I’m writing on Substack these days for anyone who runs across this site. The new blog is called “The Fool with His Heart on His Sleeve.” Find me there instead.
April 27, 2025: on the subject of collective amnesia and exceptionalism
Today is March 13, 2025. Well—not for you, I guess, but for me, today is March 13. I’m in my office at the church where I work as a director of music right now, which is where I was five years ago today. On that day, I walked in to find that all parish events had been cancelled, the baptismal font had been turned off, the Masses for the Third Sunday of Lent, which I was there to set up for, were also cancelled. In fact, all of the Masses were cancelled until the parish invested in an iPad for livestreaming sometime in May that year. As we’re staring down the barrel of yet another disaster after yet another disaster, I’m struck by a crushing familiarity: that this is all by design.
Covid-19 changed the infrastructure of our lives in revolutionary and tedious ways; society bore witness to some of the barest displays of selfishness; and whether we admit it or not, we haven’t recovered. Which is why I find it both fascinating and frustrating that American culture at-large has so deliberately forgotten the pandemic. Americans have a bad reputation when it comes to entitlement. Our penchant for exceptionalism has led to some glaring blind spots (no pun intended), such that even when something terrible happens directly in front of us for years on end, it’s met with the assurance that “it can’t happen here”. (Maybe it’s too charitable, but I’ve started to suspect it’s a driving factor behind the Covid memory-hole.)
In 2022, as I started to venture back out from isolation, all I wanted to do was talk about the pandemic, to find some catharsis, to grieve the time lost and the time stolen from us by a selfish and ineffectual government, to get angry at the people who’d hindered our collective recovery. Most people I encountered didn’t want to talk about it, unless there was a cool project they’d started in 2020 (which I always loved hearing about). Maybe I simply missed the window—life in Kentucky had pretty much returned to normal by the end of 2021, so I was late to the post-pandemic party—but five years later, references to the Cov-19 pandemic are still few and far between.
And, to be sure, my complaints were comparatively small. In fact, in toto, 2020 wasn’t a bad year for me. Underneath the constant anxiety and fear about the state of the world, and the loneliness that came with it, I had a lot of time to work on writing, recording, and practicing; I moved into a house in June 2020; I spent a lot more time outdoors. I realize I was lucky. I didn’t lose my job, I didn’t lose a loved one to Covid, I didn’t have to say goodbye to a family member over Zoom. But so many people needlessly did.
And so many more could suffer again, because of the outright disdain of this administration for the people it claims to represent. With the return of measles, and the poor handling of avian flu, we could be facing another pandemic soon (but probably not here); there could even be a plainclothes police force kidnapping people and sending them to a foreign concentration camp (but not here); or maybe a judge could be arrested for refusing to comply with illegal executive actions (but not here); or there could be a registry of people with autism spectrum diagnoses, or who are taking specific medications (but not here); or universities could be intimidated into complying with discriminatory policies under the threat of withholding research funding (but not here); or public health and climate data tracking could be stopped (but not here); or there could be unvetted government appointees stealing federal money to inject into their private contracts (but not here); or there could be national security details sent out to random private citizens in commercial messaging apps (but not here).
This moment in history has an expiration date, but the ideologies that created it don’t, unless we work to make it so. Whether it was incompetence, selfishness, or outright malice that most prolonged our national nightmare five years ago, it was allowed to end in relative silence and its perpetrators allowed to slink away and regroup while our solipsistic American pride prevented us from seeking accountability. I guess my point is this: we need to talk about things, and keep talking about them.
I’m usually more articulate than this. The last few weeks have been remarkably busy, and I’ve thought about how to finish this more than a few times. I’d love to write a piece that raises poignant questions about our culture and its response to trauma, or better yet answers them, but I’m not a journalist, I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a philosopher. But just by attempting to articulate myself about these things, I feel a little more tethered to reality, and reality is not a solitary experience.
Ostensibly, this is a songwriting blog. Or newsletter. Whatever. So to keep up that pretense, I’ll share a song I started writing in February 2020. I finished it in the very early days of the pandemic, when shutdowns were still being extended by only a few days at a time. In August of that year I got my home studio up and running, and recorded this song with about a dozen others, eventually pared down to eight for We Never Had Tomorrow Anyway, and two that later made the cut for Still Life.
This song ended up on the cutting room floor for a couple reasons. By the time I started to compile the recordings for Tomorrow, I was starting to favor the upbeat songs like “Mediator”, and “2020” as I was thinking more about performing—and at 60bpm and just over 7 minutes, this was an easy cut to make. Too, I wasn’t sure I liked how plain the lyrics were, and I didn’t feel the melody was very expressive in my vocal range. And when compiling for Still Life, I had such a clear picture of that concept, this one didn’t even cross my mind. That said, I do still like this song, and the last 2 minutes of music are still some of my favorite that I’ve written.
Did you know the man who locked himself away?
Afraid to ask for help, he threw away the key.
His friends were so concerned, they found him the next day.
They couldn’t understand how it was already too late.
It never happened, it happens every day.
Did you know the woman that they let go Thursday?
They said it wasn’t her fault, they just didn’t want to pay.
I saw her in the car lot, she was crying on the phone,
She said “I’m sorry, I just don’t know how I’ll ever afford treatment now.”
It never happened, it happens every day.
It’s sensible, it’s reputable.
It’s defensible, it’s irrefutable.
We’re invincible, indisputable.
So effectual, and so exceptional.
Did you see their children? They were marching in the street.
Could you hear their voices and the words that they’d repeat?
It’s detestable, unacceptable,
Inexcusable and irresponsible.
It’s intentional, and it’s preventable.
We’re not invincible.
January 19, 2025: on the subject of atemporality and self-discovery
Happy New Year. As I’m writing, Louisville is still entombed in about a foot of snow (and an inch of ice). It’s difficult to tell from our house just how much the city has shut down, since our street has always been the last to be plowed—if it ever is. But from here, life has slowed to a halt, and time has completely stopped since Sunday morning. It doesn’t help that Eliza has a few new teeth coming in and keeping her up at night, meaning that all three of us are keeping odd hours. Still, there has been some relief in losing track of the time this week after a long and arduous December full of challenges, deadlines, and obligations—on top of Eliza’s troubles, and the ordinary (and extraordinary) demands of the Christmas season this year, I found myself struggling this winter to understand my own mental health.
I’ve never had much trouble writing about my mental health in song—isolation (see: “The Pattern”, “Creation”, “Strangers”), depression (see: “Who Do You Think You Are”, “All over Town”, “Try Again”, “Bad Faith”), indecision (“Have It All”, “Should I”), anxiety over lost time (which seems to be a main theme in my ruminations—see: “Two Cars”, “Photograph”, “Still Life”, “Congratulations”, “The Waiting”, and at least a couple I haven’t shared yet). But writing it down as prose, in sentences, is a more intimidating experience. Even still, just writing about it this way—as yet unsure if I’ll go through with posting this—is cathartic in a much different way than songwriting.
When I was 27 I promised myself that it would be the year I “figured myself out”. I didn’t realize how long a process that would be, as every overturned stone seems to reveal a thousand smaller stones. Admittedly, I took a little break from the figuring-out this summer after Eliza was born; but being a parent has challenged my self-perception in plenty of other ways. I have a unique insight into Eliza’s possible futures by examining my own past, and in doing so I’ve found myself flipping back to chapters of my life I previously thought complete to write in the margins.
In sixth grade, my class read a short story—“Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros. Like most assigned readings, it didn’t faze me at the time, but I was reminded of it years ago and it resonated with me in adulthood. The story is simple—on her eleventh birthday, Rachel is humiliated when her teacher makes her claim ownership of an ugly red sweater in front of her classmates—but the way Cisneros describes aging is so potent. On her eleventh birthday, Rachel doesn’t feel eleven, but ten and nine and eight and every other age combined, like a nesting doll of a sixth grader, and as much as she tries to meet the occasion and respond like she thinks an eleven-year-old should, she fails and lets her younger selves win.
The first time I remember really struggling with my mental health, I was 17. I was severely depressed, I didn’t understand what was going on, and I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it—all compounding into a cosmic gumbo of shame and fear. At my lowest points in my adulthood, I’ve felt the nesting doll unstacking itself until I’m seventeen again: scared, self-isolating, and unwilling or unable to ask for help. The silver lining in that is that I’m not actually 17, I’ll be 30 in the spring, and I have thirteen years’ worth of Matryoshka shells to parse through to better understand that 17-year-old whenever I’m confronted with him. In going back and connecting the dots, I’ve realized that the root of most of my problems—the isolation, indecision, rumination, the need for control—is anxiety.
Maybe that seems like an underwhelming or obvious revelation, but if you’d asked me two years ago if I thought I had anxiety, I’d say of course not, I just worry a lot. Learning more about myself has been both a challenge and a relief, informing the way I respond to my emotions, my thoughts, and the outside world. But more importantly, I want the 30-, 31-, 32-year-old, and all the other more self-aware versions of myself that come after this to be the kind of person I didn’t know I needed when I was 17—and that some future version of Eliza may need me to be.
In November, one of the pastors at my church gave a sermon referring to “thin places”—places where the living and dead, past and present, are in closer communion. Christian theology, influenced by pre-Christian Celtic mythology, regards that time of year as inherently “thinner”—Samhain, Halloween, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day. Lately as I’ve felt more in tune with my past and more cognizant of the future, I’ve been imagining parenthood as a thin place of its own, or a thin state of being. About six weeks ago I started writing a long-form piece called “The Thin Place”. It was the first time I’ve put pen to paper in a meaningful way since Eliza was born. I’m hoping to compile its three distinct parts with a couple songs I’ve already written (one of them “Background Noise”) into—you guessed it—a 20-ish minute suite. (That said, it’ll be less “Shine On” and more “In Held ‘Twas I”.)
This piece is far from finished, and I don’t have a demo of the whole thing to share with you, but I will share its current lyrical form (the part that’s most complete), as well as one of the earlier parts, called “Trick”. I wrote and recorded this demo in June 2023, as Kailyn and I were plotting a course toward parenthood. I named it for Domenico Starnone’s book of the same name which I’d just finished at the time, though it’s hardly based on the book. Like most of my titles it was meant to be temporary, but I think the book’s central theme of generational conflict is still present. So here is “The Thin Place” (“Trick” is part 3 of 6, so keep scrolling for the Soundcloud embed):
In the dark where we were, where we all had to be,
Before there was you, before there was me,
When the river was still but still teeming with life,
From under the surface we made up our minds.
And there on the bank in the silt and the sand,
Did I count out the grains or did you measure the land
Before we pitched out our tents? Before we staked out our claims,
Did you know my face, did I know your name?
I think I knew you before I knew you;
I’ll never know you the way you do, but I can try and set myself aside,
And anything you need you can retrieve me piece by piece.
I saw you building a fire at the edge of the trees;
I made mine on the hill where it could dance in the breeze,
And in recognition, they each tossed out a few sparks
And waved to each other in the infinite dark.
[I think I knew you before I knew you…]
I catch the wind whistling a melody as night subsides to day.
It settles in behind the sound and light while I’m away.
A little glass and paper, fragile in my hand.
The margin is contracting while the company expands.
The planet groans and mumbles for what we ask it to endure,
But this is the best of both of us—at least of that I’m sure,
Even if you’re still in your body and I’m still in my head,
Because it’s not about us, we’re just the architects.
If I learned from the creator, it was from his mistakes:
Not to shape in my own image or exist for my own sake.
The little world we wanted now struggles to be born
Against the market pressures and against our inner storms.
So the river swelled with rainfall and merged into the sea,
And we lived under water while we still knew how to breathe.
Your blood runs through my body, my fears are in your head.
I wish you could have seen me how I was when we first met.
Trick of the light makes me think that I’m still there
With you in the room where you used to go away
For a while—only for a while, never gone.
Still I’d like to see you.
Holding my breath in the darkness I created to search
For myself and a reason I could be;
There it goes, suddenly it [glows], all lit up,
Shining like a beacon.
Some great design that we’re incomplete and fragile,
[Barely defined], always struggling to be made whole.
Once in a while I can see where I am from,
Bleeding through every page, sketched in pencil lines and veins,
Set in stone, set in flesh and bone,
All grown up on the other shoreline.
Who left us here, and are we cut out for the role—
Smudges and smears, always struggling to be made whole?
I don’t consider this the second act;
We’ve really just begun.
I’ve never been as sure of anything I’ve ever done.
Despite myself I’m thinking clearly,
Still with each passing phrase, I hesitate
And leave the “i”s undotted on the page.
Well I finally learned the secret, finally figured out the con:
That it’s always a disaster but there’s really nothing wrong.
And as suddenly it gathers, just as suddenly it’s gone—
It turns out only big things happen from now on.
I sleep, I wake, I sleep, I wake again—
Couldn’t there be more?
It’s not a bluff, this time I think I’ve really had enough.
Of all the onerous pursuits I’ve led
To mark the passing days,
It’s fair to say this is the only one I’ve ever loved.
[Well I finally learned the secret…]
And when the flood receded and our vessel ran aground,
The lives that we’d abandoned were nowhere to be found.
Sometimes when I am alone I find a smoldering heap
Of something I must have known and decided not to keep.
And though the river is still, I feel it lap at my feet
While shadows rise to the top—new friends I don’t have to meet.
I start to sing an old song I haven’t heard for some time,
Surprised I still know the tune and remember every line,
Then have to be on my way because she stops for no one—
Whichever way she goes, she’s moving on.
“Rubáiyat” at #21!
December 1, 2024: on the subject of inertia and forward momentum
It’s a little ironic, I guess, that my last post—four months ago—was about consistency. Isn’t it a universal experience that the longer we go without doing something, the harder it is to pick up again? That’s certainly half of why I haven’t been writing, but the other half is that—with all the trappings of parental life—time really feels like it moves differently now. Although, by the same token, I’ve always found staying incredibly busy elsewhere to be conducive to being more productive creatively.
That’s not to say I’ve had a lot of time to do so—I haven’t kept up with livestreaming since the start of October, or (obviously) with the monthly blog post/newsletter/whatever-we’re-calling-this-now—but what time I have had to work on music has been surprisingly productive, and it only required a complete overhaul to my approach. Every record I’ve made since 2020 has been governed by a spirit of spontaneity—that is, I don’t think too hard about what I’m going to play until I hit record. (Yes, I did say last time that Still Life was more sketched out thanks to the livestreaming, but that was mainly in the vocal phrasing and chord movement; when it came time to commit parts to tape, it was still a mostly blank slate.) Thanks to a certain six-month-old who shall remain nameless, my time to improvise in the studio has been dramatically reduced, so I’m actually writing parts (crazy, I know) and practicing them so that when I do get an hour or so to work on a song, it comes together that much easier.
Working this way has afforded me enough time to finish the 22-minute Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard that I began in May. I’ve also been finishing a demo of a concept album I started in early 2023, based on the 12th century play Filius Getronis, which I think will be released under the Poor Simple People moniker I used for the Christmas album last year—I’m hoping Kailyn and Natalie will reprise their roles as co-lead vocalists for that project. I don’t want to talk too much about either of those yet, because I think they warrant their own deep dives eventually. I do plan to share Elegy here soon, just because I’m very excited about it—even though I’m anticipating a late-2025 “official” release date.
All that said, I haven’t been writing much—I know that sounds like a lot, but neither of those projects called for original lyrics (Filius required reworking about 26 stanzas of existing text but nothing totally original). I’ve got a few pages of notes that might turn into a song or two somehow, but I’ve been a little frustrated it hasn’t come together yet. I’ve been busy trying to reconcile the part of me that wants to write power-pop bangers for a killer live set with the part that wants to write sprawling progressive suites. I’ve spent the last month listening to Procol Harum’s Shine On Brightly, Spirit’s Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, and Weezer’s Pinkerton, and I think I’m closer than ever to finding a pleasant middle-ground.
Speaking of live sets and the last month: early in November I got back on stage twice, bringing the total number of live shows since Eliza’s arrival to three. First, to play with Jason Bemis Lawrence at the Whirling Tiger, which was a beautifully intimate show—and, shockingly, only the third time we’ve played live. I suspect (and hope) we’ll be playing a lot more in the new year. Second, I returned to Holsopple for another solo performance, where I played piano live for the first time ever, and got to stage-test a lot of the new songs that were livestreamed over the summer. I’ll be back at Holsopple again next month, and I’m pretty sure Scott will be playing with me that night too. We’ll be taking the indoor stage on Friday, December 13 from 6-9pm.
With the mention of live shows and new songs, I feel pretty confident in sharing some plans for 2025. Scott and I have been playing my original songs now for over two years, and a lot of the arrangements have completely changed—whether to fit the stripped-down duo conceit, or just because playing the record got boring. Whatever the reason, I really like the way we play these songs, and I’ve been feeling for a while that the recorded versions don’t represent our live performances very well. One aim of mine early next year is to record and release a live set, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the logistical side of making that happen for a small DIY band like this.
The other lofty goal I have in mind is recording and releasing all (or at least a lot) of the finished songs I’ve been sitting on. Two of the oldest, “Who Do You Think You Are” and “How Did I Get Here” have been in our setlist for over a year now. The former is our usual set closer, and when people ask where they can find it online, I hate that the answer is nowhere (except this video, but who listens to music on YouTube?). The backlog constitutes something like 21 songs—way too many for an album—so my plan is to start a series sharing one or two at a time, and to use this monthly post format to talk a bit about them.
