Interview with myself about the Fragments CD

Part One: Getting Started

Q: The Fragments CD is the follow up to the first CD When We Were Little Girls with the group Cash Cow?

A: Yes.

Q: How do these two CD’s differ? I noticed that there is a different approach.

A: Doing the Cash Cow CD was a joy. The group had played together as a quartet for only a short time… we did three maybe four gigs. The first recording, however, which still hasn’t been released, is entitled Theresa. Cash Cow was the second.

Q: Fragments the third?

A: Right. Beginning with the Theresa CD (which was recorded in Ottawa in the winter of 1998) the music was free, or ‘free form’. I had a strong longstanding relationship with Justin Haynes - we grew up together. The music we had played, namely the free form music we had played, was the most inspiring to me. In high school we would solo over anything - a Motown vamp, a U2 song, a Charlie Parker tune… anything.

Q: So Justin Haynes played guitar. What about the other instruments?

A: Nick Fraser played drums on the CD and Rebecca Campbell sang the final song, ‘Abide With Me’. I met Nick when he was fifteen and I was, oh, seventeen or so. Justin, Nick and myself did a lot of playing in those days. We played weekly at the Café Wim. Actually, Justin and I started playing there when we were in grade ten and we had a steady gig there for quite some time. It was a great opportunity and experience.

Q: So the Theresa CD was the first recording…?

A: Yes, and everything stems from that - even though it hasn’t been released.

Q: What about Rebecca Campbell?

A: Actually, I met Rebecca in Ottawa too. Justin had started a band called "Al" and we did a few gigs together. On one of those gigs we played the hymn ‘Abide With Me’ and I never forgot that. I was touched that Rebecca was willing to sing the last song on the Theresa CD, and I will always be thankful to her.

Q: So Cash Cow’s When We Were Little Girls was the second CD?

A: Yes, even though the first one - Theresa - has yet to be released. With both Theresa and the Cash Cow CD there was a freedom; however, with Cash Cow there was written music whereas the Theresa session was free form, for lack of a better term. It took me a long time to feel comfortable about the music I had written. And with Cash Cow I felt a great pleasure when playing the music composed for Cash Cow. The ironic thing is, many of the tunes composed for the Cash Cow CD were not new; in fact I had been writing some of the tunes ten years prior to the session.

Q: Why didn’t you record them earlier?

A: For a long time I was obsessed with being a Jazz musician. I had adopted an image of Jazz, and felt that the music I was writing was, at best, only partially Jazz. I actually made myself a failure, more than anything else. Music was painful for me then - very dramatic.

Q: So for this reason, because the music you wrote wasn’t Jazz, you didn’t record it?

A: Yes. It seems silly now, but now the CD has been released whereas then it was a figment of my imagination. Then it was what I heard, what I felt when I was alone, and I wasn’t psychologically in that healthy a space. The result of this unhealthy outlook poured over everything. As I said, it was very dramatic, and torturous at times. What I wanted was, fundamentally, to not be alone. However, I had a romanticized or a tragic romanticized idea of being alone. At the time I thought being a Jazz musician, a working vibrant part of a community would end my loneliness. But really it was motivated by other things. I wanted to drink, to die, to have sex and fall on the ground, all the while being this tragic genius artist. My life was like a movie: when you are sitting there it is as real as anything, but when you walk out of the movie theatre you don’t remember why you believed it so much at the time. In Ottawa I was able to maintain this view, however, when I moved to Toronto I wasn’t. Simply put, I didn’t work anywhere near as much in Toronto as I had in Ottawa. The fact is my experiences in Toronto, the work that I did, was at best psoriatic.

Q: But many musicians are looking for work?

A: Absolutely. But I wasn’t really looking for work - I just thought I was. To be honest, what I wanted was to not feel lonely, and to watch a movie, my movie, my dream. I was a young man without a career, without a place to exist in, andthis scared me, but this also recreated me.

Q: Many people are scared.

