Bio

Okay, the truth…

My professional (i.e., paid) music career amounts to playing out in painfully mediocre bar bands through my early twenties, and teaching rock licks to kids for pocket money. And lately winning a lot of t-shirts and coffee mugs in song writing contests.

Ho-hum.

My spiritual musical history is far more interesting.

One day when I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to hear the most amazing music I had ever heard -- and ever heard since. I can still feel it to this day, though I couldn't hum it for you or anything. It was orchestral in nature, but there was also the distinct sense of voice, of something being communicated. I remember lying there, feeling captivated by this music, taking it in so deeply that it soon felt like it was happening inside of me, like I was being swept up in this glorious, agonizingly beautiful sound. I remember the sense of profundity (though I probably didn't know that word at the time), the sense of some Door having been opened to me. I also remember the structure of this music. It was complex, and yet every detail in some way added to its beauty. What was perhaps most amazing about it was how it carried me up (it felt very much like an upward moving spiral) to the most ecstatic musical climax I had ever heard. But then, when I expected to be let gently back down, it started again to spiral upward from that new plateau to an even more amazing climax. And when it "peaked" there, just when I thought there was nothing more musically possible, it peaked again. And again. And again. I don't know how many times, but it was far, far beyond anything I had ever heard before.

Now I was just a kid, and I was scared of the dark, but I HAD to get up and find out where this amazing music was coming from (I'm pretty sure I was still hearing it at this point, at least faintly). I figured my parents must have left their clock radio on. But when I peaked in their room, they were fast asleep and there was no radio on. I went out to the kitchen - nothing there either. I opened the back door, thinking it might be coming from another house or… or SOMETHING, I didn't know what. But I finally realized it WAS happening inside of me, or more accurately, I felt like I was happening inside of IT.

I will never forget it. And I suppose on some level my interest in music from that point forward has always been guided by a desire to somehow recreate and share at least some tiny aspect of that experience.

By the way, the closest pieces of "mortal" music I have ever encountered to that cosmic symphony are a modern classical piece called The Lark Ascending and the more well known Barber's Adagio For Strings (the piece that was played at the end of the movie Platoon, among other places). They both have that quality of bringing you to an amazing peak and then taking you from there to an even more amazing peak (sounds pretty sexual doesn't it?). But those pieces only do this once or maybe twice, while the music I heard that night just kept taking me higher and higher until… well, I don't remember how it ended, whether I went unconscious, or what. I'm just grateful I can still remember the experience at all.

Somewhere around that time my maternal grandmother (who was quite poor) spent $100 to buy me an old upright piano. I hated the lessons, just like any other kid. I probably would have quit, if not for my father one night bringing me home the sheet music to the "Batman" theme (my favorite television show at the time). That was it for me. I started buying as much sheet music as I could get my hands on, and eventually learned the magic of improvising to those songs and then making up my own.

I have always ached with the feeling that I had some kind of truly worthy music inside of me, though I could never quite seem to get it out. These last few years are the closest by far I have ever come to bringing that inner music into a form where it can be shared and heard by others - though I feel that I still have a long way to go before I will be truly satisfied.

Back to my story. After two decades of piddling around unsuccessfully as a songwriter, I finally gave up music COMPLETELY to pursue a far more successful career as a psychologist. When I say "completely", I mean COMPLETELY: I didn't listen to the radio, I didn't buy albums, I didn't play a note (except maybe to fiddle around on a piano here and there, like if I was sneaking away from a wedding reception or a bar mitzvah or something).

Then, a couple of birthdays ago*, a voice inside me pointed out that it was now or never if I was going to pursue my dream of making the music I had always felt in my heart.

I haven't looked back since that day.

For about 9 months a year ago or so, the Muse just took over my life (actually, she's still probably got control of my life, I've just gotten used to it). She'd wake me up at four in the morning with a melody or a couplet or a chord change and a rhythm and basically DEMAND that I go downstairs to record it. (I actually dreamt some of the songs on this album, or at least significant parts of them.)

She'd interrupt me continually throughout my day, to the point that I learned to always carry pen and paper with me, if not a cassette recorder. I felt very much that I was at her service, and that if I ever said "no", she might leave me.

I'm not just being poetic here, by the way. I literally feel like some Musical Presence larger than myself has grabbed hold of me and made me her lover. I am a love slave to the Muse, no kidding. She says jump and I say how high. If she says she wants to use me NOW, I can't say no (in fact, I've only even said "later" on a few occasions, and I still wonder what the musical cost to me of those deferments has been…).

Now why is she doing this with me? I don't know. I used to think it HAD to be that this music was going to be shared far and wide and have some great impact in the world. But lately I'm questioning that. Maybe it's just for her amusement. Maybe no one is going to appreciate this music beyond myself and my intimate circle of friends. It doesn't really matter, does it? I have no good choice but to keep taking "musical dictation" from her anyway. Maybe she does have a plan for getting this music heard by others. Or maybe she doesn't care about that at all. Or maybe that's just not her department…

I can tell you this, though: even though she is clearly a "she" for me, I'm the one who's pregnant. There's just no other metaphor that comes close. I am carrying something beautiful and alive that is taking form in me beyond my control. I have somehow been given the responsibility to care for this life, to make sure it is nourished and protected and given every opportunity to grow into whatever it is it has the potential to become - whether or not it's convenient for me personally.

I'm just now giving birth to my first "litter" of songs. But the Muse is already knocking me up again and again, with no end in sight. I can't really remember what "writer's block" is. My current problem is keeping up with the amount of musical ideas that keep flooding through my mind and heart on a daily basis.

Most recently, I have spent the last two and a half years of my life working on this album, pouring the best of who I am into writing, arranging, recording and producing, day after day after day.

And now it's done, and it's time to see if anyone else really gets it.

I hope you do. I hope that in some way or another, this music nourishes your soul, opens your heart, expands your mind. If it doesn't, then for me it's not really Music after all -- just interesting noise, at best.

 

 

* Yes, by God, I'm over forty, and yes, I am aiming to break into the music business as a new artist, and yes, I know that's Just Not Done.

07-15-05 NOTE: And yes, I've discovered that I was in fact quite correct (at least in my case): It's just not done!

Nevertheless, I honor myself for giving it my best shot...