FAWM Halfway Check In

It's more than halfway through February, and I have seven songs written. I need to do something today or risk being mad at myself. We're in the Adirondacks for the long weekend, and it's cold, thick with snow and gorgeous here. Our Jetta couldn't make it up the steep driveway, so it's parked on the dirt road we live off of. We hiked everything in: food, luggage, violins, guitar, computer. Left the cross country skis in the car.

My first day on vacation is always a waste of sorts. A clearing out. I am useless, cranky, exhausted, depressed and non-functioning. This makes everyone in my family mad at me, which only exacerbates the problem, but today everyone, including me, is much better. We all had to readjust expectations and accept that we are not fully evolved beings quite yet. Things that helped: crying, telling the truth, making dinner together, listening to the 70s mix I made, and playing Attaturk. Jay can now read and write! This is quite an advantage in life, as is being able to play Attaturk.

Katryna helped a lot with FAWM. She said, "Don't think you're supposed to come up with 14 finished songs. Just get 14 song starts. We'll refine later." So that being said, I think many of these are very close:

1. Dave Hayes The Weather Guy
2. Everybody Needs a Witness
3. Turn It Around Again
4. Welcome Song
5. 12 Rocking Princesses
6. Snowblower
7. Skunk


I should also say, not that it has anything to do with anything, that all this not-being-able-to-get-up-the-driveway has us in New Car Lust mode. Suddenly, we need a car with AWD, even though in the almost 8 years since we've owned our Jetta, we've only regretted the front wheel drive twice. That Jetta gets 41 miles to the gallon. Plus it's paid for.

We also have two, count them two, silver trucks with 4WD, but neither one is appropriate for long family trips. And we are trying to sell one of them.

And finally, in the list of things that have nothing to do with FAWM, Elle wants a dog more than she wants anything in life. That child is determined (see: violin and cleverly tricking me into being YESM=Yelling Evil Suzuki Mom), and I think a dog might be in our future. Next car will depend on size of said beast.

Back at the Fruit Tree

Phillip Price of the Winterpills (and formally of the Maggies) once said to me that every time he got an idea for a song he wrote five different versions of it. That blew me away. I am way more parsimonious than he, or maybe just lazy. I try to cram every single idea I am having at the present moment into one song, "I Am the Walrus"-style. John Lennon famously wrote his songs as one would make a patchwork quilt: scraps of ideas and riffs and even takes in totally different keys (see "Strawberry Fields Forever). That was good enough for me. Although if I think I didn't nail the idea, then I might try try again. For example, in 1995 I fell in love with the Steely Dan song "Hey Nineteen" (which had been on the charts the week Lennon was killed, but I hated SD at the time and only resented them taking airplay away from John and the Beatles at the time). Later, in my mid twenties, I listened to that song, drinking red wine and letting both swirl around in my mouth. (Even now as I write this I am swooning: "The Cuervo Gold/The fine Columbian/Make tonight a wonderful thing." Though without the influence of the red wine, a bit...ick.) And I thought, "I'd like to write this song from the point of view of the 19 year old."

So I wrote "Fountain of Youth." It was OK, but it didn't grab me in the backs of the knees the way "Hey Nienteen" did. And so one sunny March morning, I sat down on the rug in the living room with a huge cup of coffee, several notebooks and my guitar. I scribbled furiously until I'd written down every single Idea I had about the song I wanted to write. And then I played a riff I'd made up during soundcheck at the gig the weekend before, and out came "Best Black Dress."

Fast forward fourteen years. I'd written "The Full Catastrophe" at Katryna's request, and then had the summer to ignore it. It was October and we had a show coming up at the Iron Horse. I wanted to debut a new song, and it should probably have been The Full Cat, but something was bugging me about the song. It was too sincere and straightforward. It did not speak to the enormity of the existential pain I was feeling at the moment. The pain felt like this: I was overwhelmed. I just looked up where "overwhelm" comes from, specifically what "whelm" means: to cover. That's exactly how I felt. Covered over. Parenthood is literally overwhelming. We cover over ourselves sometimes (many times) on purpose in order to get the job done. We cover over our basic needs (to sleep, eat in a calm manner, have sex with our partners) to attend to our little ones. And we cover over our more esoteric needs (to go for a bike ride in early spring; to write a song on the living room floor, to spend an afternoon wandering from coffeeshop to bookstore to our neighbor's kitchen table) because there just isn't that kind of time.