A: True, if not all people. But what I am saying is: the thing I thought would end my solitude was Jazz, However, no thing ends one’s loneliness. In addition, the motivation I had to play music was unclear. I wanted to write music I felt, music that expressed something, yet, at the same time, I wanted to be included in an idiom that I had, for all intensive purposes, made up myself, although I wasn’t conscious of this. It was, after all, my image of Jazz - the Jazz scene, idiom, and so forth - which I hoped to be included in. Thus, who better than I to know this ‘made up’ and ‘imagined’ idiom than I?

Q: But you didn’t think of it at the time like that?

A: No, not at all. At that time I didn’t realize or trust the length to which a person can create their world. The events which took place were out there; they were always foreign. They were either against me or with me and in either case I had little to no say in it.

Q: So what happened?

A: Well, to a certain extent, I became a little more playful. However, it is some what complicated, and it is something that I think about everyday. In this way I am studying my life, my blunders and falls, and attempting to trust that which I have set myself against. In doing the Theresa CD, the focus was to play free form music that was just that… free. With Cash Cow it was to do the same, yet, to do so over the forms of these simply tunes. With Fragments I wanted to again branch out, and look at music in a slightly different way. Essentially, I wanted to explore that which was within me to be explored. I didn’t want to arrive at anything, I didn’t want to have a voice or a narrator to build a series upon. I didn’t even want a band per se. I wanted openness.

Q: How does this openness play out in Fragments?

A: The compositional process was different in that I was unbiased. I had been asked by a friend to bring in some original music for a gig he had gotten with a Canada Council grant. The mandate of the grant was set based upon the group of musicians performing all original, or mostly original, material. So one night I sat at the kitchen table and wrote the Fragments suite.

Q: How did you start the process and how did this differ from Cash Cow’s When We Were Little Girls and the Theresa CD?

A: In actuality they don’t differ that much. The Theresa recording was all free form with the exception of the final hymn. However, the musicians I played with - Justin Haynes and Nick Fraser - are long time musical friends. In a sense we were playing from a shared experience; a shared tonality, if you will. Understand, if you talked with Justin or Nick their take on this may be quite different than mine which is what makes our relationship so beautiful, I think. Even so, what I took away from this, what I found within the Theresa session, was an openness of music; an openness I had always imagined, yet, was too afraid to trust. And I am still working on this trust, and I always will be.

Q: So music is personal?

A: Well yes. I think each person feels something personal in music and I think each person hears a kind of personal Folk or Traditional music, you could say. This music is my personal folk music, my personal traditional music and my own musical heritage. Although I don’t own it, I did get it from society; I didn’t make it up - it’s public domain. The distinction between not recording and recording for me was that I was becoming more able to draw upon my influences (the music that had affected me) and I was doing so with a greater sense of play than I had done in years. Life was less dramatic, less painful.

Q: So did this sense of play change or end?

A: No. It transformed. As a kid music was clearly my identity. What I wasn’t in other areas of life I was in music. It’s not that I was gifted, nor is it that I worked hard, it was, however, that I was ready to give everything, my whole life, to it. It was something that I could surrender to, wholly and completely. But understand, the identity that I created as a younger man becomes its own gestalt, you could say. This identity held me back, whereas once it freed me. This is the fundamental dilemma of free form music, and, I think, the flaw in its name. The act of surrender is essential in life as it is the length to which a person will go on behalf of their imagination. In imagination everything is possible, this I always knew. But the way I knew it changed, and the very act of this change was chaotic, to say the least. Because I always dreamed, like everyone does, and because music was my soundtrack to dreaming, music was the bridge between the dream world and reality.

Q: The Fragments CD has a soundtrack feel to it. Is this what you mean when you say that music was your soundtrack?

A: Yes. In fact, it was precisely this soundtrack quality that confused me in regards to playing Jazz.

Q: So how did this confusion come about? What was the conflict between this inner soundtrack and Jazz?

