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Re: (fwd) To all, from Linford
> Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment
> you know, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We
> guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
> Agnes De Mille
Knowledge is a deception, which fills you with a false sense of comfort that
you understand one aspect of an ever-changing story.
-Nobody said it, but I felt it was time that someone should.
> Now if you asked me where I'd rather be, I'd say nowhere.
> Karin Bergquist
oh that I was where I would be then would I be where I am not
here I am where I must be where I would be I can not
-Some bizarre Mother Goose rhyme that a bunch of people sing
(please note that this becomes better when the reader adds their own
punctuation)
Dear Lindford-by-way-of-list,
It seems you have quite the decision on your hands. I would say that
this decision was yours, and not ours to make. I suppose that this was
correct until you asked us for our help. I guess that the most important
thing to remember is that it remains yours to make. You have not given that
right away, but you have allowed us our say, and I'm going to start the
conversation that I am sure will follow by taking the opportunity.
I am a writer myself, or at least I fashion myself one, and several
people whom I trust the opinions of strive to further my belief in such a
thought. I have rarely published, and I offer one excuse for this: that to
pursue publication would take time away from when I should be writing. My
works can be published after I pass into the next visage, but I will not be
able to write after such an occurrence. Said more succinctly, someone else
may publish me, but they can not write my stories. I don't know how much of
that is an excuse to save myself from the effort and rejection that comes
with submission (even the word brings frightful images to all but the s&m
enthusiast), or if I really believe it. Never-the-less I offer it up here
as a possible response to your quandary.
The prior is not my response to you though. It would be easy if it was,
for then I could say that I am following my own advice, but sorrowfully I am
not (and you may have just affected my life again in the same way that you
did that day when I received a personalized response to fan mail from an IRS
artist). This is my response to you:
In 1995(or somewhere there-abouts, all of these
final-days-of-the-20th-century seem to be blurring together) I found a piece
of your soul on the discard pile of a radio station in which I was an
intern. This shard had the visage of an old man, and am quite sure that you
are aware of when you lost him. I remember that we had our first date that
day, Mr. Linford. You and I sat in the little cube that served as a
production room, in the middle of Amherst, MA as an angel of a woman who
gave your heart voice that spoke into me. (I purposed to you when I
received your honest, yet artistic reply to my subsequent letter.)
I recently came back into contact with a lost lover, and some of her
first words to me were that she remembered lying in bed with me listening to
your work. A man who would come to be my best friend and I had our first
experiences in each others lives to the soundtrack of, "Eve." Even when he
is far away I can still hear his advice and feel his warmth in, "Daddy
Untwisted." I can feel yours as well, sir.
As much as I would love to tell you to produce your own work, to spill
out your experience into a compact musical experience that I can throw into
my electronic box and reproduce for myself, and to do it as often as you
can, I can not. I can not tell you that, given the choice between producing
a lot of things that only a few people will ever hear, or producing few
things that a lot of people were here, I would urge you to do the former.
Too many people have not heard your voice. I can not rape them of that
privilege. I can not say that because I have long-lost-girl-friends, and
best-friends-moved-far-afield, my urge to have that many more should be put
in front of those who do not yet have these things. I think I may have
changed my life again, or maybe you did. I just hope I'm not too apathetic
to listen to myself.
In all sincerity,
Brian Gardner (Gardner McPherson)
> It's obvious I don't know where to begin or you would have heard from
> me long
> before now.
> I lived for a long time on the top floor of an old brick building on
> Main
> Street downtown, and now in this old house I do most of my work here in the
> attic. I'm assuming all of these words would be different if I was hunkered
> down in the corner of the basement. But up here I look out and see the tops of
> the houses and chimneys and parts of trees high up, bare branches interlaced
> like bloodvessels, veins very still against the face of the sky as if the
> world was holding its breath, waiting for something to make the first move.
> For some reason there are a lot of cardinals in this neighborhood and they sit
> there like the tip of God's paintbrush, smug in their uselessness. What are we
> supposed to do with all this red?
> How have you all been? When I think of you I remember that I know you
> and
> that I don't. Many of us will never meet but somehow I miss you anyway.
> Somehow I know that when you brush up against some obscure joy, I feel it a
> little bit too. And when you come to grips with the phantom pangs that are
> part of this free ride - this free ride that ends up giving us more than we
> can ever repay, more than we know how to handle - this free ride for which we
> bought no ticket - I mean we sloshed around in our Mothers' womb and laid
> there in our cribs and we didn't even know we were riding yet - well, somehow
> when you ache in that inside place for which we have no name, I feel it a
> little bit too. I guess I took the long way to say, Fine I hope. ( Why do I
> hope you're fine? Because when you do something good, that makes it easier for
> me.)