Thanks as always for reading until the end. I intend to get back to writing frequently and post again next month so please subscribe if you haven’t already, but I hope before then I’ll see you at Holsopple on the 13th. Finally, before I sign off again, since it’s December I’d be absolutely remiss if I didn’t take the chance to push this Christmas album one last time. I recorded this with Kailyn and Natalie and released it under the name Poor Simple People last November. (There are no plans to play the Christmas record live yet, although I’m still very happy with these arrangements, and I hope to make that happen someday.)
August 5, 2024: on the subject of consistency and self-doubt
Well the summer went pretty quickly. So quickly in fact that I didn’t get around to writing a newsletter post for July, something I really intended to do. I’m a steadfast believer in consistency, whether I’m writing to fifteen people or fifteen hundred.
As a similar endeavor in consistency, I began livestreaming on Instagram again at the start of July—initially on Mondays but starting this week I’ll be playing on Tuesday evenings at 8pm. As I mentioned in June’s post, I have a backlog of about two dozen new songs which I’ve been trying out in different capacities, alongside some older songs I’ve yet to play live (last week I tried “Softly Drown” from the Three Songs EP (2019) with disastrous results). I’m not under any delusion that I’ll ever be streaming to hundreds or even dozens of people on a given night, that’s not my goal. It’s really just a way for me to practice with some accountability, to not let my technique atrophy, and to figure out which songs I actually like playing.
I spent most of 2022 livestreaming each Tuesday working on songs from We Never Had Tomorrow Anyway (2022) and Still Life (2023) which had not yet seen the light of day. Tomorrow was fully recorded and mastered by the time I started streaming, while Still Life was barely a concept even by the end of the summer. While I am immensely happy with both records, I vastly preferred the process of playing songs from Still Life as they continued to take shape. In that space between a demo and a final track, I was able to find things I felt made the songs more natural—subtle adjustments to inflection, phrasing, melody—before committing them to tape.
[While conversational songs are something I strive for, I’m not yet able to fill the gaps in between songs comfortably; there’s nothing natural about talking to a screen. I remember one of my favorite artists, David Bazan, held a livestream on Bandcamp on Wednesdays in 2020 or ’21 workshopping new material alongside songs from his 20-year catalog. His weekly stream was something of a template for mine. Bazan is a veteran of living room concert tours and has artfully honed the skill of being extemporaneously intimate. I’m not quite there, but I’m trying.]
In addition to reviving an old habit, this summer has been marked by some newness. Obviously with the newborn baby in the mix, things massively changed in May, and change begets change. For 15 years I’ve been recording and performing and mixing my own songs in some capacity, whether they languished on my hard drive or entered the world at large. This summer with encouragement from Kailyn I’ve made a real effort to take what skills I have and offer them to other songwriters, musicians, and bands. The extra money will be helpful of course, but this is also something I’ve wanted to do since high school but lacked the confidence and the resources to pursue for a very long time. So far, I’ve had some interesting opportunities—arranger for a prog-rock cover of Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”; recording and mixing engineer for a local punk band; bassist and drummer for an Irish rock ballad—with hopefully many more to come.
Still, there’s a lot of second-guessing inherent to turning a passion into a profession. And having spent most of my college career doing weird freelance gigs to get by, I’m somewhat familiar with this genre of rumination. That leads me somewhat clunkily into the song I’d like to share today. “Have It All” is a short little song about thinking too hard. At the time I wrote it, I was listening to power-pop artist and master of the micro-song Tony Molina’s records on repeat. His longest album clocks in at about 18 minutes, so it was easy to do a deep dive into his catalog. Molina’s music is skillfully concise, but so compositionally dense that it’s easy to forget the track you’re listening to is only 90 seconds long. This is my attempt at a power-pop micro-song:
I remember when I was a kid at the video arcade,
Window-shopping for some plastic trash
With my tickets, cold as cash,
‘Til I walked out empty-handed at last.
I remember last time we hung out—
Rode an hour into town,
Spent all afternoon trying on shades,
Then I left them on the train.
I tried not to let it ruin my whole day.
Is it right, is it true?
Did I really think it through?
Sometimes I think I’m someone I’m not,
And I find out what I want.
I’m so sick of waiting on a call,
Watching paint dry on the wall—
I just wish I could have it all.
Before I sign off for August, I have to mention that I’ll be playing with Jason Bemis Lawrence on Saturday August 17 at Planet of the Tapes. Jason’s celebrating the release of his album The Grand Routine, an absolutely fantastic collection of songs that I’ve been honored to play on stage. Now that the record is out, I can also say that the closing track, “Trying to Understand”, was a major influence on “Background Noise”, the demo I shared at the start of June.
Hopefully I’ll see you at Planet of the Tapes on the 17th, and until then I’ll be keeping up the “Office Hours” livestream on Instagram each Tuesday at 8pm. Thanks as always for reading to the end.
June 9, 2024: on the subject of perspective and processing new information
Well, I made it to the other side of the brick wall. At 8:05am on May 12—five days early, and on Mothers’ Day—Elizabeth Faye Wicke was born. As I said in my May post, I don’t prepare well, but I like to think I adjust well. I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea and began treating it in March; so even with a newborn, I’m sleeping at least marginally better than I have in a decade. Despite the anxieties that come with parenthood, I’m confident that my paternity leave was the happiest two week stretch of my life. But all good things come to some kind of end: Eliza has already outgrown that lemon onesie, and I went back to work on Tuesday.
For obvious reasons, I haven’t spent much time online in the past few weeks, so I missed the opportunity to share a fantastic review of the Rubáiyát by The Elite Extremophile at the end of April. This review was especially exciting to read because it was a complete surprise—we didn’t correspond about it at all. I won’t spoil his take on the record; you’ll have to read the whole thing. He specializes in lesser-known progressive rock, so for some really unique recommendations in that genre, be sure to keep up with his blog. Click here for the full review. (Also thanks to this review I’ve had over 1000 plays on this record across platforms!)
