Sunday, October 6, 2013

Nez FB Post on "Spiritual Center of a Song"

Again, Mike posts about how he analyzes and views songs, songwritings and songsinging.

Oddly enough, I heard a much longer and more in depth version of the same topic on the radio this morning.  A program called "On Being" in a discussion with the Indigo Girls.  I'd love to hear Nez in a similar setting.

"There are few things in this world you can point to as metaphysical  Music is metaphysical."  I helped produce a benefit performance they did in Provincetown in the summer of 2012.  I was genuinely amazed at how they charged the air.  (Akin to what happens at Monkee concerts, but something deeper and transcendent somehow.  Like appreciating all of your current relationships & your world in the moment.  Monkees create perfect moments of Time Travel)

Here's his post from October 3, 2013, 9:59am.

I had a nice talk with Marc Myers at the Wall Street Journal the other day. He does a column called “Anatomy of a Song” and we were talking about Different Drum.

I tried to explain the idea of the spiritual center of a song, but I don’t know how well I did. 

When I do these live shows like the ones coming up in October/November I introduce the songs by telling a little something about the narrative they are set in. These narratives are the settings for a song -- like a gemstone is set in a ring or set in a bracelet. It’s not what the song is about necessarily but more how the song lives in my mind – like a mind movie.

The spiritual center is what gives the song its luster and color and meaning and informs the setting it is in. These settings vary but they all gather meaning from the songs.

I have written before how “songs sing us” – and that is more than a phrase. This ability to sing us is what makes a song live and breathe. Why we sing in the car and along with the radio and in an audience. A song takes us over in a specific way that causes us to let it sing -- one of the great features of a song, I think.

Mind movies are fun for me, too. They are a wonderful part of the creative process of song writing --bringing an idea into the world -- although creative process doesn’t quite describe the way a song comes to life for me. Creation is not so much a process as it is a discovery of something as it comes into view.

Songs start in mind as sound and rhythm with syllables and bits of words that may change as the song’s spiritual center starts to emerge and assert itself. The spiritual center forms the words that express it and the melody that surrounds it and at last the mind movie that sets it.

I’ve been hard at work writing down the mind movies for this coming tour. I’ll play more songs than last tour and it is great fun for me to watch these new mind movies that have been dormant – just waiting for the chance to come out and play.

I suppose each of us have a spiritual center of our own – what makes us who we are – our ethics and morals and character – our point of view and the settings we create for ourselves – the mind movies that become our experience.

All around me I see systems of ideas, each with their own spiritual center, creating these songs and mind movies -- creating life as we know it.

We start in Phoenix on the 27th. I can hardly wait.

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