10/15/2016 1 Comment Two Poems by Sheikha A.Love Disease inspired from Olfa Philo’s Love Spells You have seen more moons than a god, but there is no way to be sure. Water under an alight bridge beneath a shark-thick grey sky hides the lips you have kissed. Thirsty waves look up at eclipses that are no longer buried under curtains of dust. You are a new rising. Call my name to show me the light. My feet are not rested from the endless travails you make me follow you through. Call my name to pull me out from these walls of Pompeii. Call, so I can walk out of this eclipse. Mysticism Some words are easy to wear, like ‘unstable’. His mind is a difficult organ to penetrate. Winter’s slush pile arrives too early as autumn, subjecting every moving leaf to crimson. All I see are giant footsteps left from feet of migrating warm-region birds, leaving like the season fell less for mending. His feet are fog on a pane of glass; his hands are mist on the neck of a pine. Linen voice on spread of logic: it is a hard battle to win. Bio: Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Over 300 of her poems appear in a variety of literary venues, both print and online, including several anthologies by different presses. She edits poetry for eFiction India. More about her can be accessed on her blog sheikha82.wordpress.com
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Let's talk voices. The moment that you hear certain ones, you know them almost immediately. Emmylou, Stevie Nicks, Baez or Linda Perry, strong female voices that are singularly, hauntingly one of a kind. Anna Tivel is one of those voices. Strung with urgency, vocal dynamite, sometimes a whisper turning suddenly into a rumble from beneath the bottom of the ocean floor, singing every single word as if it contained the whole story, and it probably does. "I ran to the apple trees to bury what I know... but I don't need a savior or a lesson on a stone, to dig a hole and lay down in the night" Anna's voice matches these words, which is to say there is no separation between her poetry and her execution, it's all there, palpably surrounding every story she pens and performs. It's the kind of music you want to believe in, doubt never even enters your mind. "Even the hunger you've been holding, it's gotta let up some time soon". To approach these songs hungry, in an existential sense, and, after the listening, to walk away understood and transformed, accompanied by a voice that has been "there", that place where magic lingers through the embers of the song, marking a clear path to that endless, winding road where in "the yellow light of morning you forget the darker things you done". AHC: What has this journey, this life in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Anna: Music has been a constant saving grace in my life. I learned to play the fiddle as a kid, but came to songwriting much later. I floundered around for quite awhile after college, trying to figure myself out, waiting tables, playing some fiddle in bands and entertaining dreams of being a writer/musician full-time. A roommate of mine let me plunk around on her guitar and I fell deep in love with the way a chord can draw certain images and emotions to mind. It became the best part of my day and I started doing it as much as possible. I love the work of trying to craft an image or a story in words set to a verse and chorus. It’s the only way I’ve ever really felt like I can communicate something meaningful. I’m a pretty quiet person, so the performance aspect of making a life as a songwriter has always been the hard part. There can be a lot of doubt about the worth of the thing. Should I be doing social work instead, something more concrete and immediately helpful in a community? But I guess at the end of the day I always come back to the artists and authors that have meant so much to me, and to how affecting a song can be when it tells a story that feels honest. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Anna: My family has always been musical and music-loving. My grandpa lived with us for awhile and he played the violin and I remember laying at his feet and listening and wanting to play like he did. He had this beautiful shaky-handed vibrato that sounded like an old victrola. My parents listened to a lot of folk and bluegrass, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio, and Dylan. My sister and I went through our pop radio phase, Mariah Carey, Smash Mouth, Blink 1-82, and Train. I remember hearing that song ‘Traveling Soldier,’ (written by Bruce Robison and sung by the Dixie Chicks), on the country station in the car with my dad. I was totally struck by the story, how simple and heartbreaking. I remember waiting forever for it to come on my little boom box so I could record it on cassette. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Anna: Sort of. It was something about whales and it was truly terrible. I also sort of remember the second and third and fourth songs. They were also terrible. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain songs or albums that you couldn't live without? Anna: So many and more all the time. I’m a big lyric-lover, the music could just be one note over and over and if the lyrics hit me, it sounds so full. Gillian Welch has always been a huge inspiration, the simplicity of her voice and her complex but seemingly plain-spoken stories. I couldn’t live without her album ‘Time (The Revalator).’ Anais Mitchell’s album ‘Young Man in America’ really lit a fire in me too. Also Tift Merrit, Tom Waits, Patty Griffin, Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, so many good ones. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Anna: Hmm, there are a million ways to come at a good song I think. The story is what makes it a lot of times, letting a story stand unadorned, that one is hard for me, but the times I’ve gotten close, those are the songs that stick around and feel the most true. I can tell when I get sucked down the hole of just playing with words, loving the way they sound together. I call this the pretty-talker effect and I battle it constantly. There are times when a string of images creates just the feeling you’re trying to relay, and there are times when a real story needs to stand plain to be effective. I don’t know. I mess it all up over and over and sometimes write things that feel more true to me than others and I love the struggle of getting there. When you play a new song for an audience for the first time, that’s when you feel it the most, wether other people feel that story or wether you just wrote it because you needed to. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Anna: Yes. There’s something so deep-down-mysterious about the way certain music can move you at certain times. It’s taking a walk at night in a city vs. taking a walk at night in a city with Tom Waits playing in your headphones. I’m terrible at watching suspenseful movies because the music does such a thing to your body, puts your guts all in knots, even when some lady is just standing in her kitchen. I worked for a few years serving meals in a retirement home. Sometimes people would come in and play old big band songs for the residents and it meant the entire world to them. There’s such a strong connection between music and emotion and memory, the song your dad hummed when you were a kid, the first song you danced to with someone you loved, the music you played on the stereo when you drove across the country, when your friend passed away, when the sun came out after a long winter. Writing songs to me is incredibly healing. As someone who isn’t so great at communicating a coherent thought in conversation, music provides this way to take color and sound and visceral images and gather them together to communicate something. AHC: In a world that is moving faster and faster, for better or worse, I think that really good, tried and true music helps orient us to our times, slows us down and brings us back to ourselves, folk music is such a great example of this. When you set out to write and compose an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Anna: I think part of the work of being a songwriter is just being open to the world, traveling around and watching people and listening to their stories and listening to the news and trying to put yourself in all different types of shoes. Some of my favorite artists tell stories so seamlessly, so honestly, that you’ll never know whether it’s their story or just something they heard or dreamed up. John Prine can sing “Angel from Montgomery” from the eyes of an old southern woman and I believe every word and it’s such a moving song. I have yet to really consciously set out to write an album of songs with a specific theme in mind, but I’d love to someday. So far, it’s more like just setting out to be a sponge, a collector of people’s stories and facial expressions, the look of a restaurant in a certain light. I’ve just gotten into writing straightforward story-songs in the past few years and hope to do more and more of it. Sometimes I’ll write a certain story a few different ways and nothing feels true and then I try a fourth way and it comes out feeling more honest somehow. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Anna: I love sleeping in the van in some random parking lot on tour, walking around unfamiliar towns, watching people, eating at the grocery store or some greasy diner, playing for strangers who may or may not care. Sometimes all these things are more romantic than other times:) Lately I’ve been sharing some tours with my boyfriend, who’s an amazing songwriter. Touring alone can be freeing and magical, but it sure feels good to share the ups and downs of the road with someone. We’ll sleep in the humid heat in a walmart parking lot one night and get put up by a venue in a nice hotel the next night. I have a great memory of driving through UT with him and stopping for the night to find a backroad spot to sleep in Moab and watching the sun go down and listening to coyotes howling in the canyons. We’re both at a place in our careers where we sometimes play to two drunk people in a gritty bar with sports on the tv in the background, and sometimes we play great little listening rooms to people who get excited about lyrics and buy albums. The former makes you extremely grateful for the latter. AHC: What would be your dream gig, if you were asked to go on tour and open up for one of your musical heroes or heroines? Anna: Oh man, that’s a hard one. I just love playing to people who are into wordy, slightly depressing folk songs. I’d be so excited to open for Josh Ritter or Joe Henry or Patty Griffin. Maybe the greatest thing in the world to me would be to open for John Prine. AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Anna: Work as hard as you can to make art that you believe in. It’s easy to get caught up in all the work of booking and promoting, especially when you’re just starting out and doing everything yourself and trying to make a living. All of that stuff is good to learn and good to work hard at, but if writing and playing songs is the thing you love and the reason you’re doing any of it, do that thing the most and do it as much as you can. AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Anna: I released a new album in May and am hoping to start recording the next one this winter sometime, hopefully it’ll be done by summer. Besides that, I’m just trying to write my face off and tour and maybe start this interview/story project I’ve been dreaming of doing for awhile now. For more information visit www.annativel.com/ Meanings in a Shadow-Land Pain is contagious. Especially on a day, which is soaked to its core with ennui and warm beer. Eyes! they haunt me. Eyes, which have not seen yet. They will steal your spark to lighten up the drones, and your godhead will be exchanged for a few rat-races. buckle up. Your soul is going to get beat up till you yes their yes. Will you be robbed by them? Will you be played out in their game of schools, selfies and gold-talks ? will you forget that deep down, you can't be hurt ? will you die, before you die? "This is a beautiful world". No, it is not. This is an ugly madhouse, and anything of value is only you. You can't love, unless you have realized your oneness with this filth. World is 70 % water and 100 % suffering, and everything is running down to their entropic death at the speed of pain. Are you scared? You better be. Let the meanings find you. Let you be blessed with clarity, understanding and sublime of the pregnant lack. Bio: Sudeep Adhikari is a Structural Engineer from Kathmandu, Nepal. His poetry has found place in many online/print literary journals/magazines, the recent being Red Fez (USA), Kyoto (Japan), Uneven Floor (Australia), Dark Matter Journal (USA), Open Mouse (Scotland), Outsider Poetry (USA), Devolution Z (Canada) and Pinyon Review (USA). "Before dance, there is movement; before painting, gesture and light; before the poem, the tracing of signs and forms: world-gestures, world-patterns" a description of Loie Fuller's