Through the lens

I have a whole new appreciation for actors.  Truly, I do.  I had an idea to shoot a series of acoustic performances, one for every song on the EP, for the month of August.  Originally I was just going to have TheMan bust out his fancy little iphone, and video me playing these songs in five different settings and with five different moods….but thankfully, we were able to step it up a notch (or 10 notches as the case may be) with the discovery of wonder-director Hunter Richards.  He has brought a level of artistry to each of these little performances that has exceeded even what I had imagined.  But being in front of a lens is a weird thing…a weird loss of control, and a very vulnerable experience.  Essentially, you are trusting the director with your performance, with no idea what he’s seeing, how close he’s going to get, no clue of what he’s capturing.  The keyword here is: trust.

This recently came to play on our last filming of video 3 of the “August Acoustic” series.  I knew I wanted to perform “Edge of a Broken Heart” with local renowned artist and phenom accordion player, Michael Schaeffer.  I knew I wanted it to have an old world vibe, with us looking like buskers.  And, I knew I wanted it somewhere, downtown GR.

When I first spoke with Hunter about the idea, he suggested an alley that he thought would fit the mood of the song.  I however, was thinking a park would be a better fit…so I stubbornly set off to find my “perfect” location.  First I tried a small park downtown, by a terribly busy intersection.  It’s a big local hang, and many of our city’s homeless take residency there, and there were sure to be more than a few onlookers.  As this is a live performance, these were too many risks to take, if we hoped to get one full decent take without any interruptions.  BUT….I held on…insisting that it would be less busy in the evening…and on the weekend of our shoot.

On my way to a quick run-through with Michael the day of the shoot, Hunter called saying that the park, as usual, was too packed.

I went to plan B: John Ball Park…a bigger park in Grand Rapids.  I drove by, and pulled in..even took a few shots with my phone.  When I called to try to sell Hunter on the idea, he once again suggested that his alley would fit the song better. “Ok, that’s fine,” and I, FINALLY, gave in.

When we arrived at his alley later that evening, this is what we saw:

Even then, I wasn’t sold.  But, after a dizzying and exhausting week, i would have been ready to shoot in the bathroom of a McDonald’s in flourescent lighting my underwear.  SO, we set up…i sat down…and we shot a take.  Somehow, the minute we started playing, that alley was transformed.  The gentle breeze on the street, became short gusts in the alley…and i felt transported to another time, another place.  That alley probably hasn’t changed much (with the exception of graffiti) in the 100 plus years of the history of Grand Rapids.  For a few minutes i could have seen a horse a buggy pass by our alley, and not been surprised.  It was…a bit of magic.

Hunter shot a couple of takes…and came over to show us.  He was right.  This alley WAS perfect for this song.  I can’t believe I doubted his artistic eye.

There is something about that trust that goes deeper than just shooting a performance.  Sometimes life can seem like a filthy, rotten, stinking alleyway.  Sometimes things don’t make sense, don’t add up…and we’ll have no idea why we find ourselves in such a  shit-hole.  But there is a perspective that can’t always be seen…that of the lens.  Somehow, what may seem like a disaster can look like a masterpiece when framed through a camera.  What we don’t know, but have to trust in, is that a story is being told…and a beautiful magic  is being captured, even when we’re unsure of ourselves, and feel vulnerable…exposed.

You never know what that trust, and relinquished control, can lead to…an unexpected treasure may be unfolding in this very moment and THE magical take may be getting captured on a greater film reel…. a perfectly framed shot by a patient, and genius, unseen director.

My Delicate Hour

I don’t know where my songs come from.  I sit down and play my guitar.  A chord progression will repeat itself.  I start humming a melody.  I play it through several times….i start singing “brie-speak”(a mash-up of consonants and vowels that kind of sound like the english language).  I put the guitar down.

I come back the next day.  Pick up the guitar.  If I remember the melody then I usually think it’s a good enough song for me to actually keep.  I procrastinate writing the lyrics.  It wasn’t always like that.  I think the older I get the more reticent i am to actually say something.  I also like the thought of living with the song for a while until it tells me what it wants to be about.

