Music Lake
Yesterday I found myself in a Brooklyn grocery store buying a bag of kitty litter and carton of milk. The litter was for the cat, the milk for my two-year-old daughter, and the two items struck me as disparate, rarely purchased together, especially along with nothing else. “The meaning of life,” I said to the guy as I hoofed the kitty litter and milk onto the counter. He didn’t laugh. “The meaning of >my life,” I said, thinking it might be funnier the second time around. But this was Brooklyn, no room for funny on a Monday morning. I walked home, sustenance in one hand, necessity in the other—kitty litter and milk, together again for the very first time.
I am the personification of disparate things, kitty litter and milk wrapped in a pair of writerly specs and concert tees—I’m a writer and musician. In a perfect world, I’m a writer by day and a musician by night, moving from one pursuit to the other as easily as switching up a pair of shoes. But reality is much different. Often I’m a musician for a month, and a writer for two. Sometimes I’m a musician for six months, and writer for five. Internally, the two disciplines battle for my mental screen time, two summer blockbusters competing for advertising space.
I don’t dabble. I’m not the guy who pulls out a guitar at a writing retreat, cozies up in an Adirondack chair, and winks at his fellow writers as if to say, “I don’t really play guitar, but here goes.” I take music too seriously for that. Besides, I play the bass, and in my twenty years as a professional musician, no one has ever asked for an impromptu bass line while sitting around a campfire. The same goes for writing. When friends ask what I write, they give me a glassed-over look when I launch into a fifteen-minute diatribe on the differences between Dan Brown and serious literature. “Take it easy, Chris,” they usually say. “What you got against Dan Brown?”
After I published my first short story in a little-known literary journal based in Washington DC, a teacher (knowing I also played music professionally), looked at me and said, “Congratulations! You’ve managed to pick the one profession that pays less than music.” It seems I have a love for disparate things, lofty artistic pursuits that demand excellence while shunning finances. I could learn a thing or two from Dan Brown. When it comes to music, I should listen to more Kenny G. But more difficult than the financial intricacies of negotiating a life in New York on two equally low-paying jobs, is the brain space that the two professions demand. It is hard to do both well.
A few years ago I published a chapbook that was also a jazz album. I wanted to create a CD that was the culmination of everything I loved, writing and music together in a kind of art school mashup. The music I write is considered modern jazz, music without words, so because of its instrumental nature, the project didn’t lend itself to the usual lyrics vs. literature comparisons. This was a jazz CD that tried to tell stories with melodies, a book of stories that attempted to define plot melodically. I know, one can practically hear the cha-ching of the cash register.
When the book/CD combo was released, the press had questions, and man-oh-man, did I have answers. In interviews I’d wax poetically about the relationships between composition and short story form. I’d profess to know a thing or two about writing a tune with a strong melody, and raise my hands all theatrical-like when I explained that the arc of a short story was practically the same thing. Radio hosts would nod their head approvingly. “Of course,” they’d say. “Music and writing are very similar.” I’d smile in a way that made it seem like I understood something about my world, an understanding that came from a deep and truly inspired part of me. I was a guy seriously in touch with his process.
On paper the two seemed similar. Back then, if you’d given me a pencil, I would have drawn a line, connected melody and story, shown you where they converged. If you’d handed me a protractor, in a grandiose arc I would have proven how rhythm and pacing were inherently linked. If you’d brought me a calculator, I would have mathematized the overtone series, pressed a button, and shown you a world where harmony and plot coexisted. But these were just theories. Tricks for radio, feeble attempts to explain the inextricable link between my ass-in-the-chair and the inspiration behind two very different art forms.
