Part 2
Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?
I'm very organized; otherwise, I get nothing done. And I don't wait for my muse to inspire me—I keep regular hours and work according to outlines and schedules. Because I maintain both an art and writing practice, these vary. But I typically rise by 6:30 AM, have coffee, check the state of the world, and am in my studio or office by 8 AM. I work eight-hour days, longer if I'm on a deadline, in silence unless I need to listen to music for my writing. I listen to music for pleasure while working around the house, in the car, or on nights out at the symphony, the opera, blues clubs, jazz clubs, or dive bars.
Can you talk about a breakthrough piece in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?
A formative breakthrough was a piece I wrote for an art magazine in my twenties about punk-inspired experimental cinema. A non-profit gallery published the journal, and I had complete freedom and no deadline—positive-sounding variables any seasoned writer will tell you actually make writing more difficult. Anyway, I worked furiously on an ambitious piece, imitating the long essays I read in the Village Voice and Chicago Reader, but it felt unwieldy, like my wheels were spinning. Long story short, it was the first time I enforced strict structure on my writing—reigning in my excesses, murdering some darlings, using outlines, word counts, and alternating subjective and objective voices. The result was concise, readable, and the writing felt like mine.
There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?
To be productive, I must enact rituals, even on a tight deadline. I’m structured, follow a routine, and must get my head into a balanced state of relaxation and concentration. I traded youthful vampire hours for early rising long ago, and my mind and instincts are sharpest in the morning. So that’s when I do my most creative work. Afternoons are for polishing, revising, fact-checking, correspondence, etc. Some people work to music, TV, or radio, but I need total silence and no distractions. I tend to both write and paint in my art studio—a converted garage with windows behind me so as not to distract—because it gets me out of the house and into the zone.
Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?
Art has a healing function, especially in a culture that long ago jettisoned most of its non-linear, immaterial, intuitive qualities. Music bypasses the intellect to engage the heart, body, and soul directly and in real time; we mostly think about it after the fact. Consequently, I consider all music that moves me to be “soul” music, whether by Al Green or Dmitri Shostakovich. When I wrote my book on murder ballads, despite the lurid subject matter, I focused not on terrible things that happen to people but on how people cope with terrible things through music. And “hurtful” music can be healing: dark, disturbing, desperate sounds soothe by giving abstract voice to our pains and fears, making us feel less alone, and offering catharsis.
There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?
I work from what I know, what I’ve experienced, where I come from. But all sorts of cultural traditions influence me, many of them far removed from my circumstances. I believe this is the natural order of things. When creators draw too heavily from outside sources, it diminishes their voice. Doing so can take the form of insensitive cultural pillaging or dubious “appropriation” to support hyper-intellectual theories. But for me, these odious trends are secondary to the fact that they lead to bad work. I generally value authenticity over idea and think the best work is an organic extension of the artist.
Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?
I taught a course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago called Hearing Art / Looking at Music that focused on visual/sonic overlap, using synesthesia as an organizing principle for a simultaneous survey of art and music. As a student, I longed to take such a class, so I created a curriculum when I taught college. Synesthesia is not uncommon among artists and musicians. Duke Ellington saw colors while composing, and David Hockney designed opera sets according to palettes triggered by listening. Both disciplines share a vocabulary of values—harmony, rhythm, composition, etc.—and expressionist painters like Klee and Kandinsky emulated music in their paintings. There are analogs between color palette and key signature, between the color wheel and the circle of fifths. In my view, it’s a rich area for investigation that remains neglected.
Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?
Socio-political themes were prominent in my work from youth to middle age. Since then, they’ve receded. I remain well-informed with strong convictions about the world, but my latter-day focus has shifted toward introspective themes and subject matter. In my view, art is inherently political because, in a consumer/capitalist milieu, it’s essentially useless. To make it for its own sake rather than for fame, fortune, or power will always carry a whiff of subversion. But narrowly activist art often leaves me cold. Both because it lacks psychological complexity, trading poetry for agitprop, and because it rarely moves beyond a focus on identity politics to critique the economic system and war.
What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?
A lot. Much as I love reading and writing, I’m awed by music’s ability to transcend mundane existence and activate vistas of expanded reality. And its primary language is abstract—pure, organized sound. Thomas Mann wrote about music’s “spoken unspoken-ness”—its ability to say so much without literally saying anything. These qualities place it at the top of my artistic pantheon. So, it’s unsurprising that my ideals as a writer and artist derive less from literature and art than music. When I write and paint, I aspire to the quality of music. Being surrounded by music before I could speak seems significant here, as I’ve always felt driven to articulate the power of music through words.
