Tending a small garden and gathering seeds

I am tending a small garden and gathering seeds.

I haven't blogged for years. But I've written and painted off line.

Here is a glimpse of a thing I'm doing.

I made these seven paintings over the last seven months. Each month's piece relates to what was on my mind/heart during that time period. Then each piece of art (and a new song I write that relates to it) is added to a larger piece. This piece grows over time. The first one which was completed over a year ago has nine panels. The one you see here is still in process. A few pieces in this collection include collaborative elements, a new development which I am thankful for.

The lower image is included in the larger context of the upper image. Each painting a row in a raised bed slowly filling with plants.

I've needed this structure to keep creating, digging, and (in a small way) sharing. I'm thankful for friends who joined my Patreon group and stuck with me as I found a way to sustainably make and share art and music in this phase of life. 

I am tending a small garden and gathering seeds.
 

My headlights don't reach that far (reflections on embarrassing secret identies)

My life is made up of visions of things ahead of me (at a distance -- possibilities, dreams, tragedies) and behind me ("young lovers try to get a grip on what they tasted in that kiss") but my headlights are notoriously bad at seeing what is right in front of me. Like tomorrow or the next day. When I have a car to drive.

I am a helicopter floating over a landscape with spotlights showing spaces around me at night. In the day I see ridges ahead and the shape of continents outlined with mystical clarity around them. 

I have learned to land and take off  but usually have to hop a ride on a truck or train or ship to move across the land.  My daughter's invasion of this planet has made landing the helicopter and walking around much more regular and worthwhile.

I talked to a car operator recently. She gave me tips for navigating roads. She reminded me how to switch the headlamps on and off, testing that they are working. Turn signals too. It was a little embarrassing to admit this was more like grade school than continuing education for me.

But she may need a helicopter ride someday. Or not. Which is also ok.

Why we need critics

A good music critic pays both the artist and the public a service in two ways: 1) They point to, name, describe and invite others to discover greatness that would otherwise be missed, 2) they act as a watchdog against shoddy, unoriginal work – calling artists to work harder and the audience to look deeper. A worthy critic sees hidden qualities which they reveal in artful, compelling prose.

Words from a Friend

My last post was a very useful "scorching" review -- an attempt to look at the Reuel Ropp EP from a distance and judge it... written by Zac Garver.

Different kinds of voices help the artist grow and are necessary to get us to making better art. The critic's voice is one of those. Another is the voice of a friend who has tracked your development as an artist over time and can speak to your work on those terms. What a gift!

Here is what my friend Andrew Kreider wrote about Future Past Present:

I loved listening to this EP.  Congratulations to you both – you have four strong songs here. 

The playing is strong throughout.  Love the harmonica and big reverb on Carry On.  So atmospheric.  The multiple guitars on Graveyard and its whole vibe reminded me of Elbow in the heights of The Seldom Seen Kid.  Awesome.

Again, I want you both to know how impressed I am – keep going!

Jason:

The hypnotic rocking of Graveyard with its soaring melody lulls the listener with its deceptive simplicity, while Carry On has a strong inner momentum that underlines the courage of moving forward -  the hope that “someone’s plotting better days.”  Carry On ends with this simple offering, “And every step I take is all I have to give anyway.”   Many of us could hope to say as much.

Jonathan:

These days, Jonathan writes like a grown man, no longer a youngster– informed by loss, casting his gaze back over terrain he keeps crossing at slightly different angles, starting to discern the shape of a calling that has always been there.  As he rightly puts it, with our deepest calling, it “takes a life to accept it.”  In the end, there can be deep stillness in embracing what has come to be, and these songs show a glimpse of the promise in that struggle, the gift of being “exhausted but rested.” 

With the underlying sense of hope that runs through the whole project, it’s fitting to end the EP on the image of the skies opening after rains – on the line “blue is the sky.”

A Scorching Review

If there were more reviews like this in my circles, we'd be better artists and listeners would be challenged to use their brains and their hearts when they listen, and to expect something worthwhile...
               
                   
Album Review: Past, Future, Present
                   
by Zac Garver
                   
Great albums are like wine and spirits. Some are 40% strong and best taken in shots or cocktails, while others are 10-15% and should be sipped all evening. The “strength” doesn’t indicate quality or excellence — that would be facile.
                   
After quite a few listens to Past, Future, Present, I suspect that collaborators Jonathan and Jason aren’t quite sure what they’ve made — unaware of how the chemistry has altered from inception. To make matters worse, wines change in the bottle, and the human palate is more than fickle. So too for music.
                   
