Gitanjali
That which the locusts have destroyed will be restored unto you – Ezekiel
Music excavates heaven – Balzac
Labor Day 2007, Resurrection Tattoo, Austin TX
The only other time I’ve seen the underbelly of a tattoo parlor was five years ago in Woodstock, NY … a year of adventure and passage. I’d found a dime store charm labeled OM, and not reading sanskrit myself I took it on faith the translation was legit. It was going to be my first tattoo and I knew where I wanted it. What I didn’t know was it was going to hurt like a mother. Cary chatted up the guy tattooing her, while across the room I cried as the fingers of my right hand twitched from the pain of the needle. I traced it with my pupils; the vowel containing all other vowels started to bleed as it took shape on the inside of my wrist.
A few weeks later I ran into Tom Kimmel, and when I told him about it, he showed me a different OM strung around his neck: That’s not OM, Tom … this is. So great … I got myself a freaking tattoo and now I didn’t even know what it was – at least not until a month later back home in MD when I asked my Dad, who without a cautionary word said: It’s OM son, only a different script. Whew!
This has been a month of awakening for me. The kind of sunrise I’ve seen only once before in my life, and Colorado was the setting both then and now. I’d played the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest in ’92 and ’94, got my picture in Billboard Magazine, and every weekend there would be some kind of mention of me in the Washington Post. Heady stuff for a guy who’d just quit his job, giving himself 5 years to see if he could make it. I never thought it would end. But it did.
Ten years later in 2002 my return to the Folks Fest was less than auspicious. I had an incredibly difficult time being anonymous, and I had no one to talk to about it. I wanted it back, all of it, and I tried really hard. That steep fall from grace hurt more than my tattoo, and I wasn’t ready to stop hurting. But this summer was different. Cary was in the song contest so I decided to go back one more time. I wasn’t booked to play but I didn’t really care anymore.
I found myself in a circle with Michael Lille, Cary, Melanie Hirsch, and Tim Burlingame. Without planning to, the five of us wrote a song called Thinking About It. Craig Ferguson (the director of the festival) dropped by, really dug the song, and made me feel good by remembering my first album with great enthusiasm: Incoming produced by Mark Heard.
I’d arranged a day gig for myself during the week while Cary went to song school (the contest was Friday). Every morning I drove in to Denver to work on a new recording for my cousin Rekha. She’s an intimidating jazz pianist/vocalist and our plan was to record in her living room. Within a few seconds of hearing the piano though, I knew it wouldn’t work – the pedal was too loud, like an out of time kick drum in the middle of those sensuous chords that she plays so well. She went looking for other pianos, not knowing if any would fit the bill, but within an hour she’d rounded up a beautiful Steinway in a big hall at the Denver Art Museum that we’d be welcome to for a day, and an $180,000 Bosendorfer in a recital hall at the piano shop around the corner. Talk about karma!
As we were recording I marveled at Rekha’s ability to improvise, to solo in the middle of songs without skipping beats or falling apart – the way I always do in front of a crowd. I asked her how she did it, how her fingers could jitterbug so confidently across the black and whites. She said she didn’t feel like she was taking chances, just playing the way she would at home stomping on the keys for hours, days, months on end. She’d just dial it back a notch or two on stage, and it felt great. That’s what I wanted to do.
Each day I’d return in the evening to our huddle of tents backstage of the festival, looking to write another song – enjoying the anonymity, enjoying the circle of friends, and good strong medicine too. I wrote with Cary, Amy Speace, and Jagoda (with whom I’ve just recorded a live album). But the real reason we were there was Cary in the contest. I’d come back to a different reality every day: she was focused on her guitar playing, but I was hoping she’d be able to understand what I had to learn the hard way: it’s not ever about the guitar – it’s always about the song.
Checking messages in Denver on Thursday, I heard Cary’s voice sobbing on the phone, and I was about to tell Rekha I needed to go when I realized they were tears all right, but tears of gratitude. I don’t want to steal Cary’s thunder you should read her blog, but this story has become big for me too. In a class with Mary Gauthier, people related how they were feeling – unable to accomplish goals, to finish songs, to write with meaning, or incapable of playing the way they wanted to. Cary told Mary she was freaking out about having to play guitar for herself at the contest.
Here are the words that reverberate in my bones: “No, you’re not here for this. You’re not here to win a contest and you’re not here to play the guitar. You are here to sing the song that only you can sing. The song that someone in the audience needs to hear.”
The song only you can sing … I felt like I just went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. How far had I strayed? How many times have I taken the stage trying to prove something to somebody, trying to sing a song that’s grown old only because I know it will sell CDs? How many times have I tried to convince myself I’m still that guy who stepped on the stage at Kerrville in ’93 not caring whether he won the damn New Folk Contest or not? How codified had my life become? How frozen am I by the fear of disappointment – the fear of how powerful I really am, the fear of improvisation, the fear of dancing that keeps me from falling, but that also keeps me from flying. I am officially a pillar of salt.