My time has been mostly spent in the interest of keeping the kid alive, but I have found some moments to work on music here and there. I’ve been spending a lot of time with yet another behemoth of English literature: Thomas Gray’s 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which muses beautifully about death, and the impressions we have the capacity to make on others. In the same vein as the Rubáiyát, I’ve been setting the verses to music. So far that piece is shaping up to be a 22+ minute suite somewhere between Loreena McKennitt’s “The Highwayman” and Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Maybe it’s odd that after such a massive life event that I wouldn’t be writing about it—in fact, I haven’t written a single line about Eliza since she was born. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing about her at all—I have at least a dozen songs sketched out from the past year channeling the oscillating anxiety and excitement I wrote about last month.
Today I’m sharing a song I started working on very early in the emotional journey of the past year (maybe June or July 2023? I didn’t write it down). The original concept for the song was a three-verse narrative structure from three perspectives. My great-great-grandparents emigrated from a now-Polish part of the Russian Empire in 1863, so the first verse was to be from the point of view of a Polish immigrant family arriving in the United States in the 1860s. I learned that Parisville, MI is one of (if not) the oldest Polish communities in the US, founded in 1857, so I started there. Naturally, in preparing to be a parent, I had a lot of questions about my childhood from my parents’ perspective, so I thought the second verse could take place in the 1990s. The third was (predictably) from my own point of view, the unifying theme being the determination to make life better for the next generation.
I may still write that song later on, but this is not it. I took a lot of phrases from that sketch though to make the song you do hear. I recorded most of it the day before Eliza was born, and have been adding a little more flavor to it from a makeshift DAW (digital audio workstation) next to her bassinette. (I’m actually pretty proud of that—an H4n field recorder as the interface; a MIDI controller and interface for drums and synths; and a DI box for guitars and bass.) I have a lot of new songs written, with demos for most of them, and will be sharing them here sometimes.
Thanks as always for reading this far. Here’s “Background Noise”:
Over the water and brine, the future arrives.
It’s just as good as you thought when you were waving goodbye.
But by the end of the night, it’s all but shaken its shine—
Now you have to exist; now you have to survive.
Nations rise and nations fall—God, when did we get so small?
Whether you run, whether you crawl—who are we to make that call?
Then that insatiable fire, that impatient desire
Led me out of my head and pulled me into my life.
If I could claim it as mine, you know I’d wear it with pride,
But it was never to keep, just take along for the ride.
Isn’t that your mother’s smile, and has it been there all the while?
Isn’t this my father’s voice fading into background noise?
May 5, 2024: on the subject of fin de siècle and the inevitable future
Hello from the past. I’m writing this entry at Day’s Coffee on April 12, a few hours before I’ll be playing at Holsopple with Scott. This will be my sixth or seventh time playing there, and fourth as a duo. Holsopple is one of my favorite places to play—it’s a friendly and comfortable stage to try new things and not take ourselves too seriously. If you came to see us play today, thank you!
I’m writing in advance of Sunday May 5, when I intend this to be published, because I don’t know exactly what my life will look like later this month. Kailyn and I are expecting our daughter to be born mid-May, though we’ve been preparing for her to be early—because if we didn’t, she would be.
I’ve never been particularly good at navigating huge changes in my life; things like this feel like staring at a brick wall and trying to guess what’s on the other side. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to being a parent—I am; but without being able to visualize the “new normal”, it’s hard to know what exactly I’m excited (or worried) about.
It’s like an amplification of the anxiety I feel at New Years. Hanging a blank calendar on the wall simultaneously fills me with dread of all the unknown possible futures, and melancholy for all the expectations of the previous year—I’m a sentimental person. It takes a while to settle in and acclimate to the movements of a new year, even if they are ostensibly the same as the last. Sometimes something as simple as turning a calendar page can take a psychological toll.
In researching the pieces of Rubáiyát history I wanted to cover in this post, I came across a book called Century’s End, by historian Hillel Schwartz. First published in 1996, Century’s End is billed as “an orientation manual for the year 2000”. Schwartz wrote that the Y2K fervor that engulfed the world in the 20th century was nothing but the latest in a long line of manias coinciding with the ends of centuries. He details events throughout history occurring in the final decades of a century, which led to the distress and collective insanity of civilization.
“[N]othing would be so foolish as to claim that all events of import occur at century’s end. Natural disasters do not cluster naturally around the ‘90s. Nor do wars. Economies do not crash because it is the fin de siècle, nor do empires have the presence of mind to collapse in ’99. […] What does happen must be anticlimactic—[…] when they are passed, we look back upon them with sadness and relief: sadness for moments unseized as well as for dreams momentarily unbounded; relief that the apocalypses were, if any, minor and manageable. Then, generations down the road, we come upon another century’s end, and such is the might of the numbers looming on the horizon that we seem to have learned nothing from the last fin de siècle except to enlarge the troublesome problem of when, exactly, the hundred years will be over.”
Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord, was first recorded in the 6th century by an Eastern Roman monk, Dionysius Exiguus. One accepted reason for its creation was to assuage fears of the end of the world, which many believed would occur in the 500th year after Jesus’s birth, and was imminent according to the previous measure of time. Over the next centuries, A.D. was adopted by different kingdoms scattered across Christendom (with notable recent converts being Portugal in the 15th century, and the Russian Empire in the 18th).
As the use of Anno Domini expanded, synchronicity gave apocalyptic forecasts a wider audience. Gone were prophecies of 6000 Anno Mundi, or 5000 in the Hebrew calendar—dates observed by a minority; now fears mounted over 1095 AD, 1688 AD, 1900 AD, 2000 AD.
