MUSIC IS MUSIC

Published in article for Power Source Magazine. My column is called UnCommon Sense: God's Gift of Creativity.

Ever observed your musical week? Just pay attention to what you hear. Let’s see, this week I listened to some old time gospel, Turn Your Radio On kind of stuff, sang some classic hymns like When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, heard some current Country hits, listened to the Civil Wars, Adele, me, Chopin, and a rap song by…what was his name??? Oh yeah, Macklemore. In my head I had songs pop up like John Denver’s Annie’s Song, and at some point Build Me Up Buttercup and the William Tell Overture, (which is a mental phenomenon that happens to me any time I’m in a hurry). Finally, throw in a contemporary worship song or two and the theme songs to all the TV shows I’ve watched, and you’ve got a summary of my typical musical week.

Sounds diverse, doesn’t it? Not very unusual, either, but here’s the thing. Most people really only hear two categories in that list: commercial and classical. And don’t count the William Tell Overture because it crossed over as the theme to the Lone Ranger and possibly a Bugs Bunny episode or two. So that leaves us with Chopin versus all the other more popular music. 

And here’s the thing about THAT – in certain circles, a Chopin track is called a “composition” or “piece” while the rest are called “songs.”

I am intrigued by the distinction between songs and compositions because it sometimes becomes divisive, and musical wars really break my heart. Poor me. It’s never going to change, this aural tug of war that started so long ago when the first renegade writer added a note to the Gregorian Chant. I am perplexed though, as to why I IV V is considered more highfalutin than the 1 4 5 of song charts. Granted, you can’t very well chart a Chopin piece, but the scripting of music is only for the sake of communication. Music is the language of the soul, said Martin Luther, and the notes  on a page are empty without the passion to feel them.

My grandmother could play Chopin, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and the Boogie Woogie on the piano, all with such joy that it desegregated the music.

The other day I asked a friend if he’d been writing new songs, and he smiled smugly and told me no, he’d switched to “composing.” That was, of course, what got me going about this. But it is not an attitude exclusive to classical versus commercial, oh no! So often, the Pop fans don’t like Country, the Contemporary fans don’t like Southern Gospel, and the Worship writers probably don’t care because they’re in it only for the love of God, which is also where some big money is these days, or so I’ve heard.

I say music is music, and I hope I never get so big for my whole notes that I miss the message in it all. Music is as diverse as humanity, and we would do well to seek to understand or at least appreciate this culture’s motley scores for what they are without criticism. Things could be worse. Just imagine if you could only use a five note pentatonic scale for every song/piece. Ironically, you wouldn’t even be able to play Chopsticks, which was composed in the 1800’s by a British pianist! And THAT, dear Watson, is how the West was really won!!

Music makes pictures and often tells stories, all of them magic, and all of them true. And all of the pictures and all of the stories, all of the magic – the music is you! – John Denver

UnCommon Sense

Worshipology

Worship weaves God’s beautiful vision of the world together note by note, voice by voice. 

This is why I cannot wrap around the worship music debate. It seems like an argument for the sake of arguing. It stymies me when I begin to write music for the church. Shall I write a hymn, or a worship chorus? Why bother if all that counts are songs written in the last millennium?

The debate is between traditional hymn forms, and contemporary worship songs. One theologian called worship songs “narcissistic diddies.” No doubt post-modern attitudes hailing individualism have tainted the meaning of worship and compromised some lyrics. It’s all part of “feel-good” church and big money. Self-help church sells, but not like a treasure that becomes family heirloom; it sells like chicken McNuggets. Hence the revolving door. Mention a big church and throw a stone any direction and you will likely hit someone who says, “I used to go there.” Ask why.

Blaming the music throws the stone at the wrong sinner.

A true worship experience is the responsibility of every worshipper in the congregation.

It ruins the musical expression of God-people love when we make music a tool instead of art. I love the art of church, stained glass windows that tell the Bible story, religious paintings, fountains and statues. Art is a powerful heart-cry; music is one of the most powerful artistic expressions the church has.

I like the meditative quality of repetitious worship choruses. They stay in my mind like “whatsoever things.” (Philippians 4:8) “Twitter-lyrics,” pithy repetitious lines, have a place if every pithy word is carefully chosen. It’s kind of like the Honk if you love Jesus bumper stickers. I used to be so insulted by them, until one day I thought about what it would be like to have Satanic triteness floating around the roadways for people to ponder at traffic lights. I like seeing the name Jesus, and I like thinking the name Jesus, and I like how the mere mention of that person stirs my heart – so I honk.

