I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part two of why Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” is on the album:

In the same way that Aimee Mann’s work has guided me towards a responsible undoing of my expectation/temptation to resolve songs, the cultural counterpart to this same thought also resonates with me.  Despite having grown up outside a particular religious tradition (raised by wolves) I had been somewhat culturally trained to think of “being saved” as a specific kind of resolution; particularly that it was something very final… something that happened in a singular moment with a one-time agreement.  Like chancing upon a lifetime membership to my Happy Place.

The odd thing about this understanding of “being saved” is that, since I’ve followed Jesus, it has all the more grated against my experience of life and faith.  My ‘conversion’ didn’t take place all in a moment and certainly has been a happy experience at times but never consistently.  My being “saved” never felt like something snapped into place after which I was then on my way.  I’ve experienced the waxing and waning of actual change in my life and the same waxing and waning of faith that my life’s change is authentic and lasting.  Less than a one-time agreement, it’s been more like fits and starts, in all honesty.

Sara Miles, in her book “Take This Bread” writes: “Conversion isn’t a moment: it’s process and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt.”

A process of cycles and seasons.  That sounds like it.  Something more like the growing of a branch connected to a vine.. born invisibly, growing in shoots and perhaps too quickly… needing to be pruned.. growing again and bearing fruit.. but then.. Fall.. Winter and the long, dark hope that Spring will come again, bringing a greater abundance of fruit.  The work of a good gardener, salvation is not the magic and surgically sterile removal of my life from “this world” or even the mystical transcendence of my own base humanness.  It is the strange, messy and (dare I say) unfinished business of becoming a complete human being… one like Jesus.

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part one of why Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” is on the album:

Magnolia is one of the only movies I have ever gone back to the theater to see.  Cast with the likes of Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and WIlliam H. Macy, there really isn’t a weak performance anywhere in the movie (unless you hate Tom Cruize instinctively,… which is really more about you than the movies you see).

I watched Magnolia the first time with my wife and some friends.  Our friends didn’t care much for the film, commenting that it was “bizarre,” “pathetic,” and “unlikely.”  We agreed that those were accurate descriptions but, to the contrary, Amy and I both thought those were exactly the elements we enjoyed most about it; it was so much like life as we knew it.

Along loving the story, the cinematography and the performances, I also fell in love with the movies soundtrack and in doing so, discovered Aimee Mann.  (little did I know she was the vocalist for the band Til Tuesday, whose single “Voices Carry” echoed through my head through much of the late eighties).  My understanding is that much of the Magnolia’s motivation and theme is derived from Aimee Mann’s music.  In fact, a few of the character Claudia’s lines are directly lifted from Aimee Mann lyrics.  In one case, she turns to Officer Jim Kurring, who is desperately in love with her and says

“Now that I’ve met you
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again.”

…which is the opening line to the song “Deathly”; a song I seriously considered covering for Undone. Instead, I chose the “Save Me.” which was written specifically for the film and is one of the the most pivotal songs in my musical history.

Much of its importance to me is strictly musi-technical.  Its darker tone, melancholy mood and seemingly-too-slow tempo don’t add up to “Save Me” being a downer song at all.  In fact, Save Me is incredibly catchy and has plenty of the energy one would want in a pop song.  What was revelatory for me was that It’s life and energy are not fabricated by bright, shimmery guitar tones or an uplifting, major-chord-driven chorus.  The song is alive because of the tension within it; a tension that never resolves but keeps the song trudging from verse to chorus to bridge and and and on.  This element was liberating for me as a writer.  I could leave a song “in the dark” as it were and let go of the temptation to force a feeling of resolution in lyric or in tone.

Until I let “Save Me” sink into my skin a bit, I didn’t quite recognize how strong the temptation to “resolve” a song actually was. I believed, as do most young artists, that I was being entirely authentic and transparent in my work.  But even looking at my 2000 release “Father,” an album ostensibly about wrestling with my father’s suicide, I could see very clearly where a few of the songs were somewhat forced; at least in the way I finished them… as if I was tying together broken limbs with pretty bows and wrapping paper.   Mann’s work guided me to see that art’s job was seldom to resolve.  More often, a great work affirms the mysterious nature of the human experience just as it is, which is a form of redemption in and of itself.  In this light, I would even go so far as to say that to force a resolution is to give in to the fear that a true resolution might not be there at all; that I must create or even fake it.  It strikes me that this is what is most disappointing about much art in the christian marketplace.  Not that it’s cheesy or even that it’s particularly bad; what is most disappointing is that it is insincere.  I wanted to distance myself from that temptation and the machinery that is angled toward giving in to it.