> I'm assuming that some of you are still regularly talking to each
> other. I
> don't know if it's a relief to you to know that I haven't checked in on your
> conversations for a long, long time. But I have a dilemma that I would like
> you to discuss and then after y'all express yourselves, I think I'm going to
> get somebody to print out your words to see if you can shed any new light on
> the subject at hand.
> The dilemma is this. I have come to a place in my life where writing
> and
> recording music is the most tangible or physical way that I give a little
> something to the world and I learn a little something in the meanwhile. For
> years I have thought of what I do as running a vegetable stand. It's sort of a
> family-run business (we're not a chain or a franchise) and people have to go a
> bit out of their way to come and get what we offer. Because we're a vegetable
> stand and not a hypermarket, we try to put a little extra care into what we
> give people, keep things fresh, organic, and the scenery is arguably a little
> richer out here.
> From time to time people have come in and assured us that they can
> take this
> vegetable stand and turn it into a multi-national success story. Running the
> vegetable stand is a lot of work, and some years get a little lean - you know,
> maybe there's an early frost or whatever and the roof of the barn needs
> repaired. So it's always interesting to hear what these people have to say,
> and we try to listen. But inevitably, while people sit around conference
> tables brainstorming about how Over the Rhine's next record could sell three
> million copies, weeks and months go by, and we begin to think, gee, we could
> have put out a couple of records of our own just in the time it took for this
> famous label to decide O.K. we are now officially interested in talking about
> the possibility of definitely working together as soon as we get through this
> merger that frankly might mean we're all out of a job in a few months so
> that's great news lets go spend $800 on dinner and have a good time.
> The short version is this. If you were me and you were at a point that
> you
> knew you could make a record with a big budget and a producer that would get
> released in the next 18 months or so, and then you would promote that record
> for a few years and if you were successful, do it all over again and maybe
> make a lot of money and have a couple songs on the radio et cetera, et cetera,
> or you could take care of the vegetable stand, put out two or three records a
> year that sounded unmistakably like your own records and could make a
> comfortable but modest living, what would you do? I'm curious. Remember, the
> vegetable stand means no significant media exposure, no grammy, no "Florida
> girls with fluorescent tits" listening to your song on the modern rock station
> coming out of the boom box by the sand volleyball net. (Sorry, I'm quoting
> Karin again.)
>
> I'll be eavesdropping.
>
> Oh those crazy Canadians are trying to lure Karin and I out for
> another seven
> weeks this summer. I don't know. Touring with Cowboy Junkies was a great
> experience for us. So many firsts. Life on a tour bus, poking around
> Letterman's cold studio, touring from Whistler, British Columbia to Perth,
> Australia. From London, England to Montreal, Quebec to Santa Fe, New Mexico
> and all over North America really. We're definitely still adjusting to
> civilian life. But will we take that tunnel to Canada one more time?
>
> Rhinelanders,
> I promised myself I would hold off on sending out the final Northern
> Spy et
> cetera, until we had finalized plans for the next few years. Perhaps it was
> another gloriously ill-fated decision which contributes yet again to the
> thorny path you all have traveled hoping for your twenty bucks worth. But
> within the next few months we'll be deciding whether to go with a Capitol-
> Records-type-deal or whether to continue with our own imprint with
> distribution, or? I'll inform you all of rumours of movie soundtracks and
> other sizzling industry tidbits in that Northern Spy.
> Meanwhile, in the next few weeks we'll be performing three different
> times as
> a trio (Karin, Linford and Jack Henderson). We opened for the Junkies with
> this line-up at a sold-out show at Royal Festival Hall in London and enjoyed
> ourselves. And we got to meet Elvis Costello in New Zealand who was touring as
> a duo with Steve Nieve. We were inspired to try something a little more naked
> musically. It wasn't possible for all the musicians we've been playing with as
> a six-piece to join us for these three shows, so we're going to let you peer
> in this different window with us. The full band should be playing later this
> year and we'll let you know more details soon.
> P.S. We've had a problem keeping up with orders for Good Dog Bad Dog.
> We ran
> out of stock at the end of December and we're expecting a large shipment in
> the next few weeks. Just thought you might like to know.
>
> Can't Wait
> Linford for Over the Rhine
>
>
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--
"Though I'm usually pacifistic
you are mercifully sadistic
and I didn't know
that murder
could be good."
-Over The Rhine, "Within Without"