This album harkens to a school of brewing that employs open vats, wild yeasts and the serendipity of nature — the results are rarely reproducible and thus never commonly available.
                   
I heard brilliant moments on this album. The first track, “Graveyard” is not one of them. I’m no student of music theory, but I kept thinking “this sounds off.” Perhaps musicians will appreciate it— like Coltrane’s Ascension (not an easy drinking spirit, if you will). “Graveyard” is a song about death and I hear the minor chords and meandering scales as an attempt to express the weirdness of death, the simultaneous beauty and sadness. I just can’t shake the sense that this track is two people who aren’t playing from the same song sheet. Like jazz but without the groove. Let’s call it an experimental cocktail that you only order one of.
                   
“Some Dream” on the other hand is glowing. The rumble of Jonathan’s voice and the hum of the guitar took me back to the first time I hit “play” on Jeff Buckley’s “Live at Sin-é.” Lyrically it’s vague, and that’s where it falters (to be fair, Buckley’s “Mojo Pin” is vague and about a dream as well). I want to drink this song all night, but the lyrics keep getting in the way, like sediment or garnish floating on top. I kept asking “What? Which one? This one? That one? One what?” I hear this song as an invitation to self-identify with “some dreams,” plugging in whatever dreams, hopes, and failures I carry. And even though the vagueness felt hasty, this is the track I put on repeat.
                   
“Carry On” is a trolly car rattling through a sleepy town at twice the normal speed. It’s trying to sound and act like a much bigger train. The rhythm of Jason’s guitar and the lonely distant whistle of Jon’s harmonica are gorgeous together. I want to ride that rickety trolly car into the sunset.
          
Lyrically it lacked the weight that I wanted. Like a beer with great initial flavor, but little complexity — you don’t drink it all night. Even so, this track shows Jon and Jason collaborating at their best, not to be missed or glossed over.
                   
“Green” puts you on a misty hill, in the rolling Appalachians. Close your eyes and you might hear a bard crooning in a dell, but the piano pulls you back and you’re in the auditorium where Jason is putting the keys and piano wires to righteous work. This is very possibly the best track — well composed and executed, with lyrics that keep you focused. It’s no rock ballad, it’s not rye whiskey, or even a tawny port. “Green” is a pre-prohibition cocktail, it’s fresh, bright, but has the antique complexity and depth that you rarely find in a song. The texture of the track — voice, piano, violin (or cello?) and the rustle of the musicians — all comes together unlike the rest of the EP.
                   
Keeping with the cocktail analogy, it’s as much about proportions as quality of ingredients. Finding the right balance is tricky, that’s where a master bar-tender, distiller, or winemaker comes into play — or in the musicians’ case: a producer. For Jonathan and Jason, I think they have the potential to be an astonishing duo — with the right producer. All the right ingredients are there and they’ve found some impressive combinations on this record. I want to see them do a better job perfecting what’s amazing, instead of letting the wild yeast go too far.
                   
In closing, this EP is worth adding to your library and improves with repeated listening — a quality found in the best spirits, wines and albums.

-----------------



               
           
       

A Close Thing (poem)

I find scattered flip flops on this Lake Michigan beach
More to the point, a flip flop
In decent condition, surprisingly
Not softened like bottle shards into jewelry fodder by waves and sand

It looks both satisfied and forlorn

Like one eye socket is staring out to sea
Waiting for the eventual return of its mate
While the other gazes lazily at itself
Ripe and confident in its place at the heart of
The summer apex of consumerism's promenade
Its life cycle and shelf life so short
It can not conceive of the first frost that looms ahead
Like a gap in an otherwise well maintained railroad track

Nor the frozen wasteland of the city dump
that particular gap in the tracks
leads to

Copyright 8.10.2016 Jonathan Reuel

Play

I'm serious about making things: songs, drawings, a difference... and part of being creatively serious is playing.

A while back I was hanging out with Christa's family, and whenever the nieces and nephews are around we do art. For some reason that day we made masks. This is my Einstein mask. I'm posing in front of Christa's sewn paper wall piece with my "memory ray gun" which I made using paper bags, toilet paper rolls and old photos. You aim the ray gun at something (visible or imagined) that you would like to remember more or less vividly and press "enhance" or "fuzz" on the gun. Imagination exercises do help retrain a part of your brain that can atrophy if you let it.

And it's kind of fun.

Step Aside

 

This is a detail from a piece with the working title "Removing Art."

