Considering the Connection between Emotion and Melody

I took a bike ride.

I was forced to on account of there was so much noise and disruption outside.

Utility crews are fixing some broken dirt. They must be using really dull tools. Either that or they're just plain having fun; little big boys playing together, with big ass equipment. Fun for the entire family. Loud fun.

Anyway i wrote the following while sitting on my favorite pedestrian bridge in Austin. It's one of several bridges spanning the Colorado River as it meanders thru the Capitol City. the bridge does a little meandering itself as its not straight; it undulates, wiggles its way across the green fast-moving water.

Trouble is, the city insists on calling it a lake. Which is puzzling because it's not. Not really.

When i first visited Austin i remember wondering why they named it Town Lake. It's clearly not a lake; it's clearly a river. Lakes are big and somewhat entire--monolithic like a pond or something, not straight and narrow like a...a river. Lakes are supposed to have an inlet and an outlet, at least that's what my Earth Science book claims.

Anyway they changed the name. It's not Town Lake anymore (although why they went with something as prosaic as Town Lake i've no idea). Now it's Lady Bird Lake (which you might find head-scratcher as well, that is,if you didn't happen to know that Lady Bird, silly sounding name as it is, happens to be the dead wife of one of our dead presidents: a Texan by the name of Lyndon Johnson. .

Yeah, so i sat down in the sunshine on this serpentine bridge that connects North with South and i wrote this: It concerns the mystery of Music.

After slugging my way through 'It Could Happen to You' this afternoon it occurs to me that perhaps the thing that eludes me--the element that remains missing--that has been missing all these years--is not so much an element at all but an attitude.

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl Rast tells a story. He says that we have sometimes a grasping, clutching attitude towards life.

Says that we're all born with this 'monkey brain'-sort-0f-deal. I can totally see what he means. I mean it seems most of us are walking around with a fair amount of caution., some would say uncertainty, maybe even dread. And our response to this tenuous planetary life we got going here can sometimes be to hold on to what we DO have lest it too slips from our grasp.

Think about it:

What is the first thing a doctor does when we are born? He or she shakes the table or slaps the bottom of our feet, or cuffs our butt, to see if we are alive and well. And what is our response? we reach out for something to hold. like a monkey trying desperately to hold on to its mother as she swings from branch to branch.

This response to life extends past diapers, touching even the most basic of human needs: the quest of the human heart for meaning.

Br. David talks about the dilemma we so often face in life: whether to play it safe, take no risks, keep everything on an even keel so as to avoid the oftentimes troublesome unknown or do we venture past our comfort zones, test the boundaries set by inertia, and run the risk of tribulation?

until we discover that the truth is something that HOLDS US, that we give ourselves to it and then it holds US.

Not something that we hold onto, that we grasp and clutch to our breasts like the monkey clinging to its mother.

This becomes an attitude held in us, by us.

And this is what i am wondering about as i sit here on this breezy sun-drenched wavy gravy bridge.

This 'element', this 'attitude' about what it means to create music, to play 'good,' is it something i can give myself to and then let it hold me

or is it something that i must struggle to acquire then maintain and rigidly hold, wielding it like some Medieval knight crashing into battle?

Is this idle curiosity? NO.

This project, this all-inclusive resort for the high-minded that i've begun, has put me touch with all the elements of music that have baffled me since i first remembered that i wanted to play something 'good.'

Part of the project is me acting like i know how to do this shit. i know how to come up with changes, i know how to comp, i know how to engineer, i know how to improvise, i know how to operate instruments and on and on. Really?

So as i struggle to play what i hear, to sing the notes i hear in my head, to sound like a musician that has something meaningful to say, this one thought remains: what's it take to translate emotion into music?

I know this question yet its answer continues to elude me. But maybe this concept of attitude, once thoroughly adopted, is the same kind of deal: Brother David's deal.

Maybe this attitude about playing a melody--any melody--be it my own, the head of a tune, a solo line--maybe the element that is missing in me is not something that is studied and acquired and held on to and hauled out when the time is right.

Maybe it's an attitude that simply needs to be accepted and manifested.

Doubts come immediately of course.

But maybe that's part of it too. Maybe doubts are just indications of an immature attitude; one not yet fully formed and adopted. So does this mean that we can simply sidestep these doubts and continue to strive for this all-inclusive attitude?