We must still insist on quality and substance in our church music, succinct or otherwise. The worship songs work well if they unite us in worship. They are tragic if they are only about me, me, me or I just want to feel better so I came to church. Church is bigger than that. Otherwise, you could choose between church or getting a message, or fishing… or a 12-step meeting. All are good, but one belongs in a different category, an Eternal-meaning-of-life category. It’s like the difference between a plastic magnifying glass from a cereal box or the Hubble Telescope.

The Hubble Telescope discovers things as they are, not things as we want them to be. It asks questions and finds answers that lead to more questions. It says, “I want to see beyond this world things that eye has not seen.” (I Corinthians 2:9)  Worship is an opportunity for us to see worlds unseen. It is bigger than the individual, but ultimately blesses the individual. It is in giving ourselves selflessly in worship that we open up to possibilities only God knows.

Worship is poetry. When we sing to God, about God, or about the meaning of life in God, we tap into galaxies unknown, we join a cast of saints and angels.

What songs will still be around 100 years from now? Maybe it’s the wrong question. Will God still be worthy of our praise 100 years from now? 1000? A million? My goal is not necessarily to write a song that lasts (although I do strive for that), but to participate in The Song that is Eternal.

The Frog, The Spaceman, and Clint Eastwood

I'm practicing guitar more these days, since I'm holding one in every picture. I'm pretty good (for a girl, so they say), but I can be better. I love practicing, though. The Zen of finger exercises and scales settles me down.

Sight reading is more challenging. It's like guitar vitamins; no worse. Sight reading is like guitar cod liver oil. Blekkk!!! I like how it's affecting my playing, though. I'm learning a Spanish piece in e-minor. It's pretty. I may never play it for anyone, though. I'm like that frog on Bugs Bunny. Remember?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GDEkxBjIM4

He dances for the spaceman, who then tries to get him onto Vaudeville (or something of that ilk), but the frog won't show off for anyone else. Spaceman goes crazy, frog keeps dancing.

It's probably recital fear. PTSD of the music world. I can relate. I'll improvise all day long, but ask me to play a rehearsed, note by note piece, and I "croak" - so to speak. I trust my musical instincts more than my memory.

But you know, music is worth playing just for yourself and God now and then. I don't always need an audience. It keeps the music pure, playing music for the sake of the music. Then it's truly play, not work. I want that spirit to pervade the live performances and recordings.

I'm playing - playing - the Bluebird on March 14th with my band. I usually do writer's night there, but I want to get out and sing songs from the new cd more, and have it sound semi-close to what we recorded. Having a band is challenging. It's so much fun. I like the practice as much as the show. It's just difficult to keep everyone busy enough to make the money right. I have the best players in the world. They will play for free, but I'm not going to let them. At the Bluebird, we can fit 110 people in there. It's $8 a ticket, and you have to spend $7 on food or beverage. If we can fill it up, all will be well.

The other day I told someone I'd never been a smoker, but that people assume I have. I'm not all wrinkled up like a smoker. I think it's the leather jackets, I told her. I was doing my dry-wit thing, but she wasn't following. Instead of giving me an affirming "of course you've never smoked" response, she gazed at me curiously and said, "But don't you play the Bluebird?" I gazed back, as you must be doing vicariously as you read this, and asked, "What does that have to do with smoking?" "Well, isn't it a bar? Don't they smoke there?"  Oh so many retorts you must be considering. I was polite, but standing there in my black leather duster, I think my eye twitched a little like Clint Eastwood in The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXldafIl5DQ

That's all...I was just thinking about all that and thought I'd share it with you. Come to the Bluebird. Leave the stogie at home - they have a no smoking rule, as does the entire State of Tennessee.

Now go play!!

March Backwards

Friday. Last day of the week, first day of the month, and it caught me completely off-guard. I spent an entire Thursday thinking I had one more day of February left. It kind of mattered to me. I messed with my phone for a minute this morning, thinking the date was set wrong, but it was correct - now mortgage is due.

March means it's Springtime, almost, but it snowed. Not enough to make snowballs. It will probably snow one last time, because it always snows on the daffodils.