hauntingly mysterious art of movement, but one that could just as easily be said of the music and art of Rachel Mason. Much like Fuller's poetry of light, movement and cloth symbolizing a hidden universe of forms and gestures, Mason creates worlds within worlds, in music, art, film, forms hiding other forms, depths without end or limitation. To encounter her work is to find oneself on a journey, one that's destination is not known beforehand but that's arrival is always well worth the travel. Her work is conceptual, performative, always on the move and never where you would expect it to be. Like Laurie Anderson, Mason is a conductor fully in command of her score. In an age where grand musical narratives, grand narratives in general, seem to be declining, Mason shows not only what can be done when you create with the largest canvas available, but what the painting of, not a state of movement, but movement itself, looks like. AHC: You create fantastic and intricate rock operas to more subdued folk music, what is your approach to making an album from concept to final form, and what inspires your songwriting and music? Rachel: When I'm writing songs specifically tied to a narrative like The Lives of Hamilton Fish, I do a lot of research and then allow myself a kind of freedom to just let the songs hit me, when they will. It’s impossible to really know when you will get your best lyrics and melodies. Sometimes songs come in my dreams, or while I’m walking or driving. But I do love having an over-arching concept that contains the body of songs, because often with the song-series I learn what I need to create with my visual art that pulls everything together. The two are very much interwoven for me. AHC: Your art work is very political and poignantly so, from "The Ambassadors" to "The Candidate" which features disembodied hands at a podium absent a whole figure, profoundly mirroring just how disembodied our political culture is, to the provocative "kissing President Bush". Could you talk about your approach and philosophy surrounding these works and to your art practice as a whole? Rachel: ”The Ambassadors” was a project which involved both sculpture and songs. I sculpted figurines as a kind of fictionalized “collectors” set of the busts of leaders of the countries that were fighting during my lifetime. I included myself at the age that I was for each conflict. While sculpting these figures I created two albums of songs, and these were called, “Songs of the Ambassadors.” It’s still one of my favorite projects because it has so many far reaching tentacles. One of the songs, “My Chechen Wolves” ended up having a lot of momentum on YouTube and the song itself became a kind of anthem. Another song, “Unbind it” were the actual words of Saddam Hussein that I set to music. His own words were so musical. I performed these songs mostly in the art world whenever the Ambassadors were shown, or when I was doing related exhibitions. One of my favorite of these was a very large scale production at the Park Avenue Armory. I basically took over the whole Armory with an army of dancers - and did the whole thing very much guerrilla style- and with no budget. I morphed from Saddam Hussein, to Dzhokar Dudayev and then to an oracle. “The Candidate” was a project which came from an assignment to draw John Edwards back in 2009 when he was a presidential candidate for Playboy Magazine, by the writer Will Blythe. I got an email out of the blue asking if I would illustrate his article, and it was an amazing experience to go on the campaign trail sketching all of the candidates (including Clinton and Obama, who both signed my drawings). I ended up with hundreds of drawings and did an exhibition with a series of podiums which referenced, using my own hands, the candidates’ own gestures that they repeatedly used while giving stump speeches. “Kissing President Bush” was a sculpture I made while a student at Yale, and it was my response to the President and the entire government which I felt was so deeply corrupt and which I could not find any way to realistically protest during that time. AHC: Could you talk about the creative process and inspiration behind your very unique approach to music videos, which are beautiful and haunting short art films that bring to mind, in their own unique way, artists like Jan Švankmajer and Jiří Barta? Rachel: These artists are two of the best! I love music videos because they allow you to enter an alternate universe. I like to invent these worlds myself and also collaborate with others who have a like-minded interest in fantasy and exaggeration. Matthew Spiegelman made my most recently released video, Tigers in the Dark, and another video from the new album is being created by Eric Leiser, who is an amazing stop-motion animator. AHC: Could you talk some about your incredible film project 'The Lives of Hamilton Fish'? Rachel: The Lives of Hamilton Fish is a live-performed musical film, based on a true coincidence. Two men, both named Hamilton Fish, were pronounced dead on the front page of The Peekskill Evening Star Newspaper on January 16, 1936. One man was a serial killer and the other was a famous politician. The film's story is told through songs and I play the part of the editor of the newspaper. It has been shown all over the world, as a standalone film and as a live concert. I’m really grateful that you call it, “incredible” because for the first year when I sent it out to festivals, it got nothing but rejections, along with the caveat that it was “beautiful” but wasn’t a “real film” because it has no dialogue, and in many ways, it has the feel of a feature length music video. I was able to really find the right champions for the film in the art world, and in some ways, the film is just building its momentum. In many ways I circumnavigated the existing models for its distribution. It was shown primarily in art museums and even historical societies, even though it is now fully available to everyone online. Which is something I’m really happy about -- I make a very small amount of money every time anyone watches or purchases the film online. You can find the film here. http://www.livesofhamiltonfish.com/ AHC: Do you have any words of advice for young musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Rachel: Don't compare yourself to anyone! Every artist (and every human) has their own unique path in life, and if things aren’t going the way you expect or want, just try to shift and make changes so you can do what works for you - to sustain yourself artistically