And we are overwhelmed--egos covered over, self-interest covered over, ambition covered over--with love for our darlings. That very first look into my babies' faces did me in. I was willing to do anything, go to any lengths to provide and protect for those squirmy, red, pooping cutie pies.

But 'overwhelmed' does not mean 'annihilated'. We're still there, as is the carpet, under that cover of legos, bad kids' books, contents of a drawer of clothes and stuffed animals. We're still conscious and waiting, a part of us full of compassion for our spouse or partner who is equally overwhelmed while the other part is keeping meticulous track of exactly how unequal the duties are being handled, and exactly how many hours "off" s/he has had in the last 4 years.

For me, so much of my journey was in learning to metabolize my own disappointment in myself, in my shockingly low capacity for creative play with my kids, for my quick temper, for my pathetically small reserves of patience. I was so not the mother I'd hoped I'd be, and yet, when I killed that angel in the house, I was left with someone who was really not so bad. And most importantly, I was left with someone who even with a mouth full of the ashes of disappointment was willing to get up every day and meet her beloved(s) back at the fruit tree.

And so I wrote two more songs about the Full Catastrophe idea. One was More Than Enough. The other was this one:

Back at the Fruit Tree

Still the camera on the moment I met you
All the world inside a garden built for two
All the fruit you could eat in a day
All the news turned into boats
That float on down the river

Ah, ahhhh…..

But someone has to cut the brambles back
Someone has to stave the weeds’ attack
Someone has to bring the harvest in
Someone has to gather seeds to hold us through the winter….

I don’t need the good life
I just need life
The full catastrophe
If you’ll see me that way
With my feet covered in clay
I’ll meet you back at the fruit tree.

The mind beats like the tides in a lake that thinks it’s the sea
But only storms create conditions for epiphany
October gardens rusty, ragged, overgrown
The child won’t be consoled and you
Don’t want to be alone.
You find a seat at the edge of the bed
Put a hand on a hot and sticky head
You say, “So, tell me all about your day
No matter what it is, I’ll stay. I won’t go away.

I don’t need the good life
I just need life
The full catastrophe
If you’ll see me that way
With my feet covered in clay
I’ll meet you back at the fruit tree.

Nerissa Nields
Oct. 22, 2009

I Choose This Era

Here is me playing the acoustic part.


This song is actually the oldest song on the CD. I wrote it a couple of weeks before my daughter was born, and like "Don't Wait Too Long" (which appears on our double CD Rock All Day/Rock All Night and which I wrote when I first found out I was pregnant) I still didn't know the being I was writing to. It was also right before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, and news about the various ways in which we were trashing the planet were being regularly broadcast. That evening on the news I'd heard (again, in a new way) the ways in which the rays of the sun are so much more dangerous now than they were fifty years ago. Who knows what we are going to witness in this lifetime? But do we have a choice?

I Choose This Era

We go round the sun
The Moon goes round the earth
When the day is done
Sometimes something hurts
There’s danger in the papers
Danger on the radio
But I’ll put my arms around you and I
Will not let you go.

There’s a place called Kansas
Dorothy called it home
To me it’s just a grassland
Where I’d be frightened to be left alone
I’d much prefer a city
Even if it’s Emerald green
Home is where ever I find you
But it’s also wherever I’ve been.

And it’s not the same sun my father knew
It can burn in ways that don’t heal
But I’d take these rays with this place and your face
If that is going to be the deal

I’ll take you to the ocean
To every edge that invites me close
And there I'll make my vow to you
Before everything I love the most
There’s danger in the ocean
Danger from the sun above
But I’ll put my arms around you
And surround you with my love.
I'll put my arms around you
And I will not let you go.

