Hey Hartlist,
The word integrity (from integer) means “wholeness.” Living in integrity means expressing and doing what’s true for you in all situations. {…} Where are you not feeling what you feel, knowing what you know, saying what you believe and doing what feels most right? “- Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity (and no I’m not working for this woman just obsessed with her work)
Beauty is truth; truth, beauty- that is all /ye know on earth and all ye need to know” - Keats
Speaking of beauty and truth, do you have your tickets for Monday’s Valentines’ Day show @ the Rockwood Music Hall Stage TWO?
Last Saturday, the Wrong Band - or this fun, ever-evolving hodgepodge of talented people1 - and I got together at my place for a good old living room acoustic session and faster than you could say “I wonder where Susie and Matt could do a fiddle duet?” we came up with the above. Please enjoy our arrangement of ‘Clearing in the Wild’ by Red Tail Ring.
I didn’t write a newsletter last week at all! My apologies. I spent way less time creating (as in, talking & writing) and way more time absorbing.
As in, listening.
I may have mentioned that I recently acquired a record player. And it is, as they say, Giving me Life. Or, I guess returning a chunk of Life I left somewhere along the way, which consisted of… music.
Specifically, listening to music.
(I KNOW.)
This is super embarrassing to admit to in a newsletter largely devoted to my own musical activities, but… I actually haven’t really spent much time listening to music in, um, a while. Like… (over) a… decade? Yep.
Now there have been exceptions and resurgences (my obsession with Sufjan’s “Carrie & Lowell” that shaped The Magician’s Daughter, or all those nights driving around Los Angeles with the Steely Dan box set). And of course I don’t mean a total Cloister of Silence. I DO play in a band, and I go see playsicals, and I did attend Musical Theatre Hogwarts for graduate school. But the whole “put on music in my home/on my subway ride/spend time with it” thing has mostly… not been happening. When people send me playlists or Spotify links, I always think Oh cool, I’ll definitely get to that. When I ride the subway, I listen to podcasts or read a book. And, yes, since you ask, I have been mostly in denial.
I was not always like this. I grew up basically glued to a speaker; first my parents’ stereo and then my own. As a small child I listened to albums repeatedly the same way I re-read my favorite books; singing along and poring over lyrics. As a teenager I spent every single bus ride to and from school staring out the window, glued to headphones, rewinding not just songs over and over but sections of songs - needing to hear one more time the way the band goes into the chorus, or that sung line that made my hair stand up, or that one particular entrance of the drums. I would never have put it this way, and years later would arrive in my first band claiming to know “nothing” about how music is made. But I was also writing songs privately for years before I ever picked up a guitar … and I put it down again pretty fast when my teacher suggested I learn classic rock riffs and I was too embarrassed (and uninformed) to say that wasn’t the kind of music I wanted to learn.
Which was, I think, kind of how the Great Drought started: the idea that I wasn’t really supposed to like what I liked. (In a lot of ways, not just music, but this is just the one newsletter here). And if I didn’t like something I was ‘supposed to’ like, or that cooler or more experienced people liked, then there was something wrong with me.
I’m all for keeping an open mind and I am living proof that your palate - musical or otherwise -can evolve and change if you do. And it’s awesome. But “I should change how I feel, or at least fake it” = not the same thing. And I think it actually keeps you from taking in anything new or evolving at all.
Fronting my first band in college, the Rebecca Hart Project, I learned so much! including many different styles of music, how to play in time, and other worthy things. The band wasn’t something I decided to do, it was decided by this bunch of talented guys who liked my songs and put a band together around me. Which was great, not gonna lie. But it also meant that my life in music started out under the canopy of These Are Real Musicians and I Am A Quirk of Nature Who Manages to Write Songs while Knowing Nothing. So- if they didn’t think something was cool, or worthy, I dropped it/hid it/pretended I didn’t either. And if they DID, I did my best to get on board. Sometimes that worked (you can blame them for my devotion to Steely Dan), sometimes not (I appreciated all the let’s say John Mclaughlin and Phish, but I wouldn’t say my deepest heart was in it per se. THIS IS NOT A DIS; I don’t know how to explain “why” I like some things more than others! But also, who cares??)