and practically. A friend recently sent me this amazing article by one of my favorite artists, Carol Bove, and she offers such good advice for artists. http://www.artspace.com/magazine/news_events/book_report/carol-bove-akademie-x-52712 AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Rachel: In November I’ll be releasing an album called, “das Ram” on Cleopatra Records in collaboration with a brand new artist-run cassette label called Practical Records. This album is really exciting to me because all of the songs have their own distinct stories and characters and I’m releasing videos which expand on these different narratives. I’m releasing a track with TheUse, whose lyrics are those of a poet who tragically died last year by suicide after working a brutal job at FoxComm in China. I found his poetry after news outlets began reporting about his death and the effort to save his words, by his friends. The song is going to be featured in a documentary film called “Who Pays the Price” which is all about the ongoing issues at electronics factories in China. One really exciting new video is Tigers in the Dark, which was made by Matthew Spiegelman, a close friend and brilliant artist and photographer. The dance in the video was choreographed by one of my favorite young dancer/ choreographers, Haylee Nichele, a Canadian who is currently living in Los Angeles. She is also featured along with Chelsea Zeffiro, another new dancer I recently began working with since moving to LA. I’m excited about working with so many amazing women. That’s been a welcome addition to all of my creative endeavors. Recently, a band that has begun forming between myself, Linda Kiss and Sophia Cleary, two women I adore. We’ll be playing at my album release shows at Human Resources and the Bootleg Theater. I am calling the band the Starseeds because the last body of sculptures I made was a series of women who are my heroes in art and music and I called them Starseeds. Sophia is an incredible and funny artist and her band is called Penis and they are championed by one of my favorite Riot Grrl heroes, Kathleen Hanna. Linda is a costume designer in addition to being a bassist, and over the summer many of the costumes that I wore were made in collaboration with her. I’m also now in the process of developing a new performance project at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. I’ll be showcasing work as part of their ongoing In-Real-Life performance series through December. For more information visit www.rachelannmason.com/ To purchase music directly from the artist visit rachelmason.bandcamp.com/ 10/12/2016 2 Comments Three Poems by Jennifer HernandezUnaccompanied Minor If you go before, my lamb – border dust, metallic screech&crash, needles full of poison, virus, malignancy, gunshot – my lamentations will spill with vowels. I will speak a new-old dialect, elongate my longing, a flicker like tiny soft fingers on my skin, a minor chord that resonates deep within the hollow organ of my body, you the antistrophe to my strophe. Abscission Literally, to cut. See: Scissors. But leaves fall on account of stress, like my hair. I’m deciduous, protect myself by shedding what’s extraneous. Skin. Bad boyfriends. I shut down to guard my core. Fractures speed release, conserve energy that I can reabsorb, carry to my roots, store for later, my fallen leaves not wasted. Decay feeds life. The Huntress You lie there prone, nothing concealed. I glass your terrain, spy jagged wisps of exhaustion rise like spines of cacti. Have I spooked you yet? Let me crabwalk across your hips, my soft muzzle aimed at the crosshairs of your heart. Bio: Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she works with students from immigrant families and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. She has performed her writing at a non-profit garage, a taxidermy-filled bike shop, and in the kitchen for her children. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dying Dahlia Review, Mothers Always Write and New Verse News, as well as Bird Float, Tree Song (Silverton Books), A Prince Tribute (Yellow Chair Press) and Write Like You’re Alive (Zoetic Press). The music of Jolie Holland is steeped in that rich tradition of folk and Americana, musical lines that run deep, stories that help define who and where we are. When you think of Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Townes Van Zandt & countless others, what really comes to mind are people who made music because it was their absolute calling, they actually came from the worlds of which they sung, if they were rich at all it was in life experience, and living and creating as an artist didn't come easy, but they were on the path and there was no going back the other way. The music landscape is changing harshly, it's hard to make a living these days, Jolie explains, in part because of the changing sale structures, the way music is listened to (streaming) but also because of who is making the music. Songwriters most often came from the lower economic ends of society, what happens, asks Jolie, when music becomes a craft that is largely practiced by people from 1% families? Will there still be voices heard from the trailer parks and the outskirts of life? What happens when all that is left are people who make music because they can and not because they have to? AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Jolie: Yes. I recorded it on Escondida, used as the intro for another song. It's the short piece played on the toy piano. I wrote that when I was 7 on a toy instrument my step-grandfather bought for me. My parents never got me music lessons or playable instruments. I have taught many more music lessons than I ever received. Once my mother got me a completely unplayable mandolin. Kids at school, distant relatives I only met once or twice gave me instruments. I would get grounded and go to my room, and there was a piano in there. It wasn't my piano, or my mother's piano. It was a piano my mother was babysitting for her friend who had moved out of state. For whatever reason, they let me play piano in my room. I don't remember anyone telling me to stop. I used to experiment with vocal tones and whistling sounds when I was alone in my room, and I remember once, one of my step-parents told me it was bugging them. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain albums or songs you couldn't live without? Jolie: It's hard to imagine who we'd be without certain transformative moments with music, right? I'm sure teenagers of the 1800s felt the same way about poetry. Music has gone from being primarily a performed social experience to being a private recorded experience. At first, people still listened to recordings socially, rolling up the rug to dance. But most people's experience of music is now happening alone, with the radio in the car or on headphones in transit. How many people do you know who still have a hifi at home? When I was a teenager, certain music was like a secret code. I could listen to English goth music when I was a teenager and imagine possibilities outside of suburban Houston, Texas. I mean I wasn't just into goth music. I was into all kinds of music from all over the place. That music was a passport to larger a reality. It spoke of scenes beyond the place I was stuck in with my parents. And now with headphones and streamed music being available to teenagers everywhere, those possibilities are simultaneously stretched and diminished. There is further privacy for an individual to discover music on their own. But streaming and lost revenue kills off the scenes from whence the music originates. Musicians quit making music because they have to get other work, or in uglier cases kill themselves. The estuaries, the communities from which music arises are drying up. Music becomes more monocultural. Most of the songs I hear on the radio or at the gym or on internet commercials sound like exactly the same song. They become indistinguishable from one another. There's one or two predominate concepts about vocal tone, one or two concepts about rhythm. What happens when the only people who are able to choose a musical career are rich kids? We're seeing that now, where most of the big acts come from one percent families. Will the idea of music be confined to the fads that were popular at Ivy League universities? We're in a funny place right now, culturally, because music has usually come from the bottom, from oppressed communities. But now those communities are less able to make music. I know fresh batches of kids will find a way to make something new, but where are they going to connect with one another? I'm watching the neighborhoods that spawned powerful musical movements be blasted into the outer reaches by gentrification. Where are people going to get together? The mall? In the trailer park? In jail? Not everybody has a computer. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Jolie: I think what makes a song nourishing for someone is a very individual matter. For instance, Sinatra's voice gives me the total creeps, but a ton of people adore him. From what I've seen, musicians don't always know when they've written or recorded a hit. I think about the one hit Louis Armstrong had with 'Hello, Dolly.' He didn't even remember recording it. That's how busy he was. It's success took him completely by surprise. I thought 'Crush In The Ghetto' was going to be huge. And maybe it is, but streaming/theft/the decimation of record stores disguised that fact. Back in Louis Armstrong's day, a band could survive with no hits. A couple of my artistic heroes just told me how much they love my song 'Crush In The Ghetto' now 10 years after it came out. That's my success now. I can barely pay my bills, but my heroes tell me they love my songs. That's the only payday I get now. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Jolie: It does not save me financially. That actually used to be part of the equation. As I have watched the music industry falling apart in the past 15 years, I have felt some sense of vindication. I was happy to see the plastic giants fall because they were so terrible. But new plastic giants of even lesser musicality have risen in their stead. It's like what's happening in the ocean: when more complex forms of life can no longer survive, we get jellyfish blooms. I thought that by providing music of deep value to people that I could at least survive. No. It hasn't worked out that way. My friend just told me that my song was echoing in her head as she was providing hospice service to her father, helping him die. I met political prisoners who told me they sang my songs when they were in solitary confinement. I know people who were born to my songs, conceived under the influence of my songs, people who lost their virginity to my songs. People have considered my work to be proper for burying, marrying and birthing their loved ones. So many people have told me that my work has helped them heal psychologically in so many ways. I appreciate knowing that my work is being applied to people's lives. A lot of my heroes have spoken kindly to me about my work. Lou Reed was really sweet to me. Songwriters I adore have said positive things to me about my work. Lucinda Williams, Michael Hurley, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Will Oldham, Victoria Williams have said kind things to me about my work. Bob Dylan played a couple of my songs, and said my name and spoke about me on his radio show. Many of my favorite musicians who are Not famous, just excellent musicians, or "sidemen" have showered me with love for my work. I feel so honored to have the support of my peers. And I do everything I can to support other musicians. It's a great honor for me to pay my backing musicians as well as I can. If I'd started my career ten years earlier, maybe I'd have gotten a leg up enough to have a little more financial stability. As it is, I'm skirting around with about a grand in the bank most months, just barely shuffling enough money around to stay in business. I went 20,000 dollars in debt paying my band the year Wine Dark Sea came out. Now musicians have to study up on marketing in order to survive. That's not good for either marketing or music. Even hugely successful artists with tons of bank find it difficult to make time to work. JK Rowling says she constantly has to remind people that she needs time to write. She can't just be the face of her brand, because that's another full-time job. If you can't pay your rent, where are you going to work? When are you going to work? AHC: I read this beautiful quote once which reads "music is not only the art of harmonious sounds; it is the expression of the world before representation", I wonder do you experience music in this way, as you create, write and compose your songs, do you have the feeling that there is something in the music that jumps ahead of you, so to speak, some ineffable mystery that you try to put your finger to the pulse of? That the song is a translation of a deep inner experience that is sometimes, maybe not always, hard to name or