I've been thinking about how religious subcultures relate to art. One way, one phase, is removing it. This is sad. It can be devastating. It can be small minded and stupid, and often is.

And. . . it can also clear space for something different, something new, like forest fires re-calibrate local ecosystems. Is there a place for book burning? Flag burning? Our most sacred personal, religious and national symbols deserve respect but also reexamination and challenge from time to time. Jesus kicks over the money changers' tables in the temple. Hooray say the artists while the business people scratch their heads or call their lawyers. But...

If I, as an artist, am unwilling to accept the possibility of (let me say it stronger -- if I don't expect and look for) times and places where removing art or music is the right thing to do (rather than making or promoting it), I may find myself in the same boat as the money changers who could not imagine that what God desired might require them to... step aside.

(Please excuse the Melvillian hack of a run on sentence.)

Listening to Music Now (Part 3: Critics)

Who tells you what to listen to . . .  or guides you to places they've discovered?
I used to go to record store owners to find new music. One of them made the switch and now I listen to his Spotify playlists. It is now, however, a different experience. Fundamentally. Whereas before I'd save up to buy an album every month or so (or maybe sign up for BMG again and get the free cds), now it's all at my fingertips. An unfathomable amount of music, right there. The fact that our minds are not blown by the landscapes open to us now, the treasure hunting available, is stunning. Once we start to get it we will learn new things, recognize new patterns, invent new ways of describing what we see. This is probably already happening.

This new reality calls for a new type of critic -- one that helps people learn how to listen again, how to look, how to appreciate, how to swim in the ocean.  Before critics were expert guides to particular swimming holes, rivers, or lakes. Some were explorers who visited other lakes and rivers. Some found the sea, but most of us didn't care because we couldn't afford to travel there. Now, however, the ocean is open to many, many more of us, and it's hard to hear the old critics voices over the roar of the waves. But some of them are modifying their boats or buying seagoing vessels. . . and other, younger ones are growing up on the ocean, visitors to the lakes and rivers  that were homes to yesterdays critics. But salt water is different than fresh water -- some skills translate and some don't.

I have a friend in his twenties that I see two or three times a year when I go to Nashville. He's become one of my new music "dealers", a seagoing explorer who comes to shore and shows me what he found since I last talked to him. He sometimes begins with an apologetic, "Well I don't have much for you this time" and then goes on to introduce me to a brilliant singer, writer, song, or even sub-genre. I'm trying to get him to write about what he hears. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. Maybe it will work, maybe not. At this point the important thing is that he's out of his boat looking. When he comes to shore he talks to his friends and they talk to their friends. People like him may end up writing... or not. Maybe they'll talk, or tweet, or host television shows -- or maybe (hopefully) there will be another way to introduce people to what they find in the sea, a method that does justice to the kind of change we are undergoing.

Collaboration

And now, for a brief respite from my ruminations on listening to music! Here's an in-process collaborative piece I'm working at with Christa.

Listening to Music Now (Part 2)

Here's a few questions to get you thinking about how you listen to music now:

Where you listen: on the computer, on hi fi equipment at home, at work. At a music venue, at church.

When you listen: What is your physical and mental state when you listen? Certain kinds of music require mental energy, other types can catalyze movement, but if you only listen in one way you miss a lot.

How you listen: Do you pick it apart or encounter it as a whole? Do you feel it or think about it? Do you disappear into it or launch off of it?

Why you listen: What are you listening for? To reinforce something, stir you, or challenge your reality? Again, it's easy to get into ruts and miss the variety of worthwhile reasons to listen. I've talked to a number of people who don't really listen to music anymore. One of the reasons is that once they outgrew the high school reasons to listen they didn't find new ones. They do exist.

What you listen to: this is where the options have opened up in such a massive way that we really can not yet really understand the change that has occurred. Until fairly recently, unless you had a lot of money and free time your access to the massively varied music that exists was fairly limited. No longer. If you can spend $120/year you have access to more music than you'll ever be able to adequately explore. Genres and subgenres spanning decades, continents, philosophies, emotions. It's insane.

Listening to Music Now (Part One)

I recently read an interesting post about Rhapsody's UnRadio. It's another way to listen to music, somewhere between the $10/month access to all music usually associated with Spotify and the new kind of "radio" experience which is Pandora. It's good to keep thinking about technology and how it affects the listening experience, because these are the pipelines through which the miracle of music flows into our brains and bodies.