Sure, the English-speaking world in the Victorian Era may not have been waiting around for the end of the world, but they were waiting around for the end of the world as they knew it. After the seismic shifts of the Napoleonic Wars and early Industrial Revolution, Victorians were presented with massive swaths of uncharted cultural territory, which they navigated delicately and self-consciously. While change was inevitable, the rate of change in the 19th century was astounding, and posed a real threat to the hierarchies that had created and hitherto governed Victorian society. The Western world over was brimming with anxiety for the future and longing for the past, unified in its disinterest in the present.
And now for the Rubáiyát.
Edward FitzGerald first published his poetic translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859 to little fanfare. As the story goes, the book sold exactly zero copies in its first edition until 1861 when a copy was gifted to Dante Gabriel Rosetti, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rosetti passed the book along to his contemporaries, among whom it became a sensation.
The Pre-Raphaelites were artists and poets, deeply influenced by the ideals of early Romanticism, which had its origins in the apparent rejection of modernity—especially as it pertained to industrialization and urbanization. As such, they fostered infatuation with fantastical, pastoral, and courtly imagery which recalled an idyllic past that never was. In part, their rejection of English modernity also fed into excitement about the exotic. Orientalism played a major part in many fin de siècle movements, ironically helped along by the fact that modern technology made travel to far-flung regions of the British Empire easier than ever. Thus, Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát—a medieval Near Eastern poem written with a Victorian English audience in mind—enjoyed incredible success once Rosetti sounded the alarm.
The Rubáyát teems with imagery of renewal—spring (and springtime celebrations like Nowruz and Easter), blooming roses, and the sunrise are a few symbols prominently employed to evoke the newness of life. But the text minces no words about death either: that slow but certain march of time will eventually come to an end for us all. A virtuous life led in the hopes of a heavenly reward will end just the same as one led in sin; and a life spent pondering the afterlife will yield no more answers than one spent in ignorance. Why waste the life we know we have striving for something which is not guaranteed? And should this life be the only one, why should we want anything from it but to be satisfied? Though Omar Khayyám himself would likely not have signed off on it, the lesson many Victorians took from the Rubáiyát was one of urgency, but also indifferent agnosticism, resulting in an endorsement of hedonism which resounded through the Western world.
Ah, my beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears—
To-morrow? Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth, their Words to Scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
“Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.”
By the turn of the century, the Rubáiyát had leapt outside of hedonistic salons and university campuses and into the mainstream. And as with any prominent cultural moment, parodies abounded. Some were satire, commentary, or advertising; but some were just good-natured fun, lacking the depth that drew so many to the original poem while offering the same reprieve from the troubled outside world. One of my favorite examples of the latter is Oliver Herford’s 1904 Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten. (For more examples, click here.)
Herford, 1904:
‘Twas that reviving Herb, that Spicy Weed,
The Cat-Nip. Tho’s ‘tis good in time of need,
Ah, feed upon it lightly, for who knows
To what unlovely antics it may lead.
Some for the Glories of the Sole, and Some
Mew for the proper Bowl of Milk to come.
Ah, take the fish and let your Credit go,
And plead the rumble of an empty Tum
FitzGerald, 1859:
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean—
Ah, lean upon it lightly! For who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
It’s hard to overstate the impact the Rubáiyát had on Western (but primarily English, French, and American) culture at the end of the 19th century. Pocket copies of the poem were printed en masse, and disciples carried them everywhere, quoting the work like scripture. Omar Khayyám clubs, dedicated to living out the ideals set forth in the Rubáiyát appeared in London, Boston, Paris, then numerous other cities in the West.
Of course, like everything else, these ideals quickly got swept up in the political arena, fueling moral panics in the conservative spheres of the day. Artists and other bohemians living the Rubáiyát were often the mouthpiece of fledgling socialist ideologies while opponents of their lifestyle found solace in reactionary philosophies.
The theory of social degeneration was first outlined in the 18th century but was expanded extensively in the 19th. Proponents of degeneration theory claimed that advancements in science and increased urbanization caused mental illness; that that mental illness could then be inherited by further generations; and that within just a few lifetimes, entire populations could be rendered lousy with idiocy. German psychiatrist Max Nordau, in his 1892 Degeneracy, sought to outline the exact symptoms of this neuropathy and called out many artists and authors by name for their apparent anti-social behavior. Degeneracy was a bestseller—the theory became a popular talking point and set off a widespread moral outrage.
But degeneration theorists and degenerates alike didn’t need to look as far as future generations to find cause for alarm. With the rapid and increasing pace of progress, even the not-so-distant turn of the 20th century threatened to unleash social chaos. As Hillel Schwartz points out in Century’s End, the popular conscience has rarely given us positive visions of the future.
The 19th century was not an exception, as advancements in technology—and their consequences—captured the imagination of early science fiction writers like Verne, Wells, Laßwitz, and Doyle (it’s worth noting that Wells invoked degeneration theory in his works, while Doyle was a founding member of London’s Khayyám club). Apprehension about the “unknown unknowns” (if using the Rumsfeld matrix) created a feedback loop which widened the gulf between the extremes of the day. Decadence begat reactionary politics, and those politics in action begat further desire for escapism.
And that’s the thing about fin de siècle movements—they tend to continue after the fin of the siècle. Yes, per Schwartz, the collective insanity may subside as the new century takes shape, but the theories are not untheorized, books not unpublished, art not uncreated; culture pushes forward—into the brick wall. So while the fire may have in part been lit to resist the interminable march of time, the philosophies of the 19th century reverberated well into the following century. Social degeneration was a founding tenet of fascism; the young utopian creatives grew into card-carrying Communists; the demands of serial hedonism helped to usher in a new era of manufacturing and consumerism.