recognize outright? Jolie: Music comes from a trance state, or at least a lot of music does. That's an open door where the artist is listening like the oracles. The complete human engagement with mystery is present in that entranced listening. So of course, all that human experience has the possibility of coming through in the work. A lot of musicians, increasingly more, are not interested in writing from this kind of listening trance. In the global English-speaking monoculture, we don't have a way to consciously acknowledge trance-originated, trance-inducing music, even though of course it is valued. We don't have a language for acknowledging transcendence, and maybe that's why we are moving away from that type of musical expression. In some cultures, this kind of transmission is explicitly valued. In the Islamic world, there is a custom of speaking the name of God when you feel the transcendent power of music. That's how "Olé" got into the Spanish language. Ethnomusicologists talk about how the blues comes from Arabic music. And the blues is one of the US's great cultural commodities. The blues is part of the fabric of jazz, of R&B, of rock music, of country. There is very little pop music from America or anywhere else that is not shaped by the blues. So when we hear melismatic, emotionally-charged R&B vocals, that comes to us via a culture that values trance-oriented music. Even though some music can have a very dry delivery, that can still be generated by trance-state. I'm not saying it all has to be super emotional-sounding. And even melisma can be emotionally dead. Albert Ayler versus Kenny G: who is more interested in transcendence? AHC: When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Jolie: Oh yes. Of course. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Jolie: There are millions of beautiful moments. Hearing bandmate's stories, listening to Gorecki's symphony on a dark highway, watching the moon rise over some strange city, finding some long-lost friend at a music festival. So many memories. The band & I like to go to second hand stores because most of us live in big cities where you can't get good cheap second hand clothes. And we like to go to co op grocery stores on the road. It keeps you from eating crappy restaurant food, and you get a sense of the land- what grows there, who lives there. AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Jolie: I don't have any words of advice for musicians In General. I wouldn't presume. But I did start an advice column recently, and I need more questions! So if anyone had any specific questions they wanted to send in, please don't hesitate to hit me up on my website or any social media platform. There's only been 3 columns out so far. You can find them at my website in the blog section. joliehollandmusic.com #AskJolieHolland AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Jolie: I have a new band with my old bandmate from the Be Good Tanyas, Samantha Parton. We are called Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton. We started recording a record, and maybe we'll be able to release it this coming Spring? I'm working on some literary projects, including an illustrated book that my heroes Black YaYa and Mayon Hanania will illustrate. I'm also trying to get a musical off the ground with my wonderful collaborator David Coulter. This winter I'm going to Europe twice, once as a guest singer as part of a big show David Coulter is producing of music used in Jarmusch films. And then I'm going over to collaborate with some Swedish musicians outside of Stockholm in January. Then I have a short tour booked ranging from England to Italy with my duo-fronted band Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton. 10/10/2016 2 Comments Four Poems by Mike Meraz 1 Girl with Head Down Low You are Beautiful The way You Don't Smile. ................................. 2 I look Sideways At those Who hold Writing As a "Hobby" When I am Trapped Under its Claws And seeking Rehab. ................................. 3 I pour Beer Down My Throat I put Music In My Ears I put You In my Heart: Poem. ................................. 4 After we broke Up I worried About you Thought I'd Find you In an alley Or on some Street corner Lost and Alone Yesterday I googled You Thought I'd See if you Were still Alive You were There At some Beach Resort Smiling Widely As if to say The forces Didn't take Me I had more Tricks Up My Sleeve. Bio: Mike Meraz lives and writes in Whittier, Ca. Stephanie Buer, has spent over a decade observing the urban landscapes in Detroit, MI. She has an intimate appreciation of urban desolation and a love for the once prosperous buildings that have been abandoned to time and the elements. Her works in both oil and charcoal capture with photo-like detail the layers of gritty history that accumulate as these places succumb to the manipulation of vandals, artists, and the steady persistence of nature. In the juxtaposition between decay and growth, Stephanie finds a place that echoes the peace she finds in nature, with its endless cycles of change. Part of the power in Stephanie's work comes from the absence of human figures in a place clearly marked by them. Rather than allowing distant observation as narrative, she draws viewers in to witness the space that people have left behind, compelling them to personally experience these modern relics that have been condemned by society. The simultaneously idyllic, yet derelict scenes challenge viewers to question their notions of beauty, while the detailed texture and depth that is characteristic of her work invites them to explore these places personally, as she does while taking the photographs from which she works. AHC: Could you talk some about your work in the Detroit area, the process of scouting locations, photographing and then painting these scenes of urban decay and desolation? Stephanie: I started exploring Detroit when I was going to college there, at the College for Creative Studies. My first time out was with some of the artists from the Heidelberg project, we would go looking for unique materials for installations they were building in the project. I fell in love and started exploring more with friends, we would hear about spots or just happen upon them while driving or riding our bikes around town. The process is pretty organic, just wander until you see something that looks interesting. I take hundreds of photographs and then pick a few I really like and make works based on them. AHC: There are no people in these pieces, though we have