A: Well, when you begin in any type of education you go in blind - the statement ‘Hind sight is 20/20’ is quite true. What happens, in my estimation, is I feel in love with some aspects of Jazz, and the idea of having an identity. I feel in love with my image of Charlie Parker, for example. I also loved the tragedy of Jazz, the drugs, sex and the overall underworld, but most of all, the fact that Jazz was an outsiders’ music.

Q: Did you think music was tragedy?

A: Yes, and I was right - I think. Music is tragic in the sense that a person is both free and bound. If you think about what it is to be lifted within a song or melody, you have to ask yourself ‘what am I being lifted from or by?’. In this sense music is tragic, it becomes a fight for freedom. Drugs, sex, alcohol, class, belief, and so on, are exciting in that they give a person the feeling of empowerment. However, this empowerment, like all forms of power sought in such a way and understood in terms of domination or conquering, is in and of itself a betrayal of the fundamental motivation to seek a secure identity within the free exchange of life’s many experiences - in other words, to imagine and to exist without shame. The tragic side comes about when the person who has been triumphed over is oneself and is forced to lose oneself. When we are winners we perceive ourselves as winners and then hold onto that perception; however - and this is once again the tragic part - by way of our own defeat.

Q: You could say that we are our own accomplices.

A: Yes.

Q: But how does this relate to music - outside of the ill effect of drugs, alcohol and so on?

A: Fundamentally we are talking about a dialectical process - the way we understand and communicate with ourselves; the thing that leads me to believe that I can ‘conquer’ and ‘gain’ power achieved through my understanding. Understanding is reason and reason is dialectical. As well, they are the motives that affect the object I am attempting to understand. For instance, if I was concerned with loneliness and sought solace in sex (perhaps this was the language that was available to me, or perhaps this was an area that seemed to hold a possible freedom for me?) If this is so, sex then becomes the language to which my loneliness is expressed symbolically.

Q: I presume you are going to point out how predacious sex is within our society? The ill of sex, the bad of sex. But what does this have to do with music? This is sociology.

A: Please understand, I have no interest in changing your opinion, nor do I intend to deviate from the topic of music, more specifically Fragments. Nor do I wish to condemn sex. However, it is the case that all of these things have influenced life greatly, moreover, all of these things are tied, if you will, to Fragments, Theresa, and Cash Cow. This said, the underlying force for me, that which informs art, life, humanity and so on - all of life: sex, romance, hunger, loneliness, and so on - are themselves expressions and, more directly, expressions of humanity.

Q: Okay, could you tie these things, these sociological things, to music?

A: Sure. In life potential is sought. We perceive and understand potential through reason. The degree to which we reason is the degree to which we understand. Because my understanding, my reason, had canonized or stop within a certain ideation of Jazz, which is to say, that Jazz could provide a community and as such curtail my fears of failure and loneliness, I was trapped, or to put it another way, I was bound. What Jazz was at first representative of to me is not exclusive to Jazz. I wanted to be a part of an outsider music. The irony is although Jazz is many things, and it is no longer an outsider music, nor was it ever an outsider music in the way that I desired. Because I couldn’t reason past the idol I had created in Jazz I was trapped and as such I was affected in every way that a trapped man is affected. In a phrase, I regressed. Alcohol was my symbolic return to unreason, my escape from the dialogue I could not answer nor equal. And, since I was trapped - and, as we said, reason is the degree to which we understand, and since I couldn’t understand, the best thing, the only thing was to regress. What I did was to fight and move away, antagonistically, from the object of my obsession. It was, in every sense, a love-hate relationship. On the one hand I was attempting to escape the reality of my life, which was ‘I am not a Jazz musician’. By drinking I was attempting to escape the paralysis of doubt by drinking myself away from a reason that I felt was destroying me.

Q: Musically this removed you from potential?

A: Yes.

Q: But this all seems so obvious now.

A: Yes it does.