By the time the Great War erupted, fin de siécle fever had waned, and the new world order began to coalesce. Anxieties about the future quickly turned to resignation to the realities of the present—but the Victorian carefree outlook inspired by the Rubáiyát lived on in the blasé attitudes of a generation whetted by global conflict. In the trenches, soldiers still carried pocket copies of the poem, reciting verses from memory. In one POW internment camp at Ruhleben, prisoners circulated their own parody verses, making light of their situation:
Ruhleben, 1915:
Hark how the cock crows welcoming in the day!
Arise my Little Ones to work or play;
And cheat the ultimate Design of Fate;
And pass the all too slothful Hours away!
FitzGerald, 1859:
And as the cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—”Open the Door,
You know how little while we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more.”
Through the 20th century, the popularity of the Rubáiyát waned. But while it didn’t enjoy the universal cultural relevance it had in the 1890s, it remained an influence on artists, writers, and other ne’er-do-wells, as a manual on resisting the constraints of the modern world. Sal Paradise, from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, is loosely based on Omar Khayyám—not the real one, of course, but the version that emanated from FitzGerald’s beloved translation. Maybe the most recognizable Rubáiyát reference from the latter 20th century is Edward J. Sullivan’s “Skeleton and Roses”, taken from a 1913 edition for the Grateful Dead’s 1971 live album.
In recent years, FitzGerald’s translation has come under more scrutiny, especially as the poem has enjoyed a resurgence in its native Iran. Recent translators, more interested in preserving the intent of the text than its poetic virtue, hope to put to rest the long-standing debate of Sufism versus skepticism, debunk its association with hedonism, and demonstrate its relevance to a modern audience.
From Juan Cole’s New Translation from the Persian (2020):
I browsed a crafts exhibit yesterday
and saw a potter pummeling fresh clay,
That lump, as in a vision, said to him,
“Please lighten up! For I was once like you.”
Or Siamak Akhavan’s Modern Translation (2021):
In passing a potter’s market quay,
saw him pounding a piece of clay.
The clay pleaded with him then,
“have respect… I was you one day.”
Compared with FitzGerald, 1859:
For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watch’d the Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all obliterated Tongue,
It murmur’d—“Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”
Not all of the stanzas are as closely related as these; in fact, most of them are unrecognizable from FitzGerald’s interpretations. But in a few (like this one), it’s obvious that FitzGerald did make some effort to preserve Khayyám’s intent—but ultimately, being a Victorian poet (that is, an inherent aestheticist), the cadence of the English language took precedent. In either case, FitzGerald’s poem has certainly earned its place in the English literary canon as a work of art in its own right.
Most likely this will be the last post (exclusively and extensively) about the Rubáiyát. I can’t describe how much fun it was to set this piece to music, to explore the prog-rock sonic palette, and to dust off a piece of literary history. Progressive rock is notoriously playlist/radio-unfriendly, so it has been especially exciting to see the reaction to the record in its first month. Very sincerely, I want to thank everyone who has supported this effort, shown an interest in the music, and is reading this now.
And for my own fears about the future—I’m hopeful they’ll amount to about as much as Y2K or fin de siècle (which by the way means end of the century, and usually the 19th). After all, the new normal won’t be new forever.
Images: Selfie at Holsopple May 2023; The Sack of Dinant, Albert Robida (between 1914 and 1926?); The Lady of Shalott, John William Waterhouse (1888); Illustration from Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten, Oliver Herford (1904); Engraving, Omar Khayyam Club dinner flyer (1900); Surely the World is Growing Better, William Crawford (1913); Skeleton and Roses, Illustration from the Rubaiyat, Edward J. Sullivan (1913); Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam album cover, Meg Wicke (2024).
Stellar review of Rubáiyát!
“Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is an ambitious project, and it is a resounding success. The two epics weave beautiful lyricism with dynamic and exciting instrumentals. There is a clear thematic throughline on each song, with peaks and troughs of drama and emotion.”
— The Elite Extremophile
April 7, 2024: On the subject of Omar Khayyám and identity
Early last month I celebrated the release of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, an unrepentant progressive rock album, alongside some of Louisville’s finest musicians at Planet of the Tapes. I had the pleasure of pulling a double shift that night actually—in addition to my own set, I played bass with Jason Bemis Lawrence, who’s gearing up for his own record release very soon. We were also joined on stage by Ed Monk and So It Was, two phenomenal local acts who kept the energy high and the vibes immaculate. (Photo by Amber Thieneman)
I’ve said it countless times, but it always bears repeating; to everyone who played, attended, listened, a tremendous thank you. This post is a little all over the map, but I want to give background not only on the historical context of Rubáiyat (as I did with Song on the End of the World last month), but also some of my own experience working on it, since it was such an undertaking outside of my typical oeuvre (is that pretentious? Am I allowed to have an oeuvre?).
Rubá (as I’ve affectionately been referring to it in file names) had been collecting dust on my hard drive since 2021. Since recording it, I’ve prioritized releasing two other albums, We Never Had Tomorrow Anyway (2022) and Still Life (2023), on the grounds that they were more “in-character” for me. This is something I’ve struggled with for years—I often find myself trying to shoehorn in whichever sound I’m trying to embody at the time, whether it’s what the song calls for or not.
While studying jazz at U of L, I actively resisted the influence of Bill Frisell, Esperanza Spalding, Charles Mingus, or whoever else, hoping to maintain some credibility as the folk singer/songwriter I wanted to be. Despite my best efforts, the (in my mind) deliberately folk-rock Run for Help (2018) was later described to me as “jazz-infused yacht-rock”. (Thankfully I was far enough removed from the album by then to appreciate that comment.) Best laid plans, et cetera. So in an effort to stop resisting my own interests, I decided to finally get Rubá off my computer and into the world.
Rubáiyát is something of a return to form actually—I’ve always had a penchant for progressive rock, having been trained at 14 on David Gilmour solos and John Petrucci riffs. For this project though I was drawn to a more acoustic palette, like the Moody Blues, or Renaissance, or the Decemberists (whose prog credibility I feel is criminally underrated). In fact the whole project probably wouldn’t have happened were it not for the Decemberists’ 2021 livestream concerts, which lit a fire under me that spring.