And it's still Lent. This is a long one. I know someone who gave up Lent for Lent. Said he'd just finished a big fast and saw no need to give up anything else so soon, which, of course misses the point of Lent - but that's his journey, not mine. I think it might be good for some people to give up Lent for Lent. Religiosity. Giving up a temptation to be overly pious, holier than thou? Christians get awfully smug in their "knowing" sometimes, but Lent is a time of soul searching and repentance. It's a time of knowing  alright - knowing I need grace.

This week, amid my dying-to-self epiphanies and journeys through Galatians, I also discovered a few things: the exciting new world of Spotify, Noah Gundersen, Marva Dawn, and that they made a new Footloose movie a while back. Noah is an artist you should check out. My friend Emily told me about him, and you find him on....drum roll please....Spotify.  Marva is a theologian with some very cool things to say about the good side of religion, and the new Footloose movie is not as exciting to me as the old one, but I'm glad I watched it - I think.

Is it me, or are we marching backwards listening to music on these little computer speakers and iPhones? The sound is small, like a transistor radio. Maybe that's why the songs are starting to matter again. A great song will shine through like light through a pinhole.

In the Beginning, God Created C,E,G, and It Was Major

Did God create harmony, or did man invent it? More data:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/fire-in-the-mind/#.UTA2m6XTy0s

Hope you enjoy.
Fascinating....

Creativity

Check this out. Go to this link, then to "exercises" on the menu on the left side of the page, and then click on the green dot experiment. It will be about halfway down the exercises page. Here's the link:

creativethinking.net

Fun. Weird. I love stuff like this. Did the pink dots disappear for you when you?

It's truly a trick of the "mind's eye." It will get you thinking about perspective. What's REALLY there? Oh the precariousness of certainty!

Also found these great inspiring quotes on creativity:

The first step in being creative is this: Get Started! 

"The easiest thing to do on earth is not write."(William Goldman)

"Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write."
(Paul Rudnick)

"The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." (Mary Heaton Vorse)

"One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily." (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." (Mark Twain)

Pay Attention

I love to read the Psalms through every month. I don’t always get through them all, though. You have to read five a day to do it, and 119 throws me off every time, although it’s one of my favorites.  Taking in all that Biblical poetry at once really accentuates the fact that so many of them talk about music. I know, I have a knack for stating the obvious, don’t I? But it makes my heart sing, literally. And how blessed the music-makers are!  Like David, we make hearts sing.

I find that the reward of creativity is the creative act. Mailbox money and awards are nice, and seeing audiences respond with smiles, or tears, or singing along is great, but still nothing compares with the feeling of finishing a song that you feel good about. In that moment, you know you have somehow obeyed a higher order, persevered through the fear of the blank page and the voices of the invisible judges, and spoken the language of the soul, both your own and possibly that of humanity. And maybe just maybe you’ve tapped in on the heart of God, who must surely love music to have created it with such transformative, healing power.

God created music. Have you thought about that? It’s a new twist on the matter for me. I like to think that my songs are co-created with God, and if you think I’m arrogant and presumptuous, pray for me. But I’m considering another perspective. It came to me when I went to a show the other night, a monologue presented by my friend Craig Havighurst, and he talked about the science of music, sound waves, harmony, and all the crazy coincidental tricks of music theory, and musical physics. For example, 440, 220, and 880 are all A’s in different octave ranges. The number, or rate of the sounds waves, cuts in half or doubles at the octave, making the pitch higher or lower but the same. No one invented that reality. The math of music blows my mind. If you study the harmonics that happen when you strike the A, the tonality of all three notes of an A major chord will be present, A, C#, and E. In his show, String Theory, Craig said, “Do you know what this means? It means that harmony wasn’t invented, it was discovered!”

I guess this struck a chord with me, so to speak, because, first of all, it connected the God-dots, but also because I feel so much like I discover songs when I write or compose, and I see the same thing happen to my students and creative friends. It’s the “magic” part, the mystery that keeps you ever reminded that you are not in total control of the gift you are being given. Humbling, isn’t it? This is why one of my favorite songwriting mottos is “pay attention.” Those who have “eyes to see and ears to hear,” as Jesus was so fond of saying, will get the greatest rewards, creatively. And it all ties in to the language of the Spirit, like the wind blowing wherever it wants, or walking on water, or loaves and fishes multiplying.

So, be brave, baby. Maybe you’d rather have me tell you how to demo songs, or make connections, or collect royalties, but trust me, that information is easy to come by. I’d rather encourage you to travel to worlds unknown and bring back something very cool for the rest of us to see. To create is to discover. Let me know what you find!