Pulling back a little from our immediate situation, back beyond Youtube, before Itunes existed, back, back, back before surround sound, back to the invention of cds, back further to DAT tapes, cassette tapes, four tracks, quadraphonic stereo, vinyl, the first radio, first recordings. This has all changed in a just a bit longer than a human lifetime.

And how we listen to music continues to change. In live settings natural acoustics made a huge difference --  for most of history. And, although we thought all our sound reinforcement changed all that, it really didn't -- natural acoustics still matter. Ask anyone who has ever set up a sound system in a public (or private) space. Ask the people who suffer through music that sounds much worse than it should because it does not fit the room it's being played in. Acoustics still matter.

Headphones or speakers? How much (and what kind of) noise pollution is around you?

Many factors influence how we listen to music now, but the building blocks are the same, and worth remembering, especially since we now have access to an unprecedented, incrementally increased amount of music -- styles and types, live and recorded. What this means (among other things, including new challenges and opportunities for professionals and amateurs alike) is each of us has a chance to discover and rediscover music!  iWhatever our phase of life, music can be a gift, an avenue for grace of God, a prophetic prod towards truth, an invitation towards growth, an exposure of the heart, an aid to rest. So consider carving out a half hour. Get on Rhapsody, Spotify or even YouTube. Explore. It may remind you what a marvelous gift life is, and what a beautiful, terrible world we live in. Which is a good thing to remember.

Song and Dance Man

One of my favorite Bob Dylan quotes goes something like this;

"I'm just a song a dance man."

Coming from one of the most revered and long-lived musician/lyricist/activist/poets around, this is a fun statement. And like most good poetry it is both true and not true at the same time, depending on what level you look at it. Allow James Moore explain:

"Scrape away the veneer and what's left is a guy madly in love with the art of musical performance, someone who, for better or worse, till death do its part, is both master and slave to the creative process itself."

So on one level it's true, he is a song and dance man. Especially important for those who want to immortalize and worship him to understand. He's not the messiah.

On the other hand he's much more than that -- and his work is profoundly satisfying and disturbing, helping you face reality and shining light on our hiding places, reminding us how much meaning there can be, how much sorrow and joy in a simple song and dance.

What does this have to do with anything, you may be wondering? Well, part of what I'm working at in my own life and work (both as a songwriter and a leader in the Dandelion Seed Company artist network) is digging through the underbrush and the topsoil to find the bedrock I can really build my life and my work as an artist on. If it's not fame or money or being true to myself, what is it?

I think Dylan's quote is a nod in the right direction. One of my first and deepest foundations for my life and journey as an artist is simply this:

That art and creativity, the song and dance, are good things. They are a gift from God, they make life richer. Yes, they can do so much more -- move people, make them think, draw them closer to God, teach something -- all that is true, but without the foundation of them being good in and of themselves, being a gift from God, it is SO VERY DIFFICULT to really live out the calling or make the journey we are called to make as artists.

Imagine if you only saw your child in terms of the value he or she could add to your or someone elses' life -- you would be hamstrung as a parent from the start in being able to help them become the gift they could be to others, and yes, to you yourself. Something very similar applies to the arts in general and more specifically to those who are called to an arts-related vocation.

Love, Take Me Home

Home is my theme for this year, thinking about it, reading, writing songs, drawing and hopefully moving closer to it -- building better homes, appreciating the ones I've had and have.

Along these lines, I posted a song called Love Take Me Home on Soundcloud. (Oh, for you less technologically savvy -- just click the link and it will take you there). I wrote it on this theme for some friends in Asia a couple months ago. They seemed to like it. Hope you do too.

House Flying

This is a collaboration with Ellah Clemons. She drew the basic, original house/space ship and gave the idea for the chocolate factory. She also drew one of the butterflies. I drew the rest, attempting to work her ideas and approach into the larger context of the painting.

In Thailand

We are in Thailand installing art and playing music.

At This Stage

I had the privilege of sharing the stage numerous times with Eluvia's more than competent rhythm section in this unique context created by Christa Reuel.

DC

Direct Car

Desperate Clearing

Dust Coil

Delicate Clasp

Drive Closest

District

Distress

Columbia

Catching

Flight

I Was Gone Earlier

I shot this photo staring out the window of the house where I co-wrote most of the Surge On Smith songs for the next record. We're about half way through writing the record. 

A Good Photo

This is a good photo. It was taken by Justin Clemons a while ago, when he was a much less well-known photographer. He took it for Surge On Smith, just as we were getting started. We got up before dawn and he dragged all his lights into a field in the middle of Dallas. There are different kinds of art; I'm glad to have been part of this one one. Check out his stuff...