before us haunting architectural scenes of where they once were. I'm curious if, as you walk through these spaces, you find yourself piecing together (mentally) internal stories of what the lives and daily going on's of these places once were, are there little objects left behind that make you wonder or give you clues as to what those stories and those lives were/are? Stephanie: I very rarely dwell on what types of people or activities these places were originally used for. However, the more personal the spaces are the more the thought enters my mind, like in abandoned schools and churches. I don't like exploring and painting abandoned homes for this reason. It seems too heartbreaking, those places used to be someones home, where they raised children, lived out their lives. I just don't feel right about painting these types of spaces, especially in a city like Detroit, where so many people were forced to leave their homes due to riots, foreclosures, and other such reasons. I think I'm more interested in the process of planning, designing, and building theses spaces and then at some point how they are no longer needed, and are left to just sit. The idea that this thing that took so much preparation, so much of people's lives and of the earths resources is so easily left and forgotten about. There is a building I have enjoyed exploring in Detroit for the past 15 years or so that is just so enormous, it's hard to believe that it just sits there, to rot. This is incredible to me. AHC: What is it about these abandoned buildings, these spaces 'condemned by society' that have compelled you to hone in on them, with your camera, oil and charcoal, your own eyes, as intimately as you have? Could you talk some about the way you see these spaces relating to the natural environment and cycles of decay and renewal Stephanie: I really enjoy exploring. I think that's what started it all. I grew up in the country in Michigan and spent so much of my time wandering the outdoors. When I moved to Detroit, it was my first time living in a big city and I really missed the woods and the countryside. I started exploring the city and discovered that these abandoned spaces around Detroit felt really familiar to wandering the woods back home. Although in the middle of the city, when you entered these spaces the noise of the city faded, there was lots of wildlife, trees, even fields, you could watch the seasons change just like in the wilderness. I love exploring all wild places and this is just a different kind of wild space. AHC: Part of your aim is to get viewers to question their preconceived notions of beauty. What, for you, constitutes the realm of the beautiful? Do you think our notions of beauty are culturally predetermined or prepackaged in a way that voids our ability to form our own ideas and notions of what is beautiful? Is your art an attempt, in part, to restore a sense of potentiality to how we process the outer qualities of what we are looking at? Stephanie: I think anything could constitute the realm of the beautiful and yes, I do strongly believe that culture heavily influences our opinions on what is beautiful. At times to our own detriment and unhappiness. I was reading an article online recently that talked about different methods for convincing people to do something, in this case it was something to do with the environment, maybe recycling. They went through a few suggestions in order to get people on board, one was money related, the other was because it was morally responsible, i forget third, it was maybe thinking of future generations, but it was the fourth option that people responded to the most and that was simply, that everyone else was doing it. People continually do what everyone else is doing, what society and culture tells them to do. So simply put, yes culture predetermines and prepackages a notion of what we should deem beautiful. Absolutely. I think this should be challenged in every part of life and my art, I suppose, is an attempt in some way, to open people up to recognizing beauty in unexpected places. AHC: Are there any countries or specific places you would like to one day visit and document in the ways that you have with the Detroit area? Stephanie: Yes, I wish I could spend as much time in other cities as I have in Detroit. Detroit was once my home though, for 10 years, and during a very formative time in my life, so it would be really hard to replicate that relationship. I would like to travel around Europe some day, especially Germany. AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences, your favorite artists or photographers? Stephanie: I love the works Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Rackstraw Downes, and John Singer Sargent, just to name a few. I also enjoy the abstract works of Franz Kline. I actually studied stone carving in college so anything carved in stone just kills me. I love it. AHC: Do you have any upcoming shows or new projects you would like to tell people about? Stephanie: I do have a show coming up but it's not until the early part of next year, so it's still a ways off. I'll be doing a large, new body of work for a show at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles. I usually paint Detroit and occasionally scenes from the Pacific Northwest, which is where I'm living now. However this show will be entirely about LA. It will be my fifth show with Thinkspace and I'm pretty excited to have the opportunity to pay homage to a city that has been so integral to my career as an artist. 10/8/2016 0 Comments Three Poems by Robert F. GrossThe Closing Times I seen Billy the Kid once behind the leather bar A heap of broken hearts and clay peacocks at his feet He was preachin a six-gun greasy salvation With a bullet in his back his fly unzipped His wanted poster puss promised back-alley bliss A rough resurrect for shattered hearts and cocks And the clay peacocks blew away In a flurry of piss and pinfeathers Squawking hymns of praise and paradox Odin on Yggdrasil he hung there for words words at the bottom of the well words he could see out of one eye he hung there for words when words they had in overflow already words in overstock words like home love war boundary blood words for god mortal dwarf giant elf he hung there for words that they never thought of using and never could translate words that were quite useless and for that reason might conceivably be true Landscape with Gratuitous Corpse Let’s place a sunset here then a swan there and surround it a passage of pure painterliness like something you’d