When you have something to say, and that something takes the
form of art, then the part of our humanness that desires order will plant a
seed. That seed grows into a thought, which becomes a plan, and pretty soon we
are taking steps toward creating some sort of artistic collection. Books, plays,
movies, dances, displays, exhibits and concerts – these are all proof that our
left brains are married to our right brains. For singer-songwriters, that seed
sometimes sprouts into musical projects like concerts, recitals or albums. I’ve
done all of them. They are all invigorating and taxing for creative sorts like
me. Ideas, from my personal perspective, are never a problem. Execution, on the
other hand….
I recorded two “albums” before I was able to admit that I
was really ready to record AN ALBUM. I call them learning curve projects, and
their existence is part of my personal history and has merit. But I wouldn’t
say I’m thrilled with them. Looking back, though, I was satisfied at the moment
of creation, but the satisfaction was short lived. So when I had saved up
enough money and emotion to attempt my first “real” project, I went forward
with a little trepidation, though that fear was outweighed by excitement and
anticipation. I do not recall harboring thoughts that anything I recorded might
be played on a grand scale, like the radio, for instance. I’ve always wanted to
be a good songwriter more than I wanted to be a good performer. So allowing
myself to think of my recordings as demo’s was a nice way out, a sort of
permission slip to be average as a singer because I didn’t intend for the
recording itself to get more attention than the song. Nonetheless, when one
artist gathers her songs in one place, and sorts and arranges them, there is no
denying that she wants them to be palatable.
I watched my sister, for instance, arranging cheese and fruits on a
platter the other day, for a dinner gathering, and I pondered the eternal
tendency to make beauty in everything we do. My friend Carla will spend hours
and hours designing and manufacturing a hand-made card. She has such a strong
mechanism for creating beauty that it is almost paralyzing. She has only so
much energy to create her beauty, and it is never enough. She was probably one
of those Creation Angels who was given full access to God’s palette in the Way-Back
of our existence. Her soul is so used to being able to create beauty that it
hurts to be stuck in her body. And so she fights the Devil himself on a daily
basis to simply survive. But her collection of songs is divine. I mean Divine,
with a capital D, and I wish the Devil would get out of her way!
When I completed that first self-produced album project,
which I duplicated and sold, I got a call from my friend Doug, who is a fabulous
singer-songwriter, one of the best I know. Doug feels like a brother to me. He
complimented me on my album, then asked how I felt about it.
“Man, Doug. It’s strange. I spent so much of myself on this project. All that
time and money and family sacrifice, and I listen to it and think I should have
done this differently, or that differently. That is something I had not
anticipated.”
Doug said, “Well, I’ve always thought you need to look at a
music album like a photo album. It’s a snapshot of where you were at that
moment in your life. You’d go crazy trying to get anything perfect. It is what
it is, and it has merit. Most living things change with time. Songs are living
things, and should be allowed to grow. But if we don’t get them down, then
there will come a point where no one knows they existed, and wouldn’t that be a
shame.”
Doug is the most warm-hearted, gentle no-nonsense kind of
guy. One of those men I can hug with full abandon and know he loves me with
genuine truth and no guile. He has a resonant, beautiful voice, which is
perfectly suited to his guitars. I hear his voice repeatedly in my head, saying
those words to me. I can even see myself hearing them for the first time on the
phone. I was sitting on the third step from the bottom of our basement stairs
in the old house. His wisdom goes beyond music albums. It reaches past art,
into the eternities. What we create, for good or for bad, is just a snapshot of
where we were at the time. We will be different tomorrow, for sure. What we
assemble in our various “albums” of experience is not a full representation of
the whole of us. For that, we will need to wait a few thousand eternities.
Still, I wish Carla would let those songs of hers find themselves
in some sort of album; some sort of beautifully, wonderfully imperfect album.