Q: At the time, though, what was it that changed you?

A: Nothing changed me, per se, rather, something opened.

Q: Which was?

A: I decided that for better or for worse it would be okay if I wasn’t a musician, if I didn’t find a musical voice, and if I was lonely for the rest of my life.

Q: That sounds rather dramatic.

A: I suppose it does, however, it really wasn’t that dramatic at all. Understand, I was addressing my own perceptions; perceptions that had been created with a reason, however, this reason had lost its meaning. In fact, if anything, the experience I had when I made this transformation was far from dramatic. I developed a different relationship with my own thoughts. I began to view my hopes, aspirations, fears, and desires as if they were mythological tales, stories I could read and re-read. I was in a different position. I had a greater amount of room within my thoughts than I had previously. What it was that took place, and I didn’t realize this in this until just now, was that the experience was a reaffirmation of my vows, or my surrender, or my hope, or dreams and so on. Music had become political. It was about getting somewhere, being accepted. It was this and that and a whole lot of other things. What it wasn’t anymorewas music.

Q: So the reason had changed or diversified?

A: No, not really. Think of it this way, you are taking a trip, something happens and you are placed on a different path; you’re still on a trip. What makes it ‘not a trip’, or bad is that it is different than the trip you had desired. What makes a person immature is that their desire is always viewed as above reality and the events of reality. They are impatient to the point of apathy. So, what changed or transformed was the understanding that I played a part in both change and transformation. And that the changes I perceived and felt were me. Earlier you asked me, "what does this have to do with music, this is sociology?". A person’s self image and the perceptions of themselves within a society are paramount in the understanding of oneself.

Q: So?

A: The self image is tied to an individual’s understanding of their society as it is a self image created within society. If that understanding is sexual, than all is sexual. If that understanding is presumptuous, then all understanding is presumptuous. The idiom, the scene, and so on, are all affected by our means of understanding. This said, what distinguishes us in our time is the understanding and communication of our self as being an object separate from ourselves - Charles Taylor wrote a wonderful book on this topic.

Q: Did you feel beaten in music by this separate perception of yourself?

A: Yes and no. Although, now when I look at it I don’t see it in terms of winning or losing, like being beaten in a boxing ring. What occurs to me now is that no person can give you a life; you can’t have life, you can only share life. What is spectacular about life is being able to share on deep levels of reason, or dialogue. This is the potential of life: to share. And sharing begins with one’s self perception; thus, a dialogue between that which is separate, that which is fragmented.

Q: How does this play into Fragments?

A: I felt I could write and share something that was more than my previous understanding of myself, yet, something pure was maintained. Simply, there was something to say. When I sat down to write Fragments I was interested in writing the little themes, the little phrases and melodies and grooves and feels that had come to me over the years. This is not to say I had composed the Fragments suite prior to that night in the kitchen. It is, however, to say that it was familiar to me.

Q: When I asked you about being beaten and feeling beaten in music you said ‘Yes and no’. What do you mean? Is it both?

A: It is both. The way I thought of music and still sometimes think of music, and for that matter life, is sometimes feeling beaten and sometimes not. For a long time I thought of such things in linear ways. The reason why I said ‘Yes and no’ is because I have changed in my perceptions and understandings of beaten and/or not being beaten. It comes down to negation.

Q: Negation?

A: Negation can be violent, it can be mending. If a person understands life only in terms of all or nothing, then negation will tend to be violent. If it is the case that life is understood in terms of relativity then there are different forms of negation. For instance, when I say negation we are talking about denial. And if a person denies that you have rights, denies that you are good and true, then you… disagree, kill them, hurt yourself, feel sorrow for yourself, start a militant group, vote them out, run them out. You, in whatever way, react to the negation. Within our day-to-day life we may feel that we have been negated. Someone cuts us off on the street, someone doesn’t congratulate us, love us, someone doesn’t help us, pay us on time, feed us, hold us, whatever. If, as was the case with me, a person isn’t accepted, or doesn’t perceive themselves as being accepted they may regress because they are hurt. The question here is ‘What does a person do with hurt?’. Do they pass it on like a hot potato, does it fuel their low self image? Do they, in short, negate again? How we understand pain is how we understand ourselves, not because pain hurts, but because it demands a reaction, it demands an answer. In order to answer we need language, whatever kind of language, and music is a language. For me, and I think for others as well, music is an answer to pain. Music can embrace pain, longing and so on, and give us an opportunity to sit within our own pain without negation. We can accept our hurt, and see it as our love, our joy, and our compassion.

