What It Means to Do Work

I am sticking my head up for a moment to say I am here. We are playing two shows in NYC area this weekend: Friday at Rockwood Music Hall on the lower East Side, and Saturday at Jalopy in Red Hook (Brooklyn). I am bringing both kids with me to the City, and my beloved aunt and uncle are taking care of them. (In between gigs, we are going shopping for items for Elle's Mad-Eye Moody costume). I say "sticking my head up" because I have been spending the bulk of my time gearing up to release our new album XVII. Though the official release date is not till Feb 2, 2015 (Groundhog's Day! Imbolc! St. Bridget's Day! Midwinter!), our Pledge Music Campaign starts October 27, and we are scrambling to film our video, write our copy, meet with our team, post the new photos by the amazing Kris McCue to the page, prepare the newsletter, send it out, pray for donations, etc. etc. Kit (our producer) is mixing tracks as we speak, and as soon as he sends them to us, we'll be scrutinizing them (or whatever the aural equivalent of "scrutinizing" is) to make sure they are note-perfect. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Part of me wants to stay away from NYC because of Ebola (my kids are terrified about getting it), and most of me just feels so deflated that people are dying and their loved ones are standing by, helpless. This is just what the Climate Change scientists predicted, back in the innocent 00's. Tuesday, in my guitar class, we played through Pete Seeger's "Quite Early Morning," and as I was singing the lyrics, I realized that though this song is about the Cold War, and the fear of nuclear annihilation, we're now facing an entirely different form of annihilation with climate change. The more I learn about climate change, the more I want to hide my head in the sand, which is another reason I am sticking my head up now. A folksinger who hides her head in the sand, who doesn't stay current, is not doing her job.

But neither can she do nothing but worry. We hiked in the Adirondacks last weekend, bringing almost-10-year-old cousin William with us. He is on Harry Potter 5, and even though Elle has technically finished all 7 books, most of them were read to her several years ago, and thus she does not have the same grasp of the details that William does. So as they marched up and down Hurricane Mountain, he instructed them on all the different spells they could cast with the wands they fashioned out of twigs (only certain twig shapes could be wands, of course. There was much searching for wands as we hiked.) They also decided to speak only in British accents. I, meanwhile, had downloaded a free pedometer app. Interestingly, while I now know I am way more sedentary than I'd previously thought, and though before the download I would have maintained to anyone who cared to listen that at 47 I am in the best shape of my life, after I downloaded and saw with dismay the meager number of steps I take on a daily basis, I immediately gained three pounds. But even though I am sorely tempted by the new Apple Watch, I am instead going to save my pennies for a treadmill desk.

As much as I do want an Apple Watch--and oh, doesn't it delivers the promise we all had as kids, fantasizing about watching TV on our wrists?--I have some concerns about turning my body over to a device, or perhaps into a device. I have a strong feeling that Apple has already taken over the better part of my brain. Plus, I don't want my kids to see just how obsessive I would be if all the answers to my potential questions were actually on my body at all times. Which is the problem with the pedometer and why I have resisted for so long in getting a Fitbit or any such thing. I'd rather just shoot for getting outdoors every day, breathing the air at its various temperatures and consistencies, feeling if my jeans are getting baggy or tight and adjusting accordingly.

As for Hurricane, it's a pretty big mountain, and when we started out around noon, I felt ambivalent about ascending. What was wrong with a long walk in the woods with Stella and the kids? I had no need to actually go to the top of a peak. It was overcast, and there was no view. But as we hiked, and especially as we neared the summit, some internal chemistry shifted, and I was overcome with the desire to touch the fire tower at the top.


I wanted to pause, up there in the clouds, put my hands on my hips and sigh, turning 360 degrees to see what I could see. I wanted to say "I did it."


Turns out there was a view after all.

We have to raise $30,000 for our new album, XVII. I guess we don't HAVE to. We have to eradicate Ebola and figure out a way to consume less fossil fuel and save the planet and try not to kill off any more other species. But it would be nice to raise $30,000 too. I could just as easily go with a plan where we do the bare minimum, like we did with our last album, The Full Catastrophe. In that case, we made 1500 copies, did a super cheap cover (in fact, I took the picture. If we'd asked Katryna--an actual photographer--it would have cost more.) We did almost no publicity, and certainly no radio. We did exactly one CD release show with a band. Releasing that way, low budget, felt like going for a long walk in the woods. There is merit in climbing to the top inherent in the climbing. We artists are communicators. If we don't do our job as fully and as well as we can, we feel we have failed, even as the work stands strong and proud (and I firmly believe that The Full Catastrophe is a strong, proud, truthful, helpful, beautiful record.) If you are reading this, we have already succeeded in communicating with you. But there are people who love the Nields and don't know it yet. We need to reach them. This money that we are raising, we hope, will do just this. Someone's life will be saved by "Witness" or "Princess." Someone needs to hear "Victory" and "River." Someone will be changed by "Dave Hayes the Weather Guy." To paraphrase Pete Seeger: we want to put our one grain of sand on the beach we believe in. We really really really love this record and we firmly believe you will too.

