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- [00:00]
A
Greetings everyone. This is the introduction to the introduction with Anna Tivel. Just a quick note here that the audio on my side of the conversation starts off sounding a little bit like Bruce Springsteen from his Nebraska recording, more rustic. But it does not take away from the lovely, inspiring, truth telling, soulful conversation that I had with Anna Tiffle. And this conversation drips with authenticity. For that I thank Anna Tiffle. Here is the true introduction. Welcome to Contemplify where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. Today I welcome Anna Tibble who is an award winning songwriter and musician from Portland, Oregon. In our conversation today we traverse many topics, short stories, poetry, checking for shit on your shoes, and Anna's latest spellbinding album, Animal Poem. For me, this felt like old friends talking about matters close to the heart. Despite this being our first real conversation, Anna Tybal is thoughtful, funny, inquisitive and one of the best working songwriters out there.
- [01:34]
B
Do yourself a favor, pick up a
- [01:36]
A
copy of Animal Poem over at Fluff and Gravy Records. As always, you can visit contemplify.com for the show notes on this episode and learn more about Anna Tivel and see if she's playing a show near you@annativel.com that's a n n a t I v e l.com now join me in raising a glass to my guest today, Anna Tibble.
- [02:13]
B
Yeah, we're off to the races. Anna, thank you so much for being here today. In conversation, that's a way to begin. I always just love to ask like where are we finding you in the world today? What's the context and setting that you are in?
- [02:33]
C
Yeah. Thank you for having me. I really feel like these conversations that you have here have kept me company so often and kind of, they have very often drawn me back into a place that, that I am kind of trying to lean into more often. And I, you know, life throws you out of it again and again and I really find it to be a place that remind. It's just like a reminder to be thoughtful and, and I've been so taken by so many ways that people talk about living and searching for things and you've. Today I am home in Portland, Oregon and sitting here my with my dog sleeping here and oh, nice by the. Yeah, it's a abnormally sunny January week in Portland which is usually the thick of the dark when you wake up and dark when you are up time and yeah, it's just sitting by the window and watching the neighborhood go by. We live a block from the McDonald's and there's a coffee shop and what was once a strip club but is now an all ages rock club, an Ethiopian bakery, a record store, a bunch of colorful neighbors. So I often just like to kind of sit by the window and watch whatever goes down in the neighborhood that day.
- [04:24]
B
I love that you paint such a vibrant scene of your locale. What's your dog's name?
- [04:34]
C
This dog is Jones. There's two dogs in this house. The other one I dropped off at a. He's in a teen, teen puppy phase of absolute rug eating, barking, humping, destruction. So I dropped him off somewhere to get his self worn out today.
- [05:00]
B
That's great. I remember when you all, when you played in Albuquerque, your dogs were with you and you had mentioned that they had torn up some boxes in the van.
- [05:11]
C
Yes, the distraction continues.
- [05:17]
B
Well, my dog Charlie was just down here and he may come back and join us at some point. So it's always nice to have these furry companions steady us in conversations like this.
- [05:33]
C
I agree. They remind you that nothing that you think matters matters.
- [05:40]
B
That's right. I always love to ask this question as we were talking about the theme of this podcast leans on contemplatives in the world. And that word contemplative means many things to many folks. How does that word or moniker contemplative relate to you or your work, if you think it does at all?
- [06:04]
C
I really love the word and I feel like it's something that I notice in other people and I'm trying to draw into my own world. Or it feels like, like it can go on forever in this way that I love. Like any, anything can be turned over in your hands or maybe right now. To me it means something like noticing, trying to take care of your attention and maybe with people and with the natural world and just living, trying to pull yourself nearer to those things and kind of hold, hold them closer and closer and with curiosity kind of wonder what they are. And that's something I. You know when you meet somebody at the grocery store or something and you can tell that they are there in the grocery store and then you meet other people and they're a thousand miles from the grocery store and you feel like that sometimes too, you're not taking in anything where you are. Maybe that's how I think about it right now. Trying to be in the grocery store when you're in the grocery store.
- [07:42]
B
I love that response. It reminds me of one of my teachers, James Finley, a Contemplative teacher, where there's this one time we were. He was doing an event, and he needed something from a drugstore or something like that. So we went to one of those big box stores, you know, where you just immediately feel your soul kind of separate, just the overwhelm of it. And I was in, like, a hurried state, like, let's get this and let's move on. And Jim took so much time with the cashier, was so present to them that the line just started to, like, build behind us. And internally I knew, like, this is what presence looks like. This is being in the box store. When you're in the box store. This is being in the grocery store, being the grocery store. And there's the part of me that's not there, that's like, let's get this show on the road. So as you were painting that picture, I immediately went back to that moment with Jim of being around people who are there. And I aspire to do that as much as possible. And I appreciate, too, your description of that word is what I hear in your music. And the fact that I received that as an expression from your art, it's humbling for me because it invites me into that. Just so grateful for how you channel that, how you embody that in your art. I wish it wasn't a rare thing, but I feel like it is. And so thank you for that response. I would love to know. Anna, I think about lineages a lot. Like, what forms us? What traditions do you feel like there's. Whether it's philosophical, spiritual, or artistic streams that you are swimming in or floating down that have formed you
- [09:49]
C
thinking about this today for some reason, that there's, like, being here in whatever mix of experience and nature and how you kind of take in what it. What is happening here and what might happen when you're not here, and all. All the kind of, like, big, wild questions that come up. And I think at a certain. There's, like, the times you can remember being a kid when you felt just supremely alive in your own way. It could be like, I can remember. My family volunteered. I grew up in a small town in northern Washington, and there was this little movie theater. It was like kind of an art house movie theater. And we would go there sometimes. And if you volunteered, if you served popcorn and stuff, you could go see the movies for free.