Earlier in August I was in Boston at Fox Run mixing my album with Jagoda. Neale Eckstein is my Pro-Tools guru and I jumped at the chance to work with him. I ran across a poem I'd read before: The Invitation (by Oriah Mountain Dreamer) is deceptive, you don’t feel the impact for a while. The first time I read it I thought it was psycho-babble. But this time one line reached out and grabbed me: I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. Oh my god! If ever there were words written for me … could I have the courage to do what I felt to be true, even though it engendered conflict? I started to realize then how I trap myself, how I keep myself in a box to feel safe and to avoid difficult situations.
Mary Gauthier’s’ words ring in my ears like tinitis. I can’t get that sound out of my head, nor do I want to. I can’t get Oriah out either. Along with The Journey by Mary Oliver, and Last Night as I was Dreaming by Antonio Machado, they have become my holy scripture. And if that is the lyric dearest friends, the melody is Darrel Scott.
Outside of seeing Shawn Colvin for the first time (giving me the courage to quit my job at 30) I have never seen something so musically powerful. He sat down alone with his guitar, unaffected by his surroundings and played from such a deep well – going for every note in his throat and his fingers. It was as if Aretha jumped into the arms of Stravinsky on the dance floor of William Blake. No jokes, no set list, no galley of guitar effects, no pregnant pauses for the expected laughter following a punch line. Just songs, not even my kind of songs, but simply the best solo performance I’ve ever, ever seen – improvising, feeling, singing, playing his goddam heart out.
I told Michael Lille that Darrel’s set was the only one I really wanted to catch. We sat together on the front row and as soon as Darrel started to play, involuntary streams raced down to the collar of my kurtha. The same tears as when a church choir starts to wail, when Ruthie Foster sings, when Aunty Diana died, when I was leaving Crystal, and when I was falling in love again. Midway through the set, Michael reached into his bag and put on his sunglasses, and I couldn’t help feeling I knew why. Sharing that moment with him is something I will always treasure. We have a special bond, the both of us – the accident of birth: April 11, 1958.
The universe was showing me the way out of my box. I ran into Darrel Scott backstage still with tears in my eyes and I mumbled the words you changed my life. I’m sure he thinks I’m an idiot.
Over the years I’ve written some of my favorite songs with Michael including Gitanjali, from a book of poems by Tagore. It’s actually two Bengali words put together: Git which means song, and Anjali meaning offering or gift. Tagore won the Nobel prize for this collection after Yeats fell in love with it, and brought this Indian Michaelangelo to England in the roaring 20’s. That song became the soundtrack to my down time these past few weeks. And even though I had very little time to myself, I heard it enough to try Tie a Yellow Ribbon for a change to get Gitanjali out of my head. It didn’t work.
Cary did so well in the contest, she sang more powerfully than I’ve ever heard her, she held her own on the guitar, and if songwriting was more than one third of the judges’ equation I think she might have won. But she was grateful for the lesson learned, her songs touched hundreds if not thousands of people, and she shone like a full moon – light where there is supposed to be darkness. I was so proud of her performance. And I am even prouder of her journey.
That evening (after Darrel’s set and Cary’s contest) I had an appointment to write with Dave Crossland, one of my all time favorite writers who by coincidence had never co-written with anyone, ever. He joked over the week that he was saving himself for me. Now I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a lot of pressure. I thought to myself: What if it isn’t good for him? He may never want to do it again.
So we sat down by the cold river on the skirt of the festival and talked for a few hours. Eventually we found our center, pondering being in the music biz for ages now, and how it feels not to have achieved the superstar status of our contemporaries; watching young yet deserving acts take our place on the stages we used to play. What an impossible feeling that is to voice without sounding bitter!
Cary gave us a line to start from: You look like the picture I saw when you were laughing. We took it from there. It’s not very often you see unmitigated joy on someone’s face, but I saw in Dave’s my own reflection – I had received an incredible series of gifts that all felt connected, and this song was part of that unfolding. Here’s the first verse and chorus:
How many times have you stood alone and wondered
Are you really good enough?
How could you meet all the expectations knowing
That you were only faking it?
But you look like a picture I saw when you were laughing
When everything was coming true
You look like the painting I always saw inside
I always saw inside of you
It was time to go back home. I immediately dove into producing again. Nancy Jephcote from Martha’s Vineyard came in for a couple of weeks, and she brought her Lowden guitar. I used to play a Lowden, the love of my life (you might have seen it on the cover of The Way of the World). It was stolen out of my car in Chicago 12 years ago and I’ve played my Breedlove ever since. I was into it for sure, but deep down I pined for my truest love. In Colorado Michael Lille asked me if I’d be interested in his Lowden if he ever moved to a trailer in the Yucatan (I said sure man, not knowing how I’d pay him), but playing Nancy’s confirmed it – I had to have one.