An attitude that has at its core an unshakeable belief (trust) that there are notes to be played and i can find them.

It's a mystery.

But could it be, that i have yet to spend the requisite time in discovering the connections between these elements? Do i just need to keep going?

By sitting, by contemplating, by paying attention, is it possible to discover and make my own, this connection between an attitude about life and music that sustains me instead of drains me?

If i stumble upon one will it bend to the other?

If i'm able to discover the truth that holds me with respect to the essential life-giving elements, i.e., love, trust, courage, will the musical elements of melody, harmony and emotion follow suit?

Or vice versa. If through this project, i am able to discover precisely the connection between emotion and melody, emotion and harmony, will the truth that holds me up in times of uncertainty and despair come as well?

You Make Me Feel So Young

This tune is called 'You Make Me Feel So Young' and it is from the album...

Wait for it..............Yep...

It Could happen to You. Kenny Drew was the piano player on this August afternoon date in New York City in 1958.

I sat down to work on this tune Monday September 14th. I remember the date because it was the day after we got home from our trip out West. Man, what a trip. Colorado

Rocky Mountains

Two panhandles: Texas and Oklahoma

and...

Wyoming. Big deal? You bet. Know why?

Cuz before i got there, i seriously doubted its existence. I know it sounds goofy. But it's true. I figured i hadn't been there, so what the hell do i know. I mean i hadn't been anywhere out West for years and years, well into my fifth decade. And what the hell do i know about anything that i haven't seen with my own eyes? Hence, Wyoming, a big hunk of a cattle-driving state, without benefit of my senses, who knows?

But now i know. i know because i've sat at a table in Cheyenne. I drank a Wyoming beer. I drove down a road with a big sign on its grey shoulder that read WELCOME TO WYOMING.

So there you have it.

all right so i went to wyoming. good for me. what matters here is: i came back to austin and took up this project where i left off.

again. good for me.

But it wasn't easy. really. Predictably it was a slow day. i felt deflated. i was quiet. i was lonely.

I meditated for awhile, not because i thought i should. but because i was taking care of myself. i knew what i wanted, what was going to make myself feel better. so i sat for a while (in the garage on account of it wasn't hot, which was absolutely euphoric) then did two loads of laundry because it needed to be done and doing so made me feel like i was doing something useful, then i opened the computer...and nearly lost it.

Bullshit. Just Bullshit. That's what the computer had for me yesterday.

Bullshit comes in many flavors: financial, relationships, work, not-work, business and business-related. Especially this last one. Business.

Bullshit tasted like business yesterday. Bills, returns not credited, emails not answered and on and on and on. The bullshit supply is inexhaustible. The list stretches from the tip of one's nose to the top of the Eiffel Tower. And back.

Yeah so enough about this non-music mental paraphernalia.

I decided to run this particular tune because, well because it was the first one that came to mind as i made my way to the piano. yeah. that's how it happens. i wish i could say it was something else, a well-thought-out design borne of Conservatory-trained mental prowess perhaps. But no, not so much.

I just pick these tunes out of a hat so to speak. Oh well.

So i picked 'You Make Me Feel So Young.' And i thought, "i know this tune; i've listened to it a zillion times. i know it sounds trite. but you gotta understand; these tunes, all of them, are like my little cousins; i know how they wipe their noses on their sleeves, what kind of candy they hide in the cuffs of their bluejeans.

But once again, i am surprised at my inability to translate this intimacy to musical language. music is a mystery. the more i learn the more i don't know.

Jesus I hate that.

But i digress.

I begin. I read the chart. I see the changes. I see the chord changes and try to envision how this all works. How does Kenny Drew work this shit? How does he comp in such a way as to compliment Chet. How does he outline the chords rhythmically as well as harmonically? How the hell?

So what the hell. So i practice the changes, moving through them, figuring out inversions that permit fluid movement from one to the next.

I play through the changes, fingering each one and the best i can. I try to make sense out of the three or four notes in each one as they pass by at 165 MM.

It's not easy. At all. But after maybe half a dozen passes they start coming easier. I begin knowing what's coming next. And so i keep trying. Time after time i train wreck. Train wreck. A musical yard sale.

But i keep setting it up. And getting back up when it knocks me down. Such is life right?

And now that i've talked about everything BUT the tune, I feel myself too tired to continue this tonight. It's almost 11 and i gotta get some shut-eye.

Cheers.