- [11:03]
B
Oh, wow.
- [11:04]
C
And we'd go and we'd do the popcorn. And I think it was the first time in my career, kid life, like, my family would go sit wherever And I'd just go, like, wander myself off into the very back of the theater and sit there in the dark and just feel. And the movies would be sort of. I can remember watching. Have you ever seen the movie Life is Beautiful?
- [11:32]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [11:33]
C
Yeah. Which is like this kind of. This guy telling a story to his kid about a. To create an experience that is much better than the one that's happening and. But I remember being a kid and sitting in the dark theater in the back and just having this feeling of like, oh, it's big. Life is so. It's so much, and it's so big, and it's such a giant bucket of questions. And I don't know, maybe. I think it's a series of those things. And the people that you come upon that. That resonate, or you can see something in them that you hope to know someday or that you. You aspire to move that way in the world, or there's something that they're in their aliveness that just feels magnetic. I don't know if this is answering
- [12:40]
B
the question, but it is. It is.
- [12:44]
C
I feel very disjointed in life or very much like it's sort of this series of sensory moments and people and being moved and then forgetting to be moved and then being moved again. And you're slowly kind of forming. Forming this. This poem that you're in. Yeah.
- [13:16]
B
I love that. It reminds me of this book I read recently called Liturgies of the Wild, where the author Martin Shaw, talks about. If you only live in soul, life is a statement. If you live in soul and spirit, life is a poem. And there's something about that that I really like. We need both soul and spirit as to bring the poetic beauty of the bigness, the fullness of life. And I could just picture you in that theater. Like, it's just such a memory of visceral feeling, childhood. And I think those rare, not rare, but when those experiences still come and you can drop into them in an unguarded way, it's really special to be alive and feel that fullness.
- [14:18]
C
Yeah. Do you find that they get more rare or that sometimes I feel like that, or that. That the work gets bigger to be in the state of coming upon them?
- [14:38]
B
I think so. I think. I think about the complicated matters of daily life, of just the things I have to do, these intrusions that get in the way that I have to do. It's just part of. I gotta brush my teeth and feed the dog and all things that I can enjoy doing, but I'll treat them as things to get through rather than, this is my life right now. And I feel like if I'm unguarded enough or vulnerable enough to the presence of the moment, I can be overtaken by beauty and possibility. Is that true for you as well, would you say?
- [15:30]
C
Yeah, it's a similar. Like, it's the. Maybe if you lived in that moment all the time, it would be like an acid trip or something. Like, if you stayed there, something would explode inside your mind. And you need. You need the amount of lostness and absurdity and the hilarity of. Of like, getting into the car and something smells like shit and you can't figure out what it is. And it's that you stepped in it. And that's just how the day is going. And you need those things so that when you come upon those big moments of being just completely floored by everything, that really strikes you. Yeah, maybe the work is like being ready when they come or something. Knowing that that exists too. Along with the shit on your shoe.
- [16:46]
B
Along with the shit on your shoe. It's every day when I walk my kids to school, One of them, my youngest, will always do a shoe check to make sure they haven't stepped in any shit along the way. It's like their. Their thing. And it's so funny because it's every single day that this happens. And it's also so sweet. It's like, can you do this for me? Can you stop your hurriedness and check my shoes for shit? That's one of the. For me, one of the gifts of those little creatures is the way that they. They're so full of wonder that they pull me into that when I'm thinking on things that supposedly matter, but really don't. They pull me into that wider space, whether it's to look at the moon or the sunset that I'm apparently missing. I think I'm grateful for them. And then also. Or other friends and comrades who can help open that space for me. And also when I'm also able to offer that for others. There's like a kinship in those type of relationships.
- [18:07]
C
Yeah. I played a show around the east coast the other day, and this wonderful guy was telling me he has two sons. And he was telling. They're fairly young. And he said one of them is really just kind of wants the thing to be black and white. Like, he sort of wants there to be rules in the world, and he's maybe a little younger and. And is ready to kind of know what. What is right and what is wrong and just define those for me. And. And his other kid, he said, just really feels. He's really a feeler. And he said he just has been loving watching movies with them because the. The one will be like, okay, so he's bad, right? And the other kid will say, well, I mean, did you see the part in the beginning where. Where his father was. Was very cruel to him? And. And so now he and the younger kid will listen for a while and then just say again. And so he's.
- [19:31]
B
That's great. I just.
- [19:33]
C
I love thinking of him getting to be a witness to the two of them kind of navigating what it is.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah, that's a great example. I can hear those voices in my own head at times of like, I just want to know this is right, wrong, good, bad. Let me put them in a category. And then that more expansive space within me yields. What's the story here? What's the edges of this that are actually more complex? How do I appreciate that? I love that. At the chance for folks listening to get to know you a little bit. Bit of an odd question, but one I love to kind of throw out there. If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of Anatypal, what would be the three mandatory readings, works, pieces of art or places that formed you that would definitely be on that syllabus?
- [20:45]
C
Oh, man. I think probably some. Some short stories. I often have this feeling the short stories are something that I kind of stumbled upon later in life, but have just been so. There's. There's something about that form that really holds. It holds so much with so few words, and it amazes me. I just. Man, it blows my mind. There's a story that I love so much. Have you ever read this one by George Saunders called Styx?
