Juana Molina

Last Friday I went to see Juana Molina. The first time I heard Juana Molina, I completely froze in my tracks and sat there, awestruck. I felt as though I were being hit with a giant tidal wave of sound and I was completely powerless to do anything but let it take me. I was shocked. People were allowed to DO that with music?

Her music is complex and richly textured. Through the use of loops, she builds layer upon layer of sound. She often samples her own voice so that you may find yourself suddenly surrounded by her, the percussive echoes of one phrase swirling back and forth around you, while an airy melody floats overhead. She also plays guitar and keyboard, and it is amazing to witness, live and in concert, how a song is built. Last Friday she performed with a bassist and a really amazing percussionist, and a bunch of electronic equipment. I don't pretend to understand how she makes music, but she'll play a riff into her loop machine and that sound will cycle, then she'll continue on, adding another riff on a different instrument, and in that way the song keeps getting more complex. I don't know quite how she ties it all together, but it works. I am in awe. She is my new favorite performer.

She did a live set on KCRW this morning, which you can listen to here. They'll probably post the video version soon (which is almost as good as seeing her on stage). Check her out!

I'd Rather Be Here:

That's all.

On Endings and the Golden Ratio

I am writing a song and the only thing I need to do is create an ending for it. That's the only thing holding me back from sharing it and getting feedback for it. I mean I can ask for input on an ending, but a part of me feels like since I started it, I want to finish it, and asking for help and input means that I wouldn't be the one to see it through from start to finish, which is what I want. I like to finish what I start. There's this line in the movie Spirited Away where the herb-guy tells Sen, the little-girl main character, to finish what she started, even though she is unsure and scared. It's classic--he sneers, "Finish what you started, human!" Almost like it's this insult to be a human, as well as to be scared and unsure. But she does it, she finishes it. It's just a little thing, but she has to summon up courage and will. I need to do that.

I am realizing that I like to start a lot of things, with the best of intentions, but I don't always finish them. This song is one of those things, in a way. When I first started working on this song I was so full of good intentions, but then things got hard and complicated (musically--it's in SIX, after all). Then I didn't want to work on it or even think about it for the longest time. But I kept getting all this pressure to produce something, and I would force myself to work on it, but nothing came. It was hard enough to just sit down and think about it. But recently I found other inspiration, and I started playing with it on my computer, and I became really excited and inspired. I would work on it for hours through the night, and then try to sneak in some time on it before work or other activities. That's quite a change from not wanting to even touch it with a 10-foot pole. I am still excited about it. I am so close. But I can't figure out how to end it.

I am beginning to ask myself if there is some deeper thing going on here. Is there a part of me that is scared of seeing things end? Am I scared of that? I hate goodbyes. Loss is something close to me and informs more of my waking minutes than I care to think about. And although finishing this song wouldn't be a loss to me, the process would be over. The journey of it. But oh I need to finish what I start. I need to summon up the courage and will. I would be so happy to hear it with the full ensemble of players. I'd like to see this thing come to life.

It's cheesy, but there's that saying, one door closing is another one opening. Over the past few years I have been trying to embrace that in my life. I've been trying to see change as not loss, but opportunity. I mean, that's a little bit of why I'm here with this dilemma today. The whole impetus of this song is that I first met Janet when she came to class one day and introduced me to the paradiddle, which I obsessed and tormented myself about.  And then later Janet stuck around and created more music which eventually turned into the whole Emeryville-Aiko experiment. I knew that when it was over that there wouldn't be that kind of taiko anymore. I knew I'd miss it. I knew that ensemble would disband and all that work that went into producing that show would be done. 

But things move circularly, kind of like the Golden Ratio. Have you heard of that?  Go look it up yourself since it takes either a mathematician or a great poet to really explain the relationship between two smaller things to a larger. Basically the Golden Ratio is a recipe for beautiful things, from the curl of a seashell to the proportions of the body to the construction of the great Pyramids.  So for me there was that first lesson of the paradiddle, which led into the more complex work of Aiko, and those lessons just built upon themselves until I came to this position of writing my own song out of paradiddles for this new group whose life and scope is much larger than Aiko. 

Maybe that's what life is. Continual reference to the smaller things that grow into larger moments. You keep reflecting back on your experience, suddenly realizing that where you are is greater than where you started, but not independent of it. Maybe my problem is not with finishing things, but trying to figure out how they will work themselves out to become greater. A stone is just a stone until it becomes a pyramid.