Nerissa Nields
April 20, 2006

We recorded the acoustic very early in the process--I think in December 2009. We didn't put the final vocals on until December 2011, maybe even January 2012. I love the way the song came out. Katryna and I did some three-part harmony, and I am trying to get Abigail (our other sister) to learn it so she can jump up on stage with us and sing it sometime. A girl can dream.

Writing The Full Catastrophe

Third in a series of posts about the songwriting on our new CD The Full Catastrophe, due out April 10. This photo is of Dave Chalfant figuring out a kick-ass acoustic part which he played on the CD and taught to me. I now try to replicate it onstage. Dave is my favorite guitar player ever.

The genesis of this CD really began in January of 2009 when Katryna called me up, as per usual, to tell me to write a song.

"Patty just called and told me that some study just proved that people without children were happier than people with children."

"Well, yeah," I said. "The highs get higher and the lows get lower. True happiness is about sane and useful contentment. That's the exact opposite of parenthood."

"Whatever," she said. She'd been tussling lately with her four-year-old who had taken to calling her "the worst Mommy ever." "I want you to write a song about post-happiness. How having a family gives you fullness and richness and complexity."

"Ah," I said. "The full catastrophe."

"Huh?"

"You know, that line from Zorba the Greek* that Jon Kabat-Zinn riffed on for his book Full Catastrophe Living? It's a book about stress, basically, that teaches the average stressed out American how and why to meditate. I remember reading it ten years ago or so, and I read it like any self-help book, trying to get the big secret of life out. You know, do these three things and be happy and healthy for the rest of your life. I kept looking for stories about how divorcing people fell back in love, or how cancer sufferers got cured. But meditation isn't like that. It's about learning to calm yourself so you can handle the fact that no matter what you do there are no guarantees for health and wealth and fame and easy relationships and slim thighs and six pack abs. But learning to meditate can help you find that balance."

"Balance? You mean like having a career and two kids and a husband and somehow managing to raise them well, occasionally have sex, go on dates and make a five-figure income? Because I've given up on that long ago."

"I know, me too. But I like to think that my acceptance of the fact that for the next 18 years I am not going to do anything particularly well is kind of balanced. Don't you think?"

She agreed, and so I sat down and wrote this song.

Full Catastrophe
When we met, I thought our journey was over
Lock the door and shut me in.
Buy a ring, invite our friends to come over
Celebrate the holy sin
But love’s much bigger than either one of us
We knew love can’t be contained.

Don’t wanna be right, don’t wanna be wrong
Don’t wanna be smart, don’t wanna be strong
I don’t even want to be happy
If you tell me what’s true, I’ll know what to do
Then I can be me, you can be you,
We’ll have the full catastrophe

I want to see the sunset in the desert
I want the moonrise by the sea
I want our kids to sing a Bach cantata
And Appalachian harmonies
I want to be there when the early morning monsters come
I want to hold you when the spokes pull free

Don’t wanna be right, don’t wanna be wrong
Don’t wanna be smart, don’t wanna be strong
I don’t even want to be happy
If you tell me what’s true, I’ll know what to do
Then I can be me, you can be you,
We’ll have the full catastrophe

They say the hours drag but the years fly by
Some days it’s hard to find a moment to ask why
We think we’re in it for the memories
But I’d trade in every scrapbook for an hour more of sleep.

I want to rise before the kids start us spinning
Take your hand and say a prayer
I want to take you back to our beginning
Unsuspecting chose pair.
And how we traded all of our worldly goods
Bet it all on that double rainbow.

Don’t wanna be right, don’t wanna be wrong
Don’t wanna be smart, don’t wanna be strong
I don’t even want to be happy
If you tell me what’s true, I’ll know what to do
Then I can be me, you can be you,
We’ll have the full catastrophe

Nerissa Nields Feb. 2009

We recorded this song with a drummer we hadn't worked with before: Zak Trojano from Rusty Belle. Dave Chalfant played the acoustic guitar, which was good, because I didn't like the part I'd been playing. Dave gave me a whole new way to approach the song.

PS Later that year, Katryna gave her four-year-old his first ever cheese croissant. "Mommy," he gasped, chewing slowly. "It turns out, you're the BEST mommy ever!"
At the end of the movie...
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