- [21:34]
B
No.
- [21:37]
C
That's like two paragraphs long. And I can't believe the amount of life and truth and weirdness and humor and wonder and, like, grief. He fits into these two paragraphs and kind of about this. This man and his family. And he's. He's sort of this uptight. Whatever the experience of his life has been has left him clenching his self in so many ways. And he's monitoring the amount of ketchup that his kids use. And there's like these tiny little sentences that allow you to really feel the energy and the tension in their house. And his one concession to joy is that he dresses up. I don't know if joy is the right word, but the one kind of outlet or expression that he has is there's these two metal poles in the yard of their house and he dresses them up. And over the years it gets more and more complex. It starts out maybe it's just for the holidays, so there's. It's dressed up with Christmas lights for Christmas or whatever it is. And then over time it gets more and more human and complex as he sort of ages and gets nearer to death. Then he hangs apologies and bits of his wife's makeup and things and questions that he has from this poll. And I just love. It's just these two paragraphs that let you see this whole world. I feel like it's things like that that I've stumbled on over the years that both in my work and in life, they're like showing it's a portal or something into this. It's somehow so short, but it expands your idea of what's possible and what is human so much that there's a story by Wendell Berry called Fidelity. Do you know this one?
- [24:15]
B
That is one of my all time favorite short stories. Wow.
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C
It's so I. Yeah, I won't feel like it, but I just ruined the last one by trying to describe it. But man, it makes me want to live with so much with my eyes open so much wider to my community and to love and what that can be and to kind of stillness and solace. Yeah. I don't know how like the ability to show me that and to have like lived a life of like what you were saying, of contemplation and of practice of your work with the ability to distill that with such intensity and devotion. And then for me, a complete stranger, to be sitting in my car on tour reading that story and just thinking, oh, I've got to call my sister.
- [25:40]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:41]
C
And love the hell out of her right now and that. Oh man, I don't know. I think those are the things. And music in that way too. Music can. I can remember hearing or hearing John Prine's song Sam Stone or something like that, where you. Everything that is connective between people or in the world is there somehow with so few words. And you, you leave that like I imagine you would leave the best that a church service could be.
- [26:31]
B
Yeah.
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C
Just feeling open to everybody and feeling. Just feeling for everybody here. And yeah, those are the. The kind of little lamps seeds that I found along the way that I'm sort of looking for those always and stumbling on them unawares and being so grateful that somebody spent their life putting those things into words or into sounds or into color that we can find. And, yeah,
- [27:20]
B
that's beautiful. I'm seeing so many connective threads through that answer into your own songwriting, which I'm excited to get there. But I'm going to definitely check out Styx by George Saunders, since that's new to me. Fidelity is one of those stories that I always recommend to people, I always say, but read more of Barry's fiction so you can feel the fullness of that impact of that story, because Burley Bolter, who is the center of that story, it's one of my favorite characters of all time. And I just remember weeping throughout that, of the loss, but also the community of, like, what does the communal collective love look like in practice? And Sam Stone, what a great, great song. Thank you for that. When I saw you play in Albuquerque, you played a new song, and then you sent it as a poem to me on the train. I don't know if I can't remember if it's got a title or not, but I'm always drawn by songs that are poems, poems that are songs. Are there any poems or songs that have been kind of reverberating in you. You lately that won't leave you alone in that way, whether it's one you've written or one that you've heard that is kind of sticking with you? Sticking to the ribs during this season of life?
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C
Yeah, I've been on a big. Not quite sure how to pronounce her name, but. Louise Glick.
- [29:12]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [29:13]
C
I think that. Yeah, I've been really enjoying listening to her interviews lately, but she often will name poets in her interviews that she is enjoying or colleagues of hers. And so I've been on this hunt lately. Every time I hear her name somebody, I go see if I can't find that book. And. And a couple. A couple that I've found that way lately have really. There's two lately that she. This guy, Jay Hopler, who wrote. He was. I think he has passed away. But in the last bit of his life, he wrote this book of poems called Still Life. Have you ever read this?
- [30:08]
B
No, it's new to me.
- [30:11]
C
It's just. Oh, can I read you one?
- [30:18]
B
Please, please.
- [30:20]
C
There's one in here. It's just short. So he's in the hospital and it's. He and his wife's anniversary. So this poem's called to my Wife on our anniversary in Castiglione del Lago. The pines are iron spined. When the wind blows, they stand still and the earth sways. If only God had forged me thus Forced into A stooped form and told to straighten up. That's as far as his blessings ever extended in my direction. You know what keeps me from falling apart? Luck and duct tape. Even so, those trees have nothing on me. Blessed as they are. All they get to hold today is a sick man's attention and maybe a few birds. And really just as I imagined him leaving that note for his wife on their anniversary. And just.
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B
That's beautiful.
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C
That one's been getting me lately. And also this guy, Richard Siken. Have you heard his poems?
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B
Darling, there's
- [31:32]
C
is just a. He's got the tastiest. I think he's a painter. So he. His way with language. He has so many. Just juicy color and brush strokes. It's almost like his poems are trying to paint. And then he's erasing and then he's asking while he's writing what is. What is painting or what is writing. And. And then he's answering himself and then he's scratching that out and then he's answering himself again as sort of this delightful. He feels like he's like word stumbling into really real truths.
