ben wakeman : : Journal

Musings on "The Moment"

July 21, 2006

There's a feeling. An unmistakable knowing you have when you suddenly realize that something is really good that has in the past left you uninspired. It’s truly like someone turning on a light in a dark room. Shapes that used to be fuzzy lumps in the murky gloom are now fully realized, three-dimensional objects that you can touch and examine every beautiful detail. It’s these moments that sustain the creative instinct for me and keep me pushing ahead even when it might make the most sense to just stop. Without the reward of these moments of clarity, bliss, or maybe even delusional fantasy, it’s all just grinding gears and toil.

As this new recording project unfolds, I am gