""A Garden Grows" is maybe the best new song I have heard all year. [Headwaters] is among my top handful of CDs released this year."
-

Larry Hillberg, KVMR Radio, California.

Thanks for the kind words and the spins Larry! You’re the best!

Words

They are missing. I haven’t had writers block like this in a long time. I sit down with my guitar and melodies come, but the words don’t. No ideas. Nothing. In some ways it feels like I’m paralyzed. When writing words is your means of making sense of the world, then it becomes easy to feel lost when words don’t come.

Maybe it’s that I just put out a new album, and my focus has been so dedicated to this batch of songs that I’m having trouble moving on. There’s a mourning process to putting out a new record. It is birth and death at the same time. So maybe this is some kind of postpartum thing. I started working on Headwaters back in November. And now it’s here. There is nothing to do but nurture it and hope that somewhere, somebody finds some amount of meaning in the songs.

But I’m not one to wallow in despair or self-pity. And so I have a new plan. I will write some words daily. It may be a haiku. It may be a short story. It may be a song. But it will be words. Likely, there will be a lot of chaff and very little grain. But I will persist until the words return.

You’ll probably see some of this on here. Because art is meant to be shared. Even if it is the art in practice, lacking in polish, but no less art just the same.

JTB

I would love so very much if you could talk about that passage and more specifically how it relates to and inspired "The Waltz". So freaking cool, man.

- Asked by Anonymous

Well, okay. Thanks. 

In East of Eden, the character Adam is a broken man who has twin sons with Cathy (Cate) who leaves him with the boys and is pretty much evil. Adam had a rough childhood and he is depressed and barely able to do what he must for his sons. Given the many biblical parallels, there’s also a Samuel, who is a wise sage, who speaks truth to Adam about his evil wife and how he is failing his sons. In the particular passage of the book that inspired the waltz, Samuel confronts Adam about his depression:  

“I don’t want advice.”
“Nobody does. It’s a giver’s present. Go through the motions, Adam.”
“What motions?”
“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”
“Why should I?” Adam asked.
Samuel was looking at the twins. “You’re going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
Adam did not answer, and Samuel stood up. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I’ll be back again and again. Go through the motions, Adam.”

I figure we’re all a little broken, all in need of going through the motions of happiness sometimes, with great hope that grace will see us through until the motions be truth. So we go through the motions, until it’s not just pretend.

Thanks again for asking and I’m so glad the waltz means something to you. I know it got me through a tough summer.

JTB

Hello Out There!

Editing video and enjoying a fine, lazy, rainy summer day in Zion. So I’m at the computer. I have some new followers and lots of wallflower types. So just in case you need anything…  Ask away!

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