A Songwriter Goes Back to School

Solo Touring at the age of 62, day by day by day….

*these are notes from the road. I intend to keep the time I spend writing them to a minimum. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy them. They are subject to editing and deletion and susceptible to self-importance. If you like them, consider becoming a paid subscriber to the songwriting essays.

10/12/2022 Day One - Grief as guitar tech, the kids are more than alright, and what’s that you said?

Downtown Schenectady, New York.

Pops had an honorary doctorate from Union College, in Schenectady, four hours drive from, but near enough to, Alfred University, where he made his first really good decision, abandoning his idea of being a Potter to concentrate on writing, poetry in particular.

He was really proud of this honorary degree, which he’d collected while nursing a knee so painful that every time he saw a set of steps, he whimpered. He loved to tell this story while laughing at himself. The steps got higher, the walk longer, the knee worse. “A guy walks into a university ceremony….”

One of his former students, Jordan Smith, an excellent poet, who writes with a clear-voiced sense of purpose and deep love for humanity, and his colleague, Jennifer Matsue who is sharp as a new blade, with wit and insight to spare, brought me here a few years ago to meet with the students to discuss Activism in Songwriting.

The kids were more than alright. I left absolutely secure that my high opinion of young people was completely justified.

I can’t believe that I’m privileged to return.

I don’t know if it’s genetic imprinting, like something a crow would have, but I feel perfectly at home here. The whole enchilada suits me, from the terrain and the weather, to the upstate New Yorker’s tendency to call bullshit on even the smallest thing. I also believe that winter is good for whatever ails the spirit. I believe that anything that can actually kill you if you don’t pay attention is good for a writer.

I’m going to “teach” a class. I have this down pat, because I know that the kids already know the why and all I have to do is help them see the what’s what. I’m optimistic for them, and that’s the whole reason I can do this. There’s no point in writing the songs I write without optimism. Without optimism I’d be teaching a class in Songwriting and the art of writing Dirges. But with optimism in hand, this thing we discuss, this moving forward against all reason, it becomes a plan and not just a hope.

The first thing I’ll tell them is that if somebody says “it will never change,” the “it” is already starting to change. Trust me on this, nothing you see today will be as you think it will be when these college kids turn 75.

So, yeah, I dig it here. But when I got off the plane I remembered that Pops was still around when I last visited. And that I can still remember his laugh, which I heard walking off of the plane, and while waiting for my luggage, and in the rental car to the hotel. Damn.

So, surprise, surprise, three days here will be another part of the grieving process, but the good and productive grieving , like singing Irish drinking songs over a body on the bar, or marching in the second line down an Avenue in New Orleans.

Pops and I had plans to go to New Orleans and just hang out in every jazz club we could find.

Books (and sometimes people) say that grief lessens with time. That’s been a lie.

I can tell you, for a fact, that you can scream all of your grief out in songs, write it down in verse, dream it and ponder it, even try to burn it out of your body with white hot action, and it will be there, as big as ever.

I can’t drink, so maybe you can drink it into silence, but that would make everything silent, and I don’t want that.

My only hope is to bring it along, let it sing the drinking songs, play the trumpet, be my roadie and guitar tech.

My grief likes it when I’m around young people, people with ideas and the full confidence of youth and energy. Because other people’s grief is the fuel that energizes young creators. The need to alleviate suffering, to understand lost love, to bring back the dead with voices that speak to the future, those can be key parts of what makes a creator look outward, and looking outward is the secret to all creation. Yes, even while creating using your inner thoughts. More on that, someday.

Acoustic Bowie- Benjamin Daniel as Bowie, Tess Pope, EP Guthrie (Bass) just out of sight, and an Old Man. The kids being more than alright. You should have been there.

I’m sixteen in this picture, singing some blues or something on a borrowed Guild guitar, at the Iowa City Fiddler’s Picnic at the Iowa City 4H Fairgrounds. That was a mighty fine guitar. And that’s a natural Afro, pick it and forget it. One of my friends called me Sly…

It’s 1976, the country was awash in grief, still trying to find a way to recover from sending its children off to die in Vietnam, for all the same reasons we send kids to die today, money for rich people.

I’m sure I’m singing something political, as well. I was young and I was 100% certain that I had to say something, do something.

Things don’t change that much. The music does, but the purpose is always there, if you listen.

I keep mentioning how much more difficult traveling feels, which makes me feel like I’m just not obeying my HTFU philosophy. (Harden The Fuck Up).

When I left to travel today, my crush told me to let people help me if they offered. That would be a first!

But I may not have a choice. One of my Covid symptoms (I’m officially over it, officially, but…) is that my hearing seems to have been negatively impacted. That’s the last thing I needed.

I’m not sure I’ve fully accepted that I have something that might be considered a handicap.

But even with hearing aids, I have to tell people, “I don’t hear well” in order to make sure they speak clearly and loudly and I don’t miss any critical information. And there is no way around it, since hearing loss is an invisible handicap.

It’s also the handicap that frustrates people the most. I listen as closely as I can, but unless your voice just happens to fit the exact frequencies that I still hear reasonably well, I’m going to miss something.

But I’m trying as hard as I can. I promise.

This will be the first craft talk/class I do since getting hearing aids, since realizing just how bad my hearing has become.

And the first thing I’m going to say is “I don’t hear well, so pardon me if I ask you to repeat yourself. Because I’ve learned that young people have a lot to say that makes sense. And I want to hear every word.

During the last few years of his life, Pops needed hearing aids that he wouldn’t get. He couldn’t hear a damn thing. But he listened to everybody. And he paid attention to what they said.

So the least I can do is listen as hard as I can, here, where I’ll be able to hear him laughing as he looked up at the long flight of stairs standing between him and his honorary degree.

I can climb those same steps, one at a time. And I can find both optimism and grief, feel acutely what I’ve lost, and joy for what I’ll find.

Today, I’ll hear about a future that is worth caring about. Because the kids are more than alright.

I promise, I’m listening.

“I fade a little every day

It’s an old man’s job to slip away

And open up new places in the line

I know this to be true

And I don’t mind”

-From the song “Metal” by Nathan Bell from “Loves Bones and Stars, Love’s Bones and Stars”

Loves Bones and Stars, Love's Bones and Stars on Apple Music

Love somebody,

Nathan