see in late Titian an eruption of pigment pus on a crepuscular canvas Then sprawl naked and foreshortened in some impossible mannerist posture languid and totally void over here with briars and a scarab devouring a final erection here And a throat cut like this looking at the evening star just beyond the frame of everything once imagined about scale and perspective and man as the measure of all things painted over bloody thick and angered Bio? Robert F. Gross was born in Chicago, raised in Wisconsin, and is currently stuck In Rochester, New York. He's recently had pieces appear in Madness Muse Magazine, In Between Hangovers, and Bindlestiff. He's a committed queer and a committed melancholic. AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Cassidy: It has certainly been a journey. I picked up a guitar ten years ago, and wrote a song shortly after with some chords that really just happened to be easy enough to find. Then there was a huge high when a local booker started having me open a bunch of small shows. I was nudged firmly on stage, and the excitement of the oppurtunity outweighed the daunting challenge. Through looking out in the crowd, I always found at least one person who connected to whatever sounds I was putting out there. That became an incentive to keep writing and playing out, besides the satisfaction I got from it personally. Those connections were high points. Then the industry leered in. There was a bad experience with a label when I was sixteen. When I moved to NYC at eighteen, I took a year off of music. I even told people I'd put it behind me. For my career, I suppose this was a low. Though that year was full of a shallow happiness and safety that I don't regret. Creatively, you're vulnerable and working hard as an artist to create songs and put on shows. There's danger in people who'd take advantage not only of that, but of the eagerness of an artist to share what they're doing. It's a low to have to take time to be wary and mindful of this reality. As far as life lessons, I don't know much. Making music for the love of it is the only way I know how. Musicians are compelled to create even when it doesn't make sense. We're slaving for this labor because we believe in the value and essentiality of a connection between people through waves of reflecting sound. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Cassidy: The draw to music was the freedom of expression it gave and the stories it could tell. My musical environment growing up varied, in part because I moved a few times, and in part because I had teachers with different levels of interest in me. There was a piano or two around, but neither of my parents were musicians. In fact, the only two CDs I remember my father having in his truck were Shania Twain's Greatest Hits, and the Black Eyed Peas "Monkey Business", the latter which I remember brought my mother to tears with its vulgarity. I spent a lot of time alone as a young person. Some of this was spent teaching myself to play music- and some was just lying on the floor listening. I can remember Queen's "Killer Queen" flooring me the first time I relished in the lyrics. What a story! And the hidden track "Wild Horses" off a Natasha Bedingfield album. It's just piano and her voice with urgent verses paired with a loose, free chorus that told as much with melody as it did with words. Also, the fact it was a hidden track made it inherently special. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Cassidy: I do! And it's awful, awful title: You Broke My Heart. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain albums or songs you couldn't live without? Cassidy: I'm inspired by the musicians who devoted their lives to the craft: Michael Jackson, Nina Simone, Neil Young. There's so many I could name who are famous. But maybe even more importantly, I'm inspired by those working relentlessly around me to create- people I work with or am friends with or am just plain lucky enough to get to hear. Jared Saltiel, who is all of those things, would be one of those people. His genius continues to beautify and reveal my world. The first album I could not live without would be "For Emma, Forever Ago" by Bon Iver. It came out as I was experiencing heartbreak, and when I owned a Jeep. Driving in dark Wisconsin while letting the ambience of those bare guitars and his muttered, moaned melodies fill that car was the only medicine for my unlucky heart. And the horns! Don't let me get started on that record. Worth mentioning too, that it struck me that some melancholy dude in a cabin just upstate from me could make music so obviously worthwhile. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Cassidy: A good question, but I'm not sure I have a good answer. I compose and write quickly, almost at the same time. It's a bit like vomiting, to be frank. It strikes, and usually upon playback or sharing I'll be able to discern if it's worth keeping. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Cassidy: Lots to consider here. Firstly, I'd have to say the perfection of the vehicle is quite subjective. For one person, my song might sound like mediocre vocals on boring guitar arrangement. For someone else, it might transform their long-held pain into meaning of some kind. So perhaps music is an imperfect vehicle that translates emotion differently for everyone. The imperfection then being the very salt of the thing. We're all tasting songs with our own palates. Some songs might be devoured and transform a person, like a good meal, whereas some may just nourish minimally. In a long post I wrote when I first received the CDs for my EP, I did say that I could never pretend I wrote the songs on it for any reason other than to save myself. They were essential to me. It's a great gift then, if any listener ever feels similarly. AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Cassidy: I would encourage anyone who creates to continue. Continue making things or sounds because we all need that work. The proof is in our undying love of books, movies, songs, great salads, fancy cocktails, etc. We all needed someone to make our favorites things. AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Cassidy: Yes! I just released an EP called "Through the Dark". It's on iTunes, Amazon, a bunch of other sellers and streaming things. My personal favorite way for you to buy it would be at cassidyandrews.bandcamp.com because Bandcamp people are lovely. But if you'd take a listen at all, I'd be very thankful. |
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