Anyway I can’t prove it, but over time, the idea that there were some sounds it was ok to like and others not sort of …eroded my desire to listen to any of it. This was a long slow burn and it wasn’t conscious at all. And I could be wrong; hindsight is really anything but 20/20.
The other thing that happened which is even more embarrassing to admit is that, after a good few years trying to strong-arm The Industry into Listening To Me GoDdamnit and driving around the country playing coffee shops by myself and not Getting Ahead as a musician while watching it happen to others resulted in… well, for a while quitting music entirely, but also in my not being able to listen to Any Great Songwriters/Bands Du Jour because… I was jealous and it was painful. Not proud, but there you are.
And then once a few years go by where you don’t know any of the popular artists it feels embarrassing and impossible to catch up. So, embarrassing + jealous = whoops, it’s the year 20Whatever and I don’t listen to music anymore, just kind of pretend I do. (Again, with brief resurgences).
Anyway, long story short (too late), I picked up this record player. First, I got it for my mom for xmas so she could make a dent in that enormous collection my father left. And then, because it fit my highly discerning tech standards (it came with speakers and was easy to set up), I got it for myself.
I think that was the beginning; not caring too much whether I had the “right” equipment or what other musicians would think of my choice, or whatever. Or maybe it was the same week I realized I really, really miss acting and I love playing music but maybe hate Trying To Be a Musician a little too much? Jury’s out. But something worked. Because then what followed was: listening to whatever I wanted.
Listening. To. Whatever. I. Wanted.
Which started out as the highly nostalgic and maybe ridiculous items from my dad’s collection that I wanted to hear: George Winston’s New Agey Piano Solos, Four Centuries of Music for The Harp, all the 15th Century LOTR-style Xmas Music. I fell asleep to the The Dr. Seuss Sleep Book album from when I was 5. Is it Good, Who Cares, I don’t care, no one cares. (Also, I remembered records are awesome ; you have to put them on, turn them over, put them on again; it’s an active relationship. )
And then, after a week or so of huh it’s nice to have instrumental music on in the background while I work, I went to a record store and found a bunch of $4-$10 items. (It’s the beginning of what I’m sure will be a long and rewarding compulsion hobby.) Back home, I put on an album I loved as a teenager - Rickie Lee Jones’ The Magazine - and very quickly realized another reason I stopped listening to music I love (and why I certainly can’t “have it on while I work”): it has the power to take me over completely.2
There are wounds that stir up the force of gravity
A cold that will wipe the hope from your eyes
Young girl standing underneath the "L" train
Standing there, watching the trains go by ...
You think that nobody knows where you are, girl
You think that nobody knows how this feels
Alone, in a world of your own
There you are girl
The small things float
To the top of gravity
Gravity
Omg the drums. I think I had to sit down. And not do anything else. I was back on the schoolbus, completely absorbed, listening with my whole body, heart, and soul. I was that kid who couldn’t pay attention and was failing math class until her teacher started letting her write song lyric quotes on her homework. (I could go on, but save something for the memoir.) My skin vibrated. My eyes watered. I was - for lack of a better phrase -back in my body, though I didn’t know I’d left it. Oh, hi. There you are.
My point is not that Rickie Lee Jones is great. My point is that it is a huge waste of time to avoid things you love for any reason, or pretend that you don’t love them, even if it brings up pain. It is more painful to live like that. It is the opposite of integrity/wholeness and it will hold you back in other ways. (Read Martha Beck’s book omg.)
Anyway, whatever, music and I are getting back together. Please come celebrate with us Monday night @ Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 @ 7PM!
& see you SUNDAY 2/13 for The Chrysalis 59: The Day Before Valentines Day,
xo
Rebecca
people on this track: me on guitar & vocal, Susie Greenebaum on vocals and violin, Matt Gelfer on 2nd violin (or viola? I forget who was which), Mollie Mcquarrie on vocals
There’s an important point here about how, for me, “lyrics” are not the same as “words” and are part of the music, but, we’ll get back to it.
the lovers, again