- [32:21]
B
That's a great introduction. I cannot wait to check him out. I always find that fascinating too when just the cross pollination of arts and how they can build and support and reveal things that maybe in just one medium they don't get that full aspect. So I always just enjoy the interplay. I don't mean just the arts too. Other things obviously play a role in that. But I'm excited to check that out. I was thinking I recently saw the new documentary about Jeff Buckley. Have you seen this documentary?
- [33:06]
C
Yeah, I just watched it the other day.
- [33:08]
B
Oh, no kidding. And it brought me back to the first time I heard his voice. As my first year in college, a new friend brought me into his room, put the record on and said just listen to this, I'm going to leave you alone. And with one of those. Those rare gifts of just like okay, weirdo, like I don't really know you that well and like you're forcing me into this situation and just sitting with that album grace and moving through the entirety, flipping the record over and just having it take me all the way there. This memory is so like hauntingly alive in me. Like it still lives in me. And I do feel like it's set in motion a trust in the fragility of authenticity that I hope to continue to grow in just from. But I feel like he modeled in that album. And so I'm wondering do you recall a song or an album that sparked a similar response in you, that helped you kind of find your own voice as a songwriter and artist.
- [34:28]
C
I love the way you say that. The fragility of authenticity that feels so real or such an un. An intangible. You don't know why it feels so visceral. Yeah, there's a bunch of them. One that I come back to again and again is this Nina Simone album. Nina and piano. It's just like her on the piano, and she. It just comes from. She doesn't seem to ever have any filter between what is happening in her and what the world might want from her. It seems like she just has to. It just had to come out of her that way. And it's so joyful and mournful. Yeah, there's. There's something. I often listen to a little bit of that before I play a show or just if I'm feeling a bit out of my body, just to remember that there's no way. There's no way you need to be. For these people in this room. There's. It's just that if you can be the most yourself, then you'll all have an experience here where you're sharing that with each other, and people might feel welcome to do that with each other in the room and with you in the room. And she's one that definitely reminds me. Reminds me that often. There's just this freedom in the way she lets her soul out of her mouth, out of her fingers.
- [36:34]
B
That's lovely. Thank you for sharing that. And it's fun to hear how that album continues to be this touchstone for you.
- [36:46]
C
Do you listen to the. Is the Jeff Buckley something that you come back to? Is it just that experience lives in your. Does it feel the same when you listen to it now?
- [37:04]
B
Great question. You know, I hadn't listened to him in years, and when I've come back to him recently after seeing that documentary I've been listening a lot to, there's a live album before Grace came out where it's before everything, before the impact of what that album did for him and his work in his career. And it's almost like another layer of that vulnerability. And he's. You know, I want to say, like, half the songs are like Bob Dylan covers, and his own are kind of like, intermixed in there. And he sings this song in another language that I. Is. It's just piercing. I can't remember the name of the artist now. And so I've come back to it, but I have a harder time going Back to Grace as an album, I think because it was such a moment in time that when I have gone back to it, I almost go back to that 19 year old version of myself and a heap of puddles of that feeling. But I will go back to it almost as like a marker, like going back to read an old journal that has that kind of. That same feel for me. But essentially I hadn't thought about like why don't I listen to it more regularly? There's probably something I'm hiding from in that
- [38:53]
C
isn't that interesting that you can have such a. Something can just open a window wide in you in a moment like that. And then it's almost like you revisit that moment and the thing will always kind of live in that way. And it, you almost go back to it to remind yourself that moments like that are possible.
- [39:25]
B
Yes.
- [39:26]
C
Just to feel like, oh, remember when your emotion just came up like a wave and you were alone in this room and this weird guy left you in and, and you needed, you like, needed to know that you could feel that much.
- [39:42]
B
That's it exactly. And I'm so grateful when. I'm so grateful for that experience and also when other pieces of art open that portal for me. Now I don't know if I'm lucky or what it is because I know a lot of my friends feel like they music does not move them the way it did in that era of life. And I still feel like I have had those experiences and your album Animal Poem is one of them where like it opened another portal for me. And then all of a sudden when I play that album over and over and over again, it's a conversation that I'm listening to that is that visceral experience that moves beyond that moment.
- [40:45]
C
But
- [40:47]
B
it's carrying me away. But it's also carrying me in the deeper into the moment as well. And to me that is the gift of art, the gift of being able to be porous enough to receive. I can't imagine that it's weird for me to be like, I know here I am talking to you about what that means to me, your album. I don't. Maybe, yeah, this is maybe my question for you is what is it like to receive that response in your artistic form that you've offered the world to hear that it's stopping people in their tracks and opening up portals and yeah, reverberating in my, in my own soul and being carried with it. What is that like? I mean, I feel like I lift up music in a Place of like I love love albums that feel like albums that aren't just that are holding so much mystery and beauty in them. I've never created something like that and I'm so grateful for artists who are doing now. I feel like I'm just fanning out. But what is that like for you to hear that you've been this conduit for your listeners?