This weekend past I taught a guitar workshop at Kerrville’s Wine and Music Festival with Tena Moyer and Jack Williams. We started at 10 AM sharp Friday morning. The three of us met an hour earlier and during the course of our planning I discovered that Jack had his Martin guitar for over thirty years, and until recently only had the one axe til Ronny Cox gave him another D35 just like it. Must be nice I said – and Tena piped in that if anything ever happened to her, I was to get her ten gazillion dollar Ryan guitar. Now I’ve never wished for the untimely death of anyone before. I don’t really wish that now either, but I was flattered by the impossibility and honored that Tena thought of me.
Our workshop was at the newly remodeled Threadgill theater. Students were milling around playing guitars, one playing a Lowden … I said to no one in particular: I love my Breedlove, but that’s the guitar I was meant to play. Nobody at the ranch knew if the workshop was going fly but soon Jack, Tena, and I settled into a groove repeating the mantra – it’s not about the guitar. A curious sentiment considering everybody just ponied up $100 each for a guitar workshop. But our honesty paid off with honesty back, there was nervous laughter, there were tears, and a lot of affirmation lazily rising up to the rafters of the gleaming tin roof.
We wrapped up the workshop Saturday morning, and as we were saying goodbye a friend taking the workshop (by request unnamed) said she had something for me, but she didn’t have it with her. We exchanged addresses and numbers even though she said it was too big to mail. A few minutes later she came back to tell me what it was: a Lowden guitar, just like the one I never got a chance to say goodbye to in Chicago. She left me with a quote: Music excavates heaven.
I was speechless.
Words cannot describe what it’s like to finally see God. I mean I’ve heard about her, but now I know what she looks like. Cary and I left for Austin that afternoon, without the Lowden, but with chests heaving in gratitude. And even though it was an amazing gift, it wasn’t really about the guitar. It was about the song inside me. We made plans to meet in Johnson City to pick up the guitar the next day, then drove to Ann Bloch’s in Buda for the rest of the weekend. That night at song circle around her fire pit with Andy Corwin, Kristin DeWitt, Stephen Taylor and Jackie Gaston, I told everyone my story but it just didn’t come out right.
Heading to the Silver K Diner on Sunday I remarked emphatically to Cary, Ann, and Sunshine: Today, I believe. We sat down at a table next to Guy Forsythe, his girlfriend and 5-month old daughter, and Michael Shea. And before you know it, God walked in with my new Lowden. I handed it to Guy and when I heard him play I knew my life had changed. My unnamed friend shared a scripture with us: That which the locusts have destroyed will be returned to you. She said restoration was the word she wanted me to hear, and along with the Lowden handed me a Cool Pick® and an amulet of Mary.
We finished our key lime pie and hopped in Ann’s Subaru back to Buda. Cary and I had talked about getting new tattoos for a while and on the drive back we decided the time was right. I looked around for images of restoration, Chinese symbols and Sanskrit translations but nothing was feeling like a permanent addition to my aging body. But when Gitanjali started playing in my head again, I knew it had to be. Ann and Cary convinced me it should be in my own writing, so I took out a Sharpie and wrote it out about 25 times before settling on the first one, the only one that was unconscious (and therefore trustworthy).
AJ, our tattoo artist, is decorated neck to ankles in tats, black hair with a patch of shaved blonde in back, and 5 piercings I could see. A scary look to be sure, but one you definitely want in a guy with an autoclaved needle and permanent ink. He tried to convince me I wanted my tattoo elsewhere, positioned in a way for others to read, and so I told him the story – a condensed version. He understood and proceeded to shave the hair on the inside of my left forearm. I want to see it when I played my new guitar to remind me of the gift I had been given at birth, that I lost, and that was now returning to me. I want to say the word gitanjali before singing the song only I can sing. (apologies for getting all Deepak Chopra on you)
I remembered Miriam who danced with all the other women after crossing the Red Sea leaving behind 80 years of slavery. I thought about King David who danced naked in front of everyone when the Ark of the Covenant was returned. I conjured up the three Mary’s swaying like The Three Graces hanging on my studio wall (which Robin Harrel made for me). I pictured sitting with Michael Lille watching Darrel Scott, and I replayed Cary singing on the Rocky Mountain stage like I’ve never heard her before, as the needle pierced my skin tracing my own handwriting. I never grimaced. I wanted to but Ann was watching me like a hawk trying to determine if she’d ever get one herself.
There’s Vaseline and Saran Wrap on top of my new tattoo where my hair used to be. Underneath it says gitanjali just like I could have written it with a Sharpie on my skin. Why didn’t I just do that? Too late. It’s permanent – just as it should be, like a prison tattoo. If I could dance I’d go out right now and shake my booty. But I can’t – most musicians can’t. That’s been getting to me lately, an unexpected point of shame.
I’ve named my guitar Shanthama. I’m going to take my time learning how to dance with her.
Namaste’ TPR
