it.
The next title was “Tiny Wings”. Actually, as I write this, I’m not entirely sure that was a title in the songwriting challenge. I might have made it up… Either way it took me about three months to put this together, chipping away slowly night by night:
I was thinking about my mom and how she must view me, what it must be like to see your child grow into an adult before your eyes. I didn’t have a child at this time, so I couldn’t truly understand it, not yet, but this was my attempt at it. Now that I’m a parent myself, I understand it so much better. I think writing this helped me wrap my head around parenting for the first time in my life.
As far as sound engineering goes, I really didn’t know what I was doing. Just a lot of trial and error. The whole thing was made with a Casio keyboard and Finale notation software. This was a HUGE learning experience.
By this point I had missed a bunch of weeks, so I had a lot of titles I could choose from for the next song. One that stood out to me was “Somebody’s Lie”. I decided to make it “Everybody’s Lie”. This is probably the most nihilistic piece I’ve ever written, but I don’t think it takes itself too seriously. In fact, the whole point of it is how humanity takes itself far too seriously and deserves a bit of mockery for that. In that vein, I created a music video to go with it:
And yes I understand the irony (or perhaps hypocrisy) of an artist spending hours and days crafting a meaningful art piece about how nothing really matters. But I’m only human… The beat is by David Neawedde, the guitar licks are Evan Owen. Everything else is Cassio keyboard.
I wrote some other rock songs during this period, but only one more really counts as Songwriting Club material. I went to the site one final time and selected the title “10,000 Hours”:
This song finally allowed me to express some of the anger I had been holding onto after that falling out months and months earlier. Sometimes it takes awhile for these things to work their way to the surface, but when they do they always emerge as a kind of muse. This process of creation through pain allows me to heal. After writing this, I really did feel better about the whole situation.
I also call this song the hypocrite song, because the speaker could be speaking from my point of view, or my ex-friend’s point of view. Since we both acted so terribly during the falling out, neither is blameless. I am guilty of every crime I accuse him for. And yes, that’s Evan on the guitar again, killin’ it.
After this song I fell away from the Songwriting Club for good. I still wrote new stuff when the feeling took me, but never at the same speed as during those late weeks of 2012. The artistic stars aligned for me during that brief period, everything worked. The new material not only allowed me to flex my creative abilities to their limits, but also to bond with my loved ones through the creation of art. And that is a rare and cherished thing.
By the way, if you want to work on your song-writing chops, find yourself a songwriting club. Or just grab a title out of the newspaper, or a billboard, or the babblings of a toddler. It’s your songwriting club, so do it however you like! The only rule is you have to finish whatever you start. You must not put the project down until it is done. And if you run out of time or patience, and you are forced to call it finished even though it isn’t a brilliant, earth-shattering masterpiece, good. You still finished a piece! Well done, seriously. You are creating art. Now do another one, and another. Some will be winners, some won’t quite ever feel right no matter how many times you tinker with it. But you are practicing, honing your craft. Every finished work gives you experience points. So good luck, and happy writing!
In the scorching heat of midday the villa was abandoned, deserted, post-apocalyptic. I hunted across the grounds, running my fingers through the golden Tuscan grass, snooping down dark hallways and looking out the ancient, cloudy windows that appeared to be made of clear honey, though they felt solid to the touch. I wandered into a giant barn. No farm equipment or hay, just faded wood panels and a colony of snoozing birds that had taken up residence in the rafters. The high ceiling and heavy, silent air reminded me of a cathedral; solemnly I knelt to inspect an old nail on the floor. Anxious to hear any type of sound, I lightly rapped the rusted door with my shoe, and the birds suddenly took flight in a panic of feathers and chaotic squawking, swooping down savagely at the invader, filling the previously silent space with noise and anger. I covered my face, perhaps in shame at how thoroughly I had destroyed something so serene, and ducked out the door into the burning sunlight, leaving the birds to return to their prayers. The hot, fallow fields and gentle hills in the distance looked on, unphased and without judgement.
A single gust of breeze meandered past the sweat on my neck, providing just the faintest hint of cool. I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with the air my ancestors breathed so many hundreds of years ago, when the villa at San Rocco was a powerful fortress guarding the countryside, a pillar of strength. Today the villa still stands a lonely guard upon its abandoned hill, but it’s empty and choked with native weeds, its only occupants birds who sing lustily from the treetops and build their nests in the red roof tiles. The outer walls of the buildings all have loops for tying up horses, but there are no horses that need tying up, and rusted farm equipment sits neatly in a line along the field’s edge, more as a creepy decoration than as tools ready for hard use. I dunked my head in a pool of cool water, and hid from the sun in a cobwebbed vestibule that no doubt once offered shade to a 17th century farmhand after a long day’s work. Sitting against a post in the shade, I began to dose. Two tiny birds flew in to get some shade and woke me from my brief nap, but upon seeing me there they departed in disgust. Wrapped tightly in the silence of the afternoon, I let my mind wander the fields.