- [42:24]
C
That just means more to me than I can ever put in words. And it means so much to me because I know that feeling so intimately with the art that I love the artists and that I need, I need them to show me and I need and it honestly, if we're going to fan out for a minute. I have the same experience with the conversations that you foster because I like. I need in this really intense way to be drawn out of my smallest self to re. Like to rediscover all the ways that people are existing in the world and the ways that they are looking for things and the ways that they are like trying to widen the language of love. And I forget just a thousand times a day to wonder about it. And the longer I forget, the smaller I feel and the more isolated and the more I think I've. I've been historically a very hidden person and very watchful and very. I've had a very hard time reaching toward people and this. I feel like I'm learning it always through other artists and other people that are looking for that thing also or making things that remind me and then. And I think it's my deepest, maybe just a human, deepest human desire to. To feel like you're with the world and you're communicating and being seen and understood and that you're seeing and understanding what other people here are expressing. That there's a conversation going and out without that conversation you're a solo afloat. And I don't know, I feel very much like it's this like the thing I'm proudest of and most devoted to and also the most unhealthily scrabbling my way toward obsessively is the any sort of moment where something is expressed between people that is understood and it's kind of subtlety and sharedness. I feel like a 10 year old in that of sort of like oh, but you friendship. You could have friendships and they could be so real and you have to show up there and you have to give yourself over and over again. Even when yourself is this like ugly little stepped on snail. You give that thing and then the person says what they see and, and you do that for each other. And it's almost amazing to me how long I sort of like didn't allow that energy to be exchanged. So it means a lot to me.
- [46:32]
B
Thank you for that response. It's. It's in that sharing of it. But I feel like so much life begets life and in recognizing that it just fills the tank of a life, I feel like to keep going one things that comes to mind, the outflow of what was just shared. And I already mentioned seeing you play live this past fall and you opened up with Animal Poem, title track of your latest album. And I just sat there, my cheeks ear stained and thinking about the specific narrative that starts it. And then it feels like you're thumbing through pages of wisdom that you're offering through that both cosmic and earthy, leaving me as a listener to lean in more fully with like a participation of love to what's unfolding in the context of my life, but also the context of the story. So, you know, my dumb question would be, how the hell did you do that? But my real question is behind those words of how did you become the type of person who was able to translate such mysterious beauty in word and melody? This kind of goes back to the conduit piece. Or do you feel like. I love Greg Brown says that he's just God's secretary. He just writes what the mystery reveals. What is that like for you? I feel like it's such a blurry question that I'm trying to formulate. I can't quite find the right articulation. Does it make sense what I'm aiming for in that?
- [48:34]
C
Yeah, I know you mean. I think and I feel the same about like those short stories that I. Ah. How did you take me there? How did you so fully realize that thing that I know to be true? And you put it into words and I didn't have any words for it. And it's this. I often think about writing or I relate to my work, I think as a form of an attempt to believe. Like what shows up there is the. The best of a big chaos of messy thoughts. It's the best I can imagine of what it means to be here. And I'm trying to ask it enough times that I might believe it. I sometimes feel that that makes sense. I think if I can describe it or if I can get at the images and the stories that make it feel true, maybe I might believe it or I might learn it or I might find a new bit of it that I haven't come upon. Yet to feel that way. Like, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've had a bit of a. This country and the way I've been a little bit just stopped in my tracks. And I think with my writing and I'm realizing that it's so much and so just unhuman that I don't know. I feel like my response, my writing urge always comes from a question of like, I don't understand. I want to understand how this can be so beautiful or how this can be so difficult or painful. And it's almost like in this moment I can't even formulate a question which is so. It's like the urge to try to get at it with writing. I feel very. Like I can't begin. There's something. There's something so immense about the things happening. And I know it exists in there. It may be just. It's moving so quickly or something, but I don't know. You feel that when you're in conversation or you're reading or you're writing or you're thinking or meditating, you are like, where do you feel that the best of your reaching exists?
- [52:16]
B
Great question. I'm thinking about that particular thinking that's like below thinking. Like, I think in kind of popular terms, we call it like a. Like a flow state. I think I like to include the mystery of our being in that. Like there's some sort of thinking that
- [52:42]
C
is
- [52:45]
B
arising, erupting, that allows that other thinking to take place. And, you know, what am I driving questions in life, I think like a lot of people, like, what does it mean to be human? And there's the. The concrete linear way that I explore that. But there's something that's below that that is completely unspeakable. But it. I can feel it, I can sense it. And that's where I feel like the gold that I cannot claim comes from in those moments. And there's like a devotional sense to it. How do I stay in fidelity to that, to that relationship? Do you have a devotion? Does it feel like you have a devotional sense in your writing process?
- [53:44]
C
Yeah, if only just that it's the place. It's the place in kind of like a tunnel visioned, just intoxicated way. It's the place that I'm masking and maybe just it's the place where expressing whatever it is that's happening or that I see feels satisfying or feels like it gets communicated or the work of the communication feels very satisfying to me. The, like tactile Tastiness of words and trying to get the actual shape of them to hold the. It's like this way that when you read poems that you really love, they don't tell you. It's so unspoken still. It's so unfactual and unhinged. It's like connecting strange words that you'd never put together. And somehow the meaning that is there is. It just is how you feel. And there's something about that. But I see it. I love that. About art or about expressions, not. It also feels so ordinary and unspecial. Like, it feels very much like. I go to the plaid pantry down this. I don't know. You guys have plaid pantries at the convenience store where you get your energy drinks and your. Yum. It's this, like, people in every situation are employing their own version of you. Like, I went to get my oil change the other day and I just had this feeling from the guy. Like, he just come upon people and they feel so solid. Like their idea of what is good feels so formed, but also so unspoken. Like, I don't know him. And I would have loved to know him, but I felt so much like he didn't need to prove what he means by that. It just lives in him.
- [56:31]
B
Yeah.
- [56:32]
C
And I just had this feeling like, oh, if you have kids, man, those are lucky kids. They. They are seeing someone who doesn't need to defend themselves against the world. And I just. It's. I like that words or songs are my way of kind of asking, but everybody is doing it. And the moments when I can climb out of myself enough to notice. It's so alive with human nature, of wondering and of expressing and all the ways that we kind of do that. That's both with art and just with a living, normal life. The way we pet a cat or the way we. There's just these ways that we're asking, is this. Is this what is this a human? And I don't know. Yeah, I love that.