I spent several months afterward trying to write something adequately progressive, but failing for two reasons: first, my songs have historically been more intimate and narratively focused, and something about prog-rock necessitated a higher-concept piece of writing that I wasn’t able to visualize; and second, even if I had been able to write, given the state of the world in early 2021, there was very little happening in the day-to-day to inspire me.
Enter Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by way of the Half Price Books on Westport Road.
Ruba’i is a form of poetry from medieval Persia—essentially quatrains (stanzas of four lines), rhyming in AAAA or AABA scheme—derived from an earlier Arabic form which took hold in Iran thanks to the Muslim conquest. Rubáiyát (the plural form of ruba’i) were written most often as standalone poems. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is a collection of these poems by Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian astronomer, set in poetic translation by Edward FitzGerald (1809–1882) as a single cohesive work of 75 (or, in some editions, 110) English stanzas.
[Khayyám] evolved a concept of life which was basically mystic: he preached the moral purity of the contemplative life; he struggled to master the eternal, the good, the beautiful. And he set down his newly found convictions in a series of quatrains.
That’s what the foreword of the 1976 Easton Press edition told me anyway, and I was transfixed. I wasted little time setting the poem to music, but I wanted to know more about Khayyám, whose existential struggles resonated so clearly in the modern world—especially with the uncertainties which abounded in the thick of the pandemic.
In digging just below the surface, I determined that the truth was far more complicated.
Scholarship on Persian literature has, since 1976, split into two camps. One maintains that Omar Khayyám certainly didn’t write most of the poetry attributed to him; the other maintains he didn’t write any of it. This isn’t like the Shakespeare-isn’t-real conspiracy: Khayyám was a real person who lived and died in Nishapur, Iran in the eleventh and twelfth century. He was an esteemed and accomplished mathematician, astronomer, and scientist; he was well-traveled and employed by impressive patrons, working for the king’s treasury in Samarkand, establishing an observatory in Isfahan for the Seljuk Sultan. (In his time in Isfahan Khayyám is credited with devising the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar still used in Iran—and more accurate than the Gregorian calendar used in nearly every other country.)
Whether you are in the first or second camp, what seems to be consensus is that the first publication of any poetry attributed to Khayyám was, at the earliest, decades after his death. As both a renowned contributor to his field and a ranked member of the Sultan’s court, Khayyám enjoyed a certain level of fame, enough that biographers were tasked with documenting his life and achievements. Yet it wasn’t until at least 1160 that any of his poems surfaced in publication.
At his post, Khayyam also would have enjoyed a certain level of comfort—one that feels in direct conflict with the bawdry stanzas reveling in lower-class pleasures. So if Khayyám was not the author of this poetry, who was—and what good did it do them to misattribute it?
The Rubáiyát contained ideas which were challenging to the beliefs of Muslim Iran in the Middle Ages. Thus, to attach one’s own name to these poems was to risk censure, imprisonment, exile, or death. Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat conveyed a sense of indifference toward the afterlife, and encouraged pursuits of worldly pleasure. Certainly that would have been a scandalous way to live at the time, and questions around Khayyám’s own religiosity have fueled debate since the poem’s first publication in English; but that likely wasn’t the author’s (or authors’) intent.
Scholars of Middle Eastern mysticism and esotericism believe that Khayyám’s poetry was full of symbolism which would have been recognizable only to those looking for it. They assert that the poem’s contributors were most likely involved in taboo practices, especially alchemy and other “magical” pursuits—things that would have been equally, or more, scandalizing to the wrong audience. Symbols like wine, grapes, and clay, which are ubiquitous throughout the poem could refer to alchemical processes or materials, conveying theories or instructions to those in the know.
I don’t know what exactly was being instructed in these poems, though I’m sure someone has figured it out. What I do know is that all of this context, except for a vague sheen of mysticism, was lost on the English-speaking audience in the 19th century. But that doesn’t answer the main question: why Khayyám?
The advances in the Islamic Golden Age were made with the support of the theocratic governments of the time. Massive efforts were made by the Sultans, Emirs, and Caliphs of the Middle Ages to establish academies, foster innovation, translate scientific texts, and assimilate technological advances from all over the world. Yet scientists, the ones responsible for unraveling the mysteries of God’s creation, developed a popular reputation for being skeptics. With a perceived disposition to secularity, noted scientists provided perfect pseudonyms for writers looking to disseminate risky ideas.
It’s supposed that Omar Khayyám had hundreds of poems attributed to him between the 12th and 15th centuries by dozens of authors. Each of these espoused their own ideas, often contradictory to those preceding them, leading to a body of work that resisted any single interpretation.
Of course I didn’t know any of this when I started working on the record. I was simply moved by the words.
At the time I started recording I didn’t really have a plan to release any of this music; it was something of a passion project. By not immediately attaching Rubá to my self-perception, I was able to let go of preconceived notions about how I should write the music. When I started playing parts of the song on livestreams in 2022, I was surprised by the positive reaction, and since then it’s become sort of a setlist staple—I really love playing it, and so far people seem to enjoy hearing it.
There’s plenty more to say about this piece but I’ll wrap it up for now. This post was starting to approach 3000 words, so I decided to split it roughly in half—next time I’ll be talking about the influence of the Rubáiyát on the English-speaking world after its first publication in 1859. Until then, come see us one last time before I become a parent. Scott and I will be playing at Holsopple Brewing on Friday April 12 from 7-10pm. And it’s free!
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Images: SWB at Planet of the Tapes 3/15/24 (Amber Thieneman); Rubáiyát album cover (Meg Wicke); notebook excerpt (my own); Omar Khayyám illustration (Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, c. 1905); Rubáiyát illustration (Edmund Dulac, 1909); Rubáiyát illustration (Arthur Szyk, 1940).
Stuart Wicke 