Last winter, when faced with the choice of writing new songs or starting a new book project, I wrote new songs. When the first one wasn't great, I wrote a better one. When that one didn't totally get at the issue, I wrote another. I wrote until Katryna said, "You've written the album. Let's record. These are the best songs you've ever composed." I hope they tell the truth, that they bring hope, that you can dance to them, that kids will learn them on their guitars and pianos and that one day I will hear them being covered. Then I will feel as though I have done my job.

FAWM Day One-Excuses, Excuses

It's February 1st, the beginning of February Album Writing Month, and I feel doomed because I have lost my journal. I am in the middle of my writing retreat, a Deep Retreat in which we spend all day Saturday (all day!) writing, with breaks for lunch, dinner, and of course singing tonight. It's 9:55am and I have already wasted 25 minutes of my writing time searching for this journal, making my cup of tea, reheating my cup of tea, gathering two different guitars, (one in standard, one in E tuning), finding my songwriting journal (different and NOT a replacement for my actual journal in which I have collected all my brilliant thoughts and ideas for writing this month). I also gathered three fat files from my filing cabinet full of crappy song starts from the 90s, plus some guitar lesson ideas and random sheet music. I made my bed. I made a new category of "Reminders" for my iphone, whose screen got wrecked this morning when, in the middle of my run, I answered a text from my sister and the thing flew out of my hands and shattered on the pavement. Naturally, I am thinking that I'll have to make a trip to the Apple store in Holyoke to get it replaced. This weekend. (Maybe I should go now.) I need to send out my newsletter to remind folks about the next retreat. And really, as I am sitting here not writing songs, I am contemplating the notion that I am more of a teacher than a writer now, anyway, and so maybe I should spend my time coming up with articles and blog posts instead of new songs. My Pete Seeger piece was published in today's Gazette. Maybe I should call the Gazette and see if I could be a writer for them! That would get me out of this songwriting gig.

I have written a lot of songs in my life. I have not counted them but figuring that I've averaged about 12 songs a year since I was 18––I am now 46––that's well over 300 songs. That seems about right.

Does the world really need any more songs by Nerissa Nields? Haven't I written enough? Can't I just keep singing my old songs?

To my right are two full bins of clean laundry waiting to be sorted. Maybe I should sort them. Maybe that would be a good thing for my right brain as I compose.

And what should I compose? I have a lot of ideas, and the ideas have no central axis. I have ideas for typical Nields teen age girl songs. I have ideas for spirituals and protest songs, and silly kids songs. We need to make a new CD this summer. I have to have the songs by then. This thought makes me want to pant like a nervous dog. I have an essay I want to finish. I am dying to get back to my novel The Big Idea, but I pledged to my novel group that I would not touch it until after February. I need to write songs. Where is my journal???

Ira Glass said this great thing about writing that I am just going to post right here:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

OK. A lot of work. The laundry will remain unfolded. I am hereby checking in to write a song. It might not be a song that ever sees the light of day, but right now, I will write a song. I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow.

Time Consciousness

Time Consciousness

I like the term “time consciousness” better than “time management” because we don’t really manage our time. We think we can, and this causes all sorts of frustrations and forms of mental illness. It’s the illusion of time management that leads to all manner of anxiety and uptight behavior. How can you manage the sun rising and setting? You just have to surrender to it. Besides, as an artist, one of the first rules I learned was that serendipity (which is, by definition, that which is out of one’s control) was the very best song-giver. At the same time, I found early on that the way to be open to serendipity was to leave myself designated times to create, to even go so far as schedule “write songs” into my day planner. We’d be in the van driving around, and I’d start to get that anxious feeling that I always get when I haven’t written a song in awhile. I’d look around quickly and confirm that it would be impossible for me to pull a guitar out of the attached trailer while driving 65 mph down Route 80, and instead sigh and write “songwriting week” into my calendar during the second week of March, the next time we were off the road.

The week of March would arrive; I would come downstairs first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee, notebook, and guitar, and I would write all week until the songs were written. It seemed to work pretty well. But during the interim, I acted like a little video camcorder, taking everything in, jotting down ideas, and humming tunes into a tape recorder. Whatever crossed my path turned into potential material for my songs. This is still pretty much the way I write. I go around figuring the universe is trying to tell me something, so I’d better listen.

The other reason I like the term “time consciousness” is the way it connects to the marvelous truth that all we ever have is this moment, and another way of saying that is all we really have is time. And maybe not as much of it as we assume. I try to hold this loosely, so that I’m not neurotically thinking “must get this done before I die” in a freaked-out, Type A kind of way; neither am I just lolling about eating bon bons and watching American Idol (though Katryna might be). I try to keep a schedule and also an eye open to the plans of others, in case they have a better idea of what I should be doing with my time than I do. Sort of like that excellent 38 Special song “Hold On Loosely.”

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