Part 3

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

75% of the music I listen to is on headphones, both other peoples’ music when I’m walking around in the world or working on something else and when I’m working on my own music.

20% of the music I listen to is at live shows. I go see a lot of live music and most frequently it’s stuff I’m not familiar with. I don’t see many rock bands, which I guess is weird since I guess I make rock music. But I see a lot of noise, techno, house, free jazz, new music, drone, etc. Affectations turn me off immediately so that cuts out a lot of country and rock where a lot of the motivations seem to be about conforming to certain cliches of rebellion.

Of course the cliches are present at house parties or punk shows for example, but those are about utopian aspirations of unity and community and I’m a sucker for that. But I find machismo repulsive in all its forms, so that cuts me off from a lot of rock music too.

As for creating I go through phases. Occasionally, like every few years, I really want to just do something on my own because I have an idea how it should work that I don’t feel like I could explain to anyone or I don’t want anyone else’s opinions.

But far more frequently I really enjoy and depend on the exponential charge that comes from collaboration. Of course I have my biases and opinions about what will serve a particular song best and occasionally I get attached to these. But probably 95% of the time I say ‘sure, let’s see what happens’ no matter what direction someone wants to take something. and 95% of those instances we end up going in that direction. Maybe 10% of the time we circle back a month later and change it back to what I originally wanted.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Music is the spiritual center of the world. It’s so funny and so sad how completely diametrically opposed the music business is to the potential power of music. But maybe I’m just not the target market for a lot of music and those dorky bands are fulfilling the same need within their demographics that I am searching for in my listening.

For better or for worse, music is also a mirror on society in a way I guess. Or whatever. But man, ugh, society?! Barf. I have a profoundly deep love and respect for all true musicians I meet. It’s pretty rare for us to not connect immediately.

I mentioned above that I estimate I feel about 2% of what I make is worth sharing. But assuming the current trends of the music industry and my place in it continue on their current courses, it seems I’m probably less than a year away from sharing 0% of what I make. I imagine I’ll continue to put the same number of hours into it every day. and I’m pretty OK with that. It’s disappointing in some ways. But it’s less disappointing than suddenly worrying about fitting into a subculture that has been my entire focus and grounding for 35 years and is now across the board pretty indifferent to what I make. So it’ll be a relief when I finally no longer worry about sharing any of it.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I make albums because I don’t know what I really think about things. As you can probably imagine by this point in the interview, there are dozens and often hundreds of pages of notes that go into the making of each album. and Still I am shocked every time when an album is completed and I listen back and see what has made the cut and what all these notes have been distilled down to and I think Oh Wow, so that’s what I think?!

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I can comprehend that I have five senses and a memory and music churns through my senses in the present and triggers associations that have different emotional associations to me. and I can comprehend that certain cliches and conventions accrue their power over time thanks to these associations that work as shortcuts to triggering these responses. I know enough about science to know that I am not qualified to offer any more specific thoughts than that on it.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Ha. Yeh. I enjoy drawing and making collages sometimes but those are intentionally creative acts. Basically when I tell people I am only interested in music I don’t mean ‘creatively I am only interested in music.’ I mean ‘nothing else holds my attention.’ I love walking the art museum more than anything else in the world, but I am always listening to music as I do so.

I have a lot of friends that joyfully extend their creative spirits and invest it into their every act. Jen feels that way about cooking and I am very pleased to benefit from the results. and I do honestly have an embarrassingly deep emotional response to great sushi. It’s weird how it moves me. I can summon creative lessons I’ve acquired when necessary to solve a real world problem. But I can’t solve a real world problem until I translate it into musical terms.

And as far as cooking for myself or other basic life upkeep, not interesting at all to me. I really just wanna get through it all quick as possible to get back to making music. I kinda wish it wasn’t so, but I accept it.  

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

You know my day job these days is writing ad copy for audiologists and hearing aid companies. So it’s funny that you phrase your question this way. I’ve written a few thousand words on the mechanics of hearing just before sitting down to write this!

I will say that we all come to recognize emotional triggers whether they’re intervals between notes or a rhythm dropping to half-time, or whatever. Personally I’ve become immune to the quiet / loud thing from too much exposure, but I get why it works. The successful executions of all of these triggers depend on them being employed either subconsciously or in a smart self-aware manner. But the greatest diversity and depth of feeling comes from the layering of these triggers. Hacks muddy stuff up with contrasting triggers. But masters create nuance by skillfully layering contradictions.

Nuance penetrates more deeply and the resolution of contradictions when embodied in the immediate in a piece of music feels like magic, or at least spirit.