- [57:43]
B
Yeah, I'm right there with you. One of the things that popped in my mind as you were talking. I'm a big fan of Gary Snyder, his poetry, but also just his essays and the work that. And life he's lived. And one thing I appreciate is he talks about practice. Contemplative practice is just the intensification of life. And I think about that thinking about Mechanic, the guy who changed your oil of his practice. That's a part of his practice that helps kind of radiate that solidity of how he shows up in the world. And in those moments when I'm able to recognize that, well, you're my teacher right now, like, how are you you in this way? Like, you're fascinating. You're. You're bringing your full self to this from what excites and animates you. And I have so much to learn from every corner and texture of life in those moments. And it was fun to hear you reflect on that from your own way because it brings me to another question I want to ask you about. There's a specificity I always struggle with that word and place making in some of your songs that come to mind for me that uplift a place of an insistence for examination, but not a domineering examination. So, like what I've been thinking about Badlands Howe Avenue 66, where you're not seeking authority over something through examination, but it hits me as like a dialogue of true longing to be in relationship. And I see this in your song as well, in the way the White Goose. Does that ring true to you? Do you see attention to detail as a dialogue of longing to connect?
- [59:53]
C
Yeah. And you just said it in a way that I feel it, but have never thought it in words. But you rang that bell right in me. Yeah. It's almost like I did a train tour, a tour all by train this past year. And I did a tour by train and also a 10 day silent meditation retreat. And those two experiences, really, I'll be chewing on them forever. And they also really were so illuminating in the ways that I'm craving to touch the places that I am. And I'm not quite sure how. Which is maybe just a human thing or a weird introvert thing, but I was so amazed in the. In this, the 10 day. You don't look at anybody or talk or write or read or that you just sit in your mind, which I'm a total novice meditator. And it was like I drank right out of the fire hose for some reason. But I was so amazed at how. How much I was trying to hide from myself even of just. Just sitting in there. How many other things I would get up to with my mind in an attempt to feel alive or better or less uncomfortable and. And also to feel okay where I am. And also on the train tour, just kind of watching the country go by out the window and having this feeling of being so moved by how big and messy and full of struggle and pain and dollar trees and cathedrals this place is and how much more comfortable I am watching it and being moved by it than Being in it.
- [62:30]
B
Yeah.
- [62:32]
C
I think as a part of the writing of places I want to get in them and I am trying to get in them with everything that I notice about them. And then in my actual life I'm trying to get in them and I'm not sure how always or I'm wanting to. It's like I'm trying to write myself into real life and maybe eventually I will.
- [62:58]
B
That's a great line. Great. There's something that feels so similar about. You're Talking about a 10 day silent retreat and then traveling by train just as far as like the pace of the day. Of course at a train you don't know who you might bump into, what small conversation you might have. But same I guess in a ten day silent retreat you don't know what thoughts, what parts of yourself are going to show up. Have there been lasting impacts or kind of how is the ripple effect of those continue to show up since then?
- [63:41]
C
A lot that there's. I think maybe it's just that that well worn thing that the uncomfortable just placing yourself in the world causes you to grow into it and battle with yourself in that space. And I really love things that take away your control. I'll sit a table and change the word the to then for four hours and that's all good and well but it. There's like something else out there that is so far out of my understanding and my control and to kind of tour is also really beautiful in this way. You just. The day is a totally unknown expanse and you bump into and have conversations with so many people and things and places that are unexpected and it's sort of just makes you confront yourself and confront the world and hold it more. Yeah. There's like a slowness. I've been craving so much lately that the train and the meditation and that certain authors and there's. It's almost not about getting anything said. It's just about sort of expressing something almost like deeply and embarrassingly true things that are like. It's not beautiful. It just is so real between people or in a place and that I'm craving those things. This sort of like earnestness that is so uncool and so slow and hard won and it's like the anti pop hit of Aliveness.
- [66:05]
A
Yes, yes. That rings so true for me and clearly shows why I'm so drawn to your music. I'm thinking about
- [66:19]
B
how I don't want to word this
- [66:25]
A
as we were talking about the ripple effects, the specificity, the place making. I'm also thinking about the vividness in which you articulate the natural world into like. I'm going to read this line real quick. This line just shattered me because I can see it. I can feel it. It's from Badlands. A thousand birds in startled ways, reversing through the sky, then emptiness right after that explosion. That's both. Something that happens in nature, something that I experience in myself. And yet they're not two, but they're not one either. Like, it holds that. That middle space. How does the natural landscape hold for you, both the metaphorical and the concrete background for you in songwriting?
- [67:30]
C
Maybe because I grew up in a really kind of. In the woods and with moles and snakes and forest and ferns and just the kind of daily goings ons of ants. And maybe also because I was a kid that spent a lot of time there, found a lot of pleasure in that quiet wildness that I just feel like everything that's happening in the human world, which we feel is so separate from the natural world, but isn't at all because there's these, like, biological angles also. But the. It's where we. We are, like, reflecting always the kind of wonder and the brutality and the confusion and asymmetry that I often find it really. It just resonates to, like, be where I live. There's just insane amount of crows right now and everywhere. It's the city, you know, but you walk through the park and there'd be like 200 crows in one tree. And they're just talking and they're. What are they talking about? I don't know. And it seems foreboding, but also really powerful. And there's something about. And they're doing their nature thing in the midst of, like, the sirens and the exhaust. And it just feels like everything that I'm experiencing in my human life is being taught to me there tenfold. Or the. The way that we take from each other, the way that we care for each other, these ways that nature sort of like, kills and eats and nurtures itself over and over and over again and. And we have that same thing in our nature and we deny it or we fight it, or we. I don't know. I think I just find it very true and full of awe to kind of ask my questions to that world because it's so. It's so wordless there. It's not trying to tell you what it's doing. It just is. And. Yeah, I don't know if that was a messy pile of an answer.
- [70:25]
A
Not at all.
- [70:26]
B
Not for me.
- [70:27]
A
That is I had the image of walking around my neighborhood and there's all this construction going on right now, and then there's a coyote just wandering. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is all passing. Yeah, this is what is happening. And the coyote is. Is just living its life that it knows amidst the construction of humans trying to pave over some land. They're still kicking it, doing their coyote
- [71:01]
B
thing
- [71:03]
A
and pulled me out. You know, it pulled back the kind of the time continuum to just almost look at it with, like, eternal eyes of, oh, yeah, there's a much larger life exchange happening right now than this annoying construction that's blocking this street. And it just kind of makes me chuckle about, you know, the sense of control that I chuckle so I don't weep. The sense of control we try to hold over nature and the reminder of limits and how to be in right relationship to this intricate web that has given us so much that we're a part of and not separate from. So, yeah, your response was definitely right in the tune of my own heartstrings.
- [72:02]
C
Did you ever read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? I have, yeah. That is a book, I think, opened a portal to me of, oh, the things that you could notice in this tiny stretch of yard that are. Or just mantises eating each other's heads and the way leaves decompose to feed other things. And this kind of like, turned on, visceral watching that you did in that book. And you could. It didn't feel like separate from humanness. It felt so informative of, like, watching to understand why the inside of yourself feels so intense. There's so. Yeah, so many things
- [73:13]
A
think about.
- [73:14]
B
I have a neighbor who wants to
- [73:18]
A
know every square inch of her yard. So there's food growing everywhere, you know, different seasonal gardens, compost that's available for neighbors to come and contribute their compost to. And it's like that kind of attention, whether you live at Tinker Creek or in a city and you have this small plot that you. You're stewarding for a very short amount of time, but getting to know it that intimately. There's wisdom in that. That localized place that we get to be in relationship with. It's so easy to forget when. When we're setting up temporary shops without forethought of what's the. What's the history of this place, what's growing beneath my feet, who are the critters who are going to come visit. And I find in your. The. These lines that, like in your songs will pull me back to that that place. Even if it's going to bring me back into a particular narrative arc or melody. It's these little wrapped gifts of eternity in the songs. And it's fun to hear you reflect on that process for you and your relationship, the web of life.
- [74:48]
C
I think it's what you just said about the coyote. It's like.
- [74:54]
B
Then
- [74:57]
C
you get reminded and it pulls you back out into this wider brief. You're just a tiny brief part of this thing. And it feels so good to draw back there and it's so hard to stay there.
- [75:11]
B
Yeah.
- [75:13]
C
Feel that about writing. It's just trying to remind yourself and remember and mark those coyotes when they come up. Then hold on to them.
- [75:25]
A
Hold on to the coyotes.
- [75:27]
C
Yeah.
- [75:29]
A
I want to ask you about the song, the humming. To me, it's one of my all time favorite closing songs on any album because I feel like in the album we walk through the mystery of living, suffering, the personal and the collective, the foibles of unhealthy culture, the mystery of being. And then you drop us off with the humming, which feels like the mystery of love. How does memory stoke the mystery of love for you?
- [76:02]
C
Such a beautiful question. I'm so glad you feel that song. That one sometimes feels like so tender and so tender and so quiet. I sometimes feel funny playing it on a stage in certain rooms. It feels like not. Not what the world wants, but it. I just feel like such an eternal kid student of this sort of gathering of true moments that make you realize how far love can go and. And it's never ending. And I feel it in people who have learned it more deeply for longer. I can feel them using their hearts in this way that I'm just hungry for. And I can feel the way time and work and language almost, or the way that. Like the language of trying to really know somebody or see somebody or be in relation with somebody. The way that will unpeel you before each other forever as long as you're willing to do that work. And I'm. I'm just so hungry to know how. Where that goes. I want to show up for it. And it's so terrifying. And it feels new always. It always feels like a new discovery every time you turn another page in that place or every time you want to run away from something uncomfortable in relationship and then it deepens or you come out the other end of a patch where you feel like strangers and you find another part of each other. And I just. I don't know, it just feels. It gives me this feeling like if I could be in that work forever. It would be okay to leave at any time. That would be such a gift to have gotten to do that I wouldn't feel like I hadn't gotten to live or that I would just. I don't know. I think it's just the place I feel the most gratitude. I can't believe that that exists, that you might get to find people that way or show yourself in that way. I don't know how you hold that in your relationships of that kind of lifelongness of it, or the. You'll never. You'll never know each other, but you'll like that wanting will just ripple outward and outward and outward. And
- [79:55]
B
that's. That's marvelous.
- [79:56]
A
It's really beautiful. It's reminded me of something else, of who I spoke of earlier, Jim Finley, where he talks about when. When you don't know someone very well, it's easy to say a lot about them, but when you really love someone, you don't know how to. To speak to it because there is no bottom to that. Like, you're constantly moving, shifting, adapting, and like, it's hard to put words on that mystery. And I so appreciated the way you were talking about kind of the different seasonalities and like, the need for constant discovery and the aliveness in that. And what a gift it is, where whatever may become the whole process is a gift to the self and to the other in that. In that evolution. And I think that's why I was so struck by that song of. It's almost like the holiness of time in relationship and looking back and the gratitude for the ordinariness and how that drops into things that are bigger than that. It's the Coyote again. You know, it's such a marvelous song. And truly the whole album, start to finish, there's. It takes you somewhere. And I hope that. That everyone listening checks out Animal Poem buys it, gifts it for friends who are of this kind of kindredness of heart. Because I think it's one of those albums that, when it came out late last summer, I believe, like, I just kept coming back to it and returning, revisiting and just allowing it to be in conversation with me,
- [81:58]
B
which is a
- [81:58]
A
marvelous gift to all of us who so love and appreciate your music, because to me, that's part of the reception of art in that way, keeps me going for the long haul. And your track record with that, with your previous albums and with this, it's just so fun to see the areas you're exploring. I'll stop buttering your bread. But it's just so. I so appreciate the way that you risk this over and over and over again through song and the intimacy at which you show up in live shows. For anyone listening who has not seen you live, I hope they. They check out your tour page and show up because it is there. You mentioned earlier about like use the analogy of like a church service that's open to everyone. In no way am I calling this churchy, but like this connected feeling that happens, I think at your shows that I can speak of from firsthand experience. Just encourage everyone to go out to see you play live. After digesting and enjoying your albums, what's next for you? And I know you're still touring. Do you have other projects in mind that that might be coming down the way that folks keep an eye out for?
- [83:35]
C
Yeah, and I just. I want to also just. That means so much to me and is. I just feel that the conversation that we've had here and the conversations that you have here and that happen at shows and that when people are willing to let the songs be part of their lives is. I just. I feel so grateful that that communication exists and lucky to have stumbled into after a whole lot of jobs where that conversation wasn't so reachable. It just. It means a lot and is humbling and that feels like a companion to living that I'm so grateful to have and to draws me to people like you or people that I meet at shows that are wanting to speak to each other in that way. And I'm learning there all the time that I'm doing this as a quiet moment. I've sort of intentionally after a lot of years of kind of month long tours into month long tours, touring still, but kind of trying to be home as much which has never happened besides the pandemic which is feeling really nice. And I'm having a lot of writing time right now and really having a deep craving to write so slow and long. Having this feeling of hopefully working my way toward something very free and very unpolished. That's very long form. I'm feeling a hunger to make time stretch in this. Maybe because of the way the culture is compressing. Compressing always into tiny little fragments. I'm wanting the conversation to stretch out just in my own work and a little unsure what that means still. Besides that, I find myself writing really long bad versey songs right now and interested. Trying to just let the expression happen and see what is trying to surface there.
- [86:48]
B
Yeah,
- [86:52]
A
I love hearing just the. The continued risk like willing to Risk, terrain that is potentially less. Less comfortable or just new in that expression. So it's really fun just to hear
- [87:09]
B
how
- [87:12]
A
you process, how you digest, how you explore what calls to you and what's calling through you. It's a great reminder, I think, for everyone listening to keep stepping out in that way. And whatever your art form is, if it's a artistic expression or just the art of life, I think it's such an important thing. And so I'm grateful to hear the ways that you continue to explore those edges. There's part of me that just does not want this conversation to end, but I also feel like I'm sensitive to the things that we just need to attend to in our world. Like my kids. I have to go pick up in 10 minutes, which is part of the real. The realness of life.
- [88:04]
C
You gotta go check their shoes.
- [88:06]
A
That's right. You never know what kind of shit they stepped in today. But I always close the question just to keep it embodied and in the enjoyment and the. The verve of life. Anna, if you're going to pair our conversation with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?
- [88:29]
C
I would. Maybe in lieu of being able to be a booze or caffeine drinker,
- [88:36]
B
as
- [88:36]
C
I wish I could be, I would pair it with some. Maybe some mint tea, the kind that your friend gives you, who has a green thumb. And you go over there and they put it, dirt and all, into the boiling water, and it's sort of this gritty, sweet, earthbound thing that you drink together that they picked with their hands. And
- [89:07]
A
that's perfect. There's nothing better than that kind of earthy tea bespeckled with the dirt that it grew in. Thank you so much for this time together. Yeah, it's an honor. And there I go. I'm just buttering bread again. I'm just going to stop and say, I have had. This has been such a delight to be in conversation with. With you as you've been playing in my ears for so long and grateful for this opportunity.
- [89:41]
C
Thank you, Paul. And this. Yeah, I could talk to you for 17 years. So let's continue the conversation. I really so appreciate what you do and what it teaches me and all of us who are listening. Yeah. Thank you.
- [90:00]
A
Thank you,
- [90:07]
B
Good people.
- [90:08]
A
Thank you for listening to this episode of Contemplify. May it aid you in plumbing the earthy depths of this shared cosmos. Pop over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode or sign up for the monthly Contemplify Non required reading list list or sign up for the weekly contemplative practice Lo Fi and Hushed.
- [90:30]
B
If you are enjoying Contemplify, you can
- [90:32]
A
rate and review it on your podcast player. It helps fill the cup of contemplative cheer. The theme song of Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Ends and Darian Hofius. Fellas, thanks as always. I'm looking forward to bringing you more musings here and conversations with contemplatives in
- [90:53]
B
the world in the near future.
- [90:56]
A
Until then, be well.