Perspective is Where Art Lives

words on life + songwriting

Remember the Indigo Girls? How about this line: “The less I seek my soul for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.”

The thing about having teenage children is eventually, they are not teenagers anymore. The rise just above it, to twenty…and you can start to see a pale formation of how they will be as adults- balancing in the world.

My older daughter is heading out to Europe with her wonderful boyfriend. A whole world in front of her. She’s an explorer at heart, a helper and appreciator of what she finds as she begins to walk through this world.

My younger daughter just turned 18. Her path has been incredibly intense and what we have learned about ourselves as a family, human resilience and love these past few years has been an incredible journey.

Sometimes I think I will write a book about the last few years. But I ended up, as I shared with you last week, writing songs again. Songs are and have always been what my mind, body and heart endure as they are extracted from me. They save me, yes. They also exhaust me.

It’s a beautiful process and a difficult process. For me at least, it really is like childbirth. With each song, often I feel it coming and have to grab my guitar as soon as possible and let it come. Sometimes it’s a blur- all the lyrics literally falling out and the chords there to catch them. Like my second daughter who flew out after an hour of labor, it was ultra-intense and awesome. Sometimes, it’s a harder process…. if we are using the birth metaphor we could say sometimes songwriting is “long labor.” Weeks going by and the lyrics aren’t right yet. But that wasn’t these songs.

This new batch has been fast in terms of the actual writing. But what I was left with when the songs were finished felt emotionally exhausting. When playing them for my family, I would start crying. And every member of my family cried - including my younger daughter, who they are mostly inspired from. At her 18th birthday a few weeks ago we were championing all she has come through and also- honoring how challenging it has been. I told her…on the bright side, you gave me something to write about again. And …again, everybody cried. I can’t imagine what the tables next to us thought.

Where there is pain, there is often a strange sort of beauty. And alongside that, an opportunity for huge and stunning transformation. Awe-inspiring transformation, in fact. The harder the road, the richer the opportunity. And that is where art always seems to step in. Are you ready? That is what art asks me when it sees that I am just barely able to shed a little perspective.

Yeah. There’s been some tears around here lately. Good tears. Tears of relief and also tears of exhaustion. Like being in the last stages of a marathon. You’re almost there, you know you are going to finish. But you’re still running. That’s where we are.

So here I am with these songs and of course then I need to record them. And I want to do it in a way that I’ve never done it before. That would be, say….without panic. I (try and) remain calm in the studio. Let the recordings form themselves, in a way. I want to honor the songs themselves- not concerned with how they should be packaged in order to…say, get played on TV (which I did for many years.) Recording them so the expectation is that the songs will reflect themselves and my experiences perfectly. That is what these songs deserve.

And so, back to that quote I mentioned at the top of this post. “The less I seek my soul for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” How does that tie in here? This line could mean something different to everyone, but for me it means: everything is just a process. I don’t always need to know or understand where I am, how I got here, what’s next. (I’m not sure I ever need to know.) What our family has been through turns out to be in the name of love. However, it’s still evolving, people are still growing and learning. I know I am.

Maybe the marathon is never really over. It’s just that you allow yourself to sit on the sidelines now and then and have some water and a hug. Yesterday I tried so hard not to have an intense day- but I had just written that 4th song and I loved it so much…I was so thankful….but I was so compeltely exhausted emotionally. The birth itself was easy, but here I was with this very real and powerful representation of myself and my experience. I didn’t know what to do with it. I was overwhelmed. By the end of the day I was kind of sniffling-crying as I was making dinner. My older daughter called me to the couch where she was finishing up her Europe reservations. She put her arms around me and said: It’s ok mama. You’re just tired.

xo
C