My 2002 release “Trust” was, as a whole, inspired and fueled by the musical revelation I found in Aimee Mann’s work.  From guitar and drum tones to chord progressions and even lyric choices, Trust was shaped by the freedom to leave songs in the dark; to create a tension and allow that tension to sustain the life of a song and even an entire album.

You can listen to a full length video preview of my “Save Me” at the top of this blog.
You can pick it up at iTunes or at my Online Store.

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part of why The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” is on the album:

Yup.. I was that kid, at least for a season;  I wore as much black as I could put on and kept my hair over my eyes to peer at you through while mumbling about my superiority as an intellectual.  That kid.  Maybe it was falling out of favor with the popular crowd that did it.  Or maybe it was because I was almost suddenly too small to play on the football team any more.. But something set me off on a journey towards the valley of “The Tweakers.”

I was in touch with my emotions..  and yours.
I read Poe, Ginsberg and Kerouac.. and understood.
I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show… and knew every word

I also listened to the Smiths…  The jangle-y, sparkling guitar tones of Johnny Marr set the backdrop for modern music’s most dramatic lyricists: Morrissey.  Lyrics such as

“If a 10-ton truck kills the both of us
To die by your side is such a wonderful way to die.”  (from There Is A Light That Never Goes Out)

Were set to music that might just as well have supported something more like

“I bought a dog to day, a yellow lab he is
He’s just a puppy, and he’s cuddly and so cute”

But it was (and is) exactly that juxtaposition of happy and sad that resonated deeply with me as an adolescent.  Then again, maybe it’s less of a juxtaposition and more of a mix.. Happy with sad. The music the Smiths made celebrated a collision of these two emotions that was… well, true.  Seldom had I experienced a sadness (especially up to that point) that was all shadow, through and through.  Something about the experience of sadness always had a the buzz of energy to it… of life… the thrill that I was feeling something.

Only later and at a sufficient distance from my adolescence did I start to grasp what all that was about; That, in a culture addicted to pleasure; a culture that spends billions in the attempt to avoid pain and maintain it’s high, feeling something low, something negative was redemptive.. In the experience of sadness, I became more acquainted with the fullness of my own humanity.

Makoto Fujimura writes about sadness as a more acceptable aspect to Japanese culture, saying…

“…the Japanese traditional culture affirms vulnerability and loss. Japanese poems and paintings… are full of sorrow and sadness, and their poetic tradition of “mono-no-aware” can be literally translated “beauty in the pathos of things.”  They already recognize that, on this side of eternity, we must see the beauty in an empty cup.”

The music of The Smiths captured this for me.  I saw the beauty of my empty cup through the lens of songs like “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time.” Here’s my cover of it:

You can pick up my rendition of the song at iTunes
or my Online Store

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part two of why Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like A Hole” is on the album:

What Reznor finds enraging about the abuse of power, wealth and influence I see and feel as well. As do most of us (I exclude here the likes of Emperor Palpatine and Sauron the Great). In fact, the marriage of religious influence with political power and financial wealth is a partnership whose destructive malevolence was the focus of many Old Testament prophets, most markedly Amos, who begins his prophetic imagery with the LORD “roar(ing) from Zion.” And why does the LORD roar? Among other things, he roars in anger over the abuse of religious, political and financial power

6 “For three sins of Israel, even for four,
I will not turn back {my wrath}.
They sell the righteous for silver,  
and the needy for a pair of sandals.

7 They trample on the heads of the poor 
      
as upon the dust of the ground 
      
and deny justice to the oppressed. 
      
Father and son use the same girl 
      
and so profane my holy name.

8 They lie down beside every altar 
      
on garments taken in pledge. 
      
In the house of their god 
      
they drink wine taken as fines.

This echoes in my heart:
…They sell the righteous for silver, 
and the needy for a pair of sandals.

Because somewhere there is a child or a family whose freedom has been compromised so that the already-wealthy don’t have to pay “full price” for shoes.

So does this:
….In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines.

The wine in some religious ceremonies during Amos’ time had been purchased with money collected from unfair and unethical fees and punishments imposed on the vulnerable and poor. It rendered the celebration of religion detestable in God’s sight. While this kind of crookedness is the exception, there is still much of christendom built on the backs of the unknowingly manipulated.. the swindled.. those who came to the Church to find a place of rest and belonging but instead found a place of emotional manipulation and trickery; Peoples’ actual needs for health, growth and community taken advantage of in order to support the expansion of their shepherd’s career in religious industry. I see these things with the same level of anger as Reznor does,.. but also with a touch of sadness that the original recording of Head Like A Hole doesn’t portray. Which is why I wanted my arrangement to reflect not only the anger but the grief and lament of God for the abuse of power.