Why do I find myself feeling jealous of these happy Tuscan birds? As I drift across the countryside searching for something that will lend meaning to my life, these small creatures are content to lay in the sun, to cool their feathers in a pond, to sleep the day away in the rafters of an old barn. Life seems to have purpose and no purpose all at the same time. One day I will disappear and be forgotten, perhaps as if I never existed, much like my ancestors who lived in Italy for hundreds of years, of whom no record exists, whose lives have been utterly forgotten by posterity, entire lives full of laughter and sadness and sex and longing and glorious moments and religion and debate and watching the sun set in the hills and babies born and tragedy and art, erased and forgotten; just as the two birds who flew into my vestibule might never have existed at all, and perhaps lived only in a dream, a dream which I am already beginning to forget. I’m sorry little birds! I don’t want to forget you. I want you to live forever, wild and free in the Tuscan sun. But if you must be forgotten, I want you to live your lives with reckless happy abandon. I want you to drink the air with hearty gulps and dance in the breeze and dive like missiles. I want to join you. Then we can be forgotten together, but we won’t care because we will be birds, smooth and fast, and we’ll make our nests in the tiled roofs of old villas.
Back inside the cool, dusky main house I glimpsed the curvy figure of a piano tucked away in the darkness. The instrument called my name, beckoned me seductively. I approached in a trance. Staring transfixed at the candlestick holders bolted to the wooden frame, I reached desperately for her smooth, white keys. But sadly when she finally felt my tender caress, she could only respond with the dull creak of decrepit age. Dust choked the arteries that once pumped sweet music down these old halls. The piano and I wept together as two lovers who have irreconcilably grown apart. I did not touch her again.
I wandered down a hallway filled with ghosts. A laughing cavalier smirked at me as I tried a locked door. Though the sun still boomed through the open window, the hallway grew more ominous as I crept down toward the dead end. This hall was different from the others, more silent, more deserted, painted differently – as if the craftsman rushed to complete his job and be away from this place. I felt something slide under my skin, an urgency, the instinct to flee. These old ghosts are not scared of the burning noon sun. They are Romans and Tuscans and hard men, and they can smell the softness of my pampered hands, the hands of an untried and cocky young man who fancies himself an adventurer. They mock and beckon. Feeling their presence, I fled in shame and with much haste. Put me on a train back to Rome, get me out of San Rocco, before I join the ghosts and become another smirking face in some faded painting, inviting naive tourists down well-lit hallways that reek of death and lead paint.
Somewhere among the dusty back-trails of Eastern Idaho, an old forgotten wagon road bakes in the sun. The prairie desperately wants to swallow it up, to make it disappear forever, just as the people who made this road have disappeared. Yet despite the countless rainstorms that year after year wash away the top soil, and the cattle herds that trample the ground into brown paste, and the prairie winds that threaten to bury this holy place in sediment, the road endures. It cuts across the frontier in a searing straight line, as if the land itself was branded with hot metal. Its rivets are clear and stark in the afternoon heat.
It was at this spot that thousands and thousands of pioneers, adventurers, families, wanderers, refugees, entrepreneurs, and thrill-seekers carved their names one by one into the earth, until all the names ran together and all that remained was an ungainly scar. A mighty river of people once flowed here, people willing to take bold action, people with new ideas. These people made the West, or at least changed it drastically. They are all gone now, their names and faces long forgotten, the names and faces of their children forgotten as well. But their road remains. An accident of history, the byproduct of something much greater than itself, yet it outlived them all. From the looks of it, this old road will be around for a long time to come.
I wish you all the best Old Road. And safe travels to any who may tread on you. May you once again serve a higher purpose. You were a good old soldier, and perhaps your best days are behind you, but there’s still a job for you, still a chance for your time here to have some meaning. Sure most days you’ll go completely unnoticed. None of the travelers who trampled on you will come back to honor you for the role you played in their lives, in our history. Alone in the wilderness, forgotten by the world, you long to be useful again. Old Road, today you were useful. You were necessary. You were exactly what I needed you to be: a quiet spot for a tired, windswept tourist to stare at the burnt grass and think longingly about the past.
I think I’ve finally hit my Rome stride. It takes me a good solid week to shake off jet lag, and perhaps longer to fully embrace the rhythm of a new home. Three weeks in one place is still a vacation, but it’s long enough to start to forget what it’s like in the real world. The vacation becomes all-encompassing. We have to go grocery shopping, and learn the layout of our neighborhood: drug store, metro stop, place that sells underwear for babies (our baggy full of Jack’s undies fell out of Erica’s backpack somewhere over the Atlantic). Today I feel like I’ve found my rhythm here. The right time to go out for a long walk in the sun, when to have a siesta, when to have an afternoon cocktail, when baby should go to bed; these are all crucial discoveries if one wants to prevent burnout. Today I have it down! I no longer have to try hard to feel at home here.
We took the number 3 tram on its long circuit from Trastevere to the North end of Villa Borghese. When traveling with a toddler, there is no better or cheaper way to keep them entertained than a long slow ride on a train. For 1.5 Euros, we basically got an air-conditioned tour of the entire eastern side of Rome, including a nice view of the Colosseum and Circo Massimo. I’m thinking perhaps sometime this week I will just hop on a regional train out into the countryside with Jack, with no particular goal in mind except to see what we can see.
An approximation of our route, based on memory.
Our goal today however is to rent bikes at the Villa Borghese and cruise around town. We arrive at the expansive park at midday, and quickly locate the little stand selling four-wheel pedal carts to tourists. With Jack perched in the front basket, we pedal our way across the park at a leisurely pace, stopping to play in fountains and listen to the random street musicians playing accordion music in the sun. The breeze in my hair makes me feel like a ship captain. Jack calls out “ciao!” to passersby, human and animal alike.
After the ride, we scarf down various sandwiches from a nearby café: spinach, egg, meat & cheese, tuna. These little white bread sandwiches are ubiquitous around Rome, very cheap, and very satisfying. Also easy to find in this city is amazing coffee. I never drink my coffee black in the US, but here it is just so rich and flavorful. Some guidebooks say that it is “un-Roman” to drink coffee all day, but I say drink it at every possible opportunity. My favorite is just a shot of espresso, with or without sugar. But also try machiatto, café freddo, and even café doppio (double shot) if you want a flavor explosion. We eat and drink coffee until we can’t move, then like amorphous blobs floating through space, we somehow drift back to our Rome Home.
Nap time for baby, siesta time for adults. Here in Rome, Jack naps from 3:30 to 6:30, so by the time we venture out again it is much cooler and the locals are beginning to emerge from the caves they hide in during the hottest part of the day. By 8pm, the piazzas of Trastevere are packed with people, eating, drinking, strolling, living the Roman lifestyle. I love this time of day here. Taking Jack for an evening stroll through the crowd of revelers makes every night feel like a festival, and maybe it is here. Jack likes to wear sunglasses at night.
I recently encountered a Roman who told me that people in this city don’t know how to work hard. I can’t comment on whether that’s true, but it certainly does seem like nobody is in a rush to do anything. I could sit at a café for three hours with one glass of wine, and the waiter will never rush me out the door. As an American, so used to immediate gratification, so used to a culture that teaches all young people that hard work for its own sake is a virtue, I sometimes struggle to accept this slower pace. But really, what is the point of hard work for its own sake? The point of work is to accomplish a goal, not to achieve a sense of soul satisfaction simply from the act of working. Here people have jobs, but they certainly don’t seem to value industry above all else. Maybe I’m buying into a stereotype, but they don’t seem to care all that much about getting things done. Joy is derived from the act of hanging out with friends, laughing, eating, and taking it slow. It’s almost as if I need to unlearn how to be an American in order to fully appreciate this life.
Yesterday I saw a group men in their thirties sitting on a park bench in the middle of a work day. These were not bums, but well-dressed men of working age. There they sat, with nowhere to be, doing nothing, without a care in the world (as far as I could tell). I watched them for sometime as Jack played in a nearby playground. They weren’t eating lunch, just sitting and watching. At one point, one man stood and wordlessly walked over to a child’s bicycle leaning against a post. He looked at the bicycle quizzically for a moment, as if he had never encountered such a thing before. Then he rang the little bell twice, turned around to look silently at his friends, and returned to his seat, his curiosity satisfied.
What is that life? How do I bring that home with me? Now granted, I do like to work, I love having a project. I couldn’t give up that Puritan work ethic, its baked in too deeply (even though I can claim no Puritan ancestry). But can I bring home a balance that includes just a piece of that Italian vibe? Can I still satisfy my insatiable need to create (that same drive that makes me write music, update a blog, build a website), but still be able to sit on a park bench for hours and find satisfaction in leisure? After all, why do I work hard if I can’t then put down my project and enjoy the finer things? Like lying around while my son performs a melodica solo.
Aren’t moments like these the most important moments in life?
After our siesta, we walk to Ponte Sisto, a piazza next to a bridge where young Italians are to be found every evening lounging on the steps, listening to the rotating street musicians who seem to work in 20 minute shifts. Down the steps to the banks of the River Tiber, a long row of restaurants and bars trace the curve of the river. More eating, more drinking, more sitting. By the time we get back home, it’s close to midnight, another Roman day well-spent.
Did we build great structures? No. Did we get richer? No. Did we relax and enjoy life, bond and laugh and lounge and live like Romans? Si! Right now, I couldn’t ask for more.
P.S. Jack made friends with an Italian waiter at a cafe today. The waiter was watching Jack from afar as Jack sat in his chair at the cafe, basking serenely in the sun like a cat, enjoying every bite of his chocolate cookie. Jack was in no rush to go anywhere or do anything. He was a master at chilling. His only job in the world was to savor good food, to people-watch, to close his eyes and rest, to just be. He was a true Italian. The waiter came up to us and said, “Now there is somebody who knows how to live.” I couldn’t agree more.