“Delicate Hour” was no exception to this process.  I wrote the melody a year ago, but when I headed off to Evan’s studio in Skid Row five months pregnant, I still didn’t know what the song was about.  It came out suddenly, the night before I was supposed to record that song.  The words just formed in my mouth in the middle of a brie-speak line: shma-dold a dahrlan…in the delicate hour”.  And so I wrote about it…I wrote about what my Delicate Hour is.  I wrote about the tension, and how TheMan and i have been so precariously balanced on that tension since we took the plunge in the St.Francis of Assisi chapel.

My great-grandfather was a tinker.  Truly.  He made a meager living during the depression touring the country in his truck…fixing up people’s jewelry, primarily people’s watches.  I hear he had watch parts and gadgety things all over the inside of his trailer.  He knew about the inner workings of a clock.  He knew about the mainspring,  gear train,  balance wheel, escapement mechanism and clock face. He knew how the mainspring would become compressed when the pocket watch is wound, the very mechanical energy used to power the watch.  He saw how they worked…and took care that they did.  He knew that tension was what kept time…the friction that kept things moving.

I never knew him, but somehow I think he whispered those first words to me that became what that song was about.  That same song that seemed to later become the center wheel of this whole project; this whole movement into releasing another EP seven years after I was quite sure I was finished.

I respect tension…maybe because so much of my life seems steeped in it.  And maybe so much of my life is steeped in it because that is the force I create from.  There have been moments in this last week between extreme exhaustion of running after a motor-bottom baby, succesive phone calls trying to get a band together for my show in LA later this month, literally sewing curtains together to try to cut the heat down in our non-AC house, and making decision after decision and deadline after deadline in the countdown toward the release of this EP;  that I have felt like I was going to need to check myself into a crazy house.  My left eye has not stopped twitching for two weeks now.  Seriously.  And then, last night, I very suddenly found myself without a “nanny” companion for the LA trip later this month.

But just when I felt myself imploding….there was a release.  A deep breath.  A mainspring decompressed.

That space immediately before the release is my Delicate Hour.  My most vulnerable moment.  The moment when I’m quite sure that I’m about to be swallowed whole, the sky is falling,  and nothing will ever work out.  And  in that moment last night TheMan kissed my face and told me he’d come with me to LA to help nanny and support me…and that I was not alone, and that every step in this direction is worth the effort it requires.

Hollywood can have its slow-moving kissing spinning dolly shot.  I have TheMan.  And if you happen to buy my Delicate Hour EP when it comes out August 3rd…you can thank him for it.

“Strawberry fields forever”

I don’t know if it’s because I’m a new mom, or new home-owner, or both…but lately i look in the mirror and see Martha.  I suddenly feel inspired to pursue a modern-homestead ideal, complete with vegetable and flower gardens, sewing machine, and an over-confident (and therefore often disastrous) DIY spirit.

It’s probably in part due to a childhood cooped up in apartment after apartment, in the urban sprawl and concrete kingdom known as Madrid.  I had a little too much time on my hands, devouring books like “Little Women” and “A Secret Garden”, and wondering at the idea of a plot of earth to make things grow in.

So, after we moved into our first home last December, one month after i gave birth (i highly recommend that sequence only if you’re anxious to test the boundaries of your sanity),we waited patiently for the Michigan tundra to thaw and for spring to signal our work to begin.  I have thrown myself happily into the deep part of the organic gardening, baking, dehydrating pool…but not nearly as deep as TheMan (what i will affectionately refer to my husband as hereafter).  No decision for TheMan is complete without 8 how-to books, and 3 dummy guides…and gardening and homestead life is no exception.

The only problem with that is that while TheMan is carefully researching the proper way to trellis tomatoes, I’m knee-deep in mud sticking in cages.  Here lies a very basic (and telling) truth difference about us:  i lack the patience to tediously learn(and take notes in green notebooks..NOT that I’m saying that anyone i know does that) about how to do things.  I just like to jump in there and try it.   This inevitably leads to many debacles and failed attempts until i figure it out, but whatever….the journey is the destination, right?

So when TheMan informed me that he purchased two giant vats of organic Strawberries from our farm share because they’re otherwise very high on the toxic list, i knew there would be consequences involving some kind of chore I’d have to do.   Insert 40′s big band tv commercial theme song here.