It is rumored that the original recording of Head Like A Hole features a one-take of Reznor’s lead vocal (meaning that he only tracked once and left it alone,.. flaws included). The rawness of his voice is then set against the driving, mechanical construction of the song’s arrangement. This tension between the human and the mechanical is what I believe gives the original track such beautiful power. My choice was to move in the opposite direction, .. So I had a cylon sing my part…. Actually, what I mean is that I wanted to make the whole thing feel human… To tap into lament and sadness rather than simply rage; hoping that the tension created would be enough to sustain the song. So, if you listen carefully to the beginning of my rendition, you can hear the creaking of the piano and even hear piano player Ben Shive breathing (I forgot to list that in the liner notes: “Breathing Noises: Ben Shive”)

You can pick up my rendition of the song at iTunes
or my Online Store

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part one of why Tom Waits’ “Georgia Lee” is on the album:

My first knowledge of Tom Waits actually came by way of Primus; a band I listened to incessantly as a teenager.  Wait’s appears on Primus’ dark and quirky 1991 release “Sailing The Seas of Cheese.” He is featured on a track entitled “Tommy The Cat” as the voice of Tommy, who is, of course, a cat.  Interesting bit of trivia: Primus backs Waits on the opening track to “Mule Variations,” the same album from which we get the song “Georgia Lee.”

Waits wrote Georgia Lee with his wife, Kathleen after the body of 12-year old Georgia Lee Moses was found off Highway 101 in Petaluma, CA, just north of San Francisco.  Discovered on Aug 23, 1997, Georgia had run away and was missing for over two weeks before her absence was noticed; a more common occurrence in low-income or impoverished areas.  In fact, just four years earlier, the absence of Polly Klaas, a 12-year old girl from an upper middle class neighborhood in the same county as Georgia Moses, had stirred outrage and action nationwide.  Major celebrities and news outlets committed hours of time to finding her.  Polly’s kidnapper and eventual murderer was arrested and is now on death row.  The man who killed Georgia was never found.

“Not to make it a racial matter,” Waits said “but it was one of those things where, you know, she’s a black kid, and when it comes to missing children and unsolved crimes, a lot of it has to do with timing, or publicity . . . and there was this whole Polly Klaas Foundation up here, while Georgia Lee did not get any real attention.  And I wanted to write a song about it.”

Road-Side Monument for Georgia Lee in Petaluma, CA

I don’t at all mean to belittle the time and energy spent searching for, mourning and remembering Polly Klaas.  Nor do I believe Waits intended to do so.  Quite the opposite in fact; that a child goes missing from their home or neighborhood should be cause for all regularly-scheduled programming to pause.. any child…

And perhaps it was simply “to do with timing” that there was so much attention paid to the finding of one child, while another child’s absence and death can be simply read as the lay of the land. I’m not suggesting that media attention is the most accurate measure of our concern for life but the nightly news is at least some reflection of collective consciousness; some reflection of what things are of value to us;  what things we are watching, listening to and present to.

A year after services were held, Waits is quoted as saying about the service “I guess everybody was wondering, where were the police, where was the deacon, where were the social workers, and where was I and where were you.”

So while it might not be CNN or FOX or even the local paper, it has to be someone, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what our hearts demand?.. that someone is watching, someone is listening, someone is there for the other child? for every child?

“Where were her parents?  What kind of parent allows their child to run away and doesn’t call the police?” we ask.  All the while knowing that parents are not always good parents; sometimes parents are only children themselves, as Wait’s writes:  “A lot of kids are raising their parents.”

“So, If not her parents,” we concede “then what about her neighbors?  What kind of neighborhood lets one of it’s little ones simply disappear?”  At which my own heart sinks because I do not know the names of children who live only a few units away from me.

What kind of world is it, then, in which the in the foundational institutions set in place to facilitate the development of young life so consistently fail?

This progression of questions about the broken nature of things leads us to the One whose world it is… or at least to the places we expect to find Him.  The SF Chronicle reported that Waits attended Georgia Moses’ memorial service, “sitting quietly at the back of the crowded church.”

Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there?

If not the news networks, the families or the neighbors.. If not the world He made, then must not God Himself protect the most vulnerable among us?

Part 2 coming shortly…

You can purchase the song or the album here
You can also find it at iTunes