Q: So denying someone is denying oneself?

A: Yes.

Q: Denial is fear, negation is fear.

A: You can’t enjoy the art in an art gallery if you are being chased through the gallery by a herd of elephants.

Q: No, I suppose not. But this is a legitimate fear?

A: Sure it is, but this ‘legitimacy‘ must be understood as such; it could be reasoned and agreed upon, could it not?

Q: Yes.

A: However, I don’t agree that a person should yell at me simply because I know that they are insecure and negating their fear. With the Theresa session I was extremely conscious of what I said. I knew I couldn’t sound nervous or anxious because this would be thrown out onto the others in the group. This was the same with Cash Cow and Fragments. The result is potential, it is possibility. This is the key. Earlier in life I understood the key to music, to life, to be control, and took control over others. However, I’ve come to realize that this control is over oneself, and it is through the negation of others that we feel in control.

Q: Then doesn’t this become chaotic or ambiguous?

A: It can, certainly. However, I am not saying power or control is bad; what I am saying is if a person has a desire, that desire is, in and of itself, chaotic (in that desire is understood as an imagined image). Then, force this imagined image upon reality and you’ve got chaos. Control comes in relation to desire and expectation. Remember, I am interested in improvisational music, in spontaneity. Spontaneity is affected by worship, worship is fear. Thus, worship is an act of negation, of denial.

Q: That’s loaded, don’t you think?

A: Only if you understand denial or negation as being bad, and ‘bad’ as being something to be avoided.

Q: Well bad is bad…Who wants to be bad?

A: We all do. Whether we are being bad with chocolate cake, drugs, or avoiding our taxes; or apathy, we all, in whatever way, engage the bad. We may refer to it as cool, hot, or even good, but this name change doesn’t remove us from being bad; it simply means we have a preferred term and that this term represents the direction from which we embrace bad.

Q: Please, what does this have to do with Fragments?

A: The process of writing had opened up; bad and good, the dialectical forum had changed. Possibilities opened, ideas came to the surface all because the understanding I had of bad and good, under the perspective of, in this case Jazz, had lifted, transformed, and yielded.

Q: So it had nothing to do with Jazz as an idiom?
A: No, it didn’t. It had to do with fear. Fear makes safe music, mediocre at best.

Q: So you became more antagonistic.

A: I was always antagonistic. I just began to feel that I could be antagonistic without being tragic, without being chaotic. A friend of mine had a poem he wrote that illustrated this transformation or predicament, depending on what side you are on. It went something like: "One day they will call you debunker, but right now you’re just white noise". I think this is the best metaphor as, really, that’s just what it was. I was extreme, I was dramatic, and still am to a greater degree. But there is something more, something that I can feel within me. Music can be good, and it’s not bad to say it. Confidence of self, confidence that is outside of any social crutch is good. To struggle, to dig, and to dig and to come up empty - only to find a year later that there was something there after all right beside where you had been looking, and that desire and intent had taken it away. To see that there is a potential and a possibility in errors and mistakes, to see that errors are only errors because of their context, and to see that life is an endless stream of contexts - this is a developed perspective of one’s self. For me, music stands outside of (above, beyond, and so forth) desire. This is because music expands through reason, and reason speaks to desire. There is no negation. Rather there is understanding, compassion, and composition of oneself, in the telling of one’s life story.

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