Welcome, friends.   Today we will learn how to properly prepare and freeze strawberries so we can later make our own jam…or, as is more likely the case for me, use them as ice-cubes in your cocktail of choice.  After washing your organic strawberries again, and drying them (heaven forbid the organic fruit not be washed a second or third time), you cut the leaves off and place the strawberry, cut side down, onto a cookie tray.  Insert cookie tray into freezer to freeze for about 24 hours.  Once frozen, remove strawberries from tray and place into freezer bags until  you are ready to use them for jam, ect.

Now let’s do the math here: four quarts of strawberries x 2= 8 quarts of strawberries in each vat. 8×2=16 total quarts.  One cookie tray holds about 2 quarts of strawberries which means I’ll be freezing strawberries for about the next 3 days using our freezer and my parent’s two freezers.  Nah…i didn’t have anything else to do this week.

That being said…I do look forward to trying my hand at jam making.  When I sink my teeth into that strawberry goodness I will likely forget what a pain it was to get there.  And i can only aspire to such sweet stirring skills like the ones so elegantly displayed by Marge Braker here at “Cooking up a Story”.  You go Marge…way to use that spatula like a Spartan.

About the Apples

After 10 years of song-writing I’ve come to realize something shocking about the music industry: it is not friendly to artists.  It’s no surprise that in our consumer-based culture the dollar is the driving force behind top-charting, trend-topping, auto tune-tracking, tour trekking  known as the music industry.  It should read: The price for fame=a burnt out exhausted artist running on empty and with a non-existant (or severely dysfunctional) family life.  And the irony is that after spending 2+ years on the road promoting a record, we’re somehow supposed to turn around a give birth to another album and do it all over again.

I don’t want that life.

It has taken me the better part of the last ten years to realize that.  After all, i am a product of our society, and its hard to differentiate between “success” and “fame”.   I am re-defining the former for myself.  After 3 years of marriage,  and the birth of my son, my priorities have changed.  My life as a mother, wife, lover, thinker, dreamer, and tinker…is my successful life.  The composted soil that gives way (after much sweat and toil) to the fruit my songs are made of:  the real stuff of life…something you can hopefully sink your teeth into and chew on for a while.

Everything else needs to fit around that life.  Maybe I’m crazy to think its possible to believe in a modest, sustainable career that pivots around my family.   Maybe its going to be manic for a while as i learn to juggle while spinning plates on my head, riding a uni-cycle in the middle of a ring of fire.  I don’t think it’s going to be easy…but this blog is a window into my trying to make that dream come true.

I have for years been a fan of Chilean poet (and prophet in my book) Pablo Neruda.  He has a way of offering you a lens through which the everyday becomes magnificent, and the miniscule minutia, marvelous.  I want to live my life with that kind of attention to detail, with that kind of awe and reverence.  This is his Ode to the Present…a beautiful manifesto of living simply, presently, with gratitude in your pocket and your feet firmly planted in the meaningful, well-tended life.

ODE TO THE PRESENT

This

moment

as smooth

as a board,

and fresh,

this hour,

this day

as clean

as an untouched glass

-not a single

spiderweb

from the past:

we touch

the moment

with our fingers,

we cut it

to size,

we direct

its blooming.

It’s living,

it’s alive:

it brings nothing

from yesterday that can’t be redeemed,

nothing from the lost past.

This is our creation,

it’s growing

this very instant, kicking up

sand or eating

out of our hand.

Catch it,

don’t let it slip away!

Keep it from vanishing into dreams

or words!

Grab it,

pin it down,

make it obey!

Make it a road

or a bell,

a machine,

a kiss, a book

or a caress.

Slice into its sweet

scent of wood,

make yourself a chair

from it,

then weave yourself

a seat.

Try it out-

or, better,

try a ladder!

Yes,

a ladder:

rise

out of the moment

step

by step,

feet firmly

planted on the wood

of the moment.

Up and

up

but not too much-

just high enough

to

patch

the holes

in the roof.

Not too far;

You don’t want to reach heaven.

Climb up

to the apples

but not as far as the clouds

(let

them

cruise the sky, drifting

toward the past).

You

are

your own moment,

your own apple:

pluck it

from your apple tree.

Hold it up

in your

hand:

it shines

like a star.

Stroke it,

sink your teeth into it and go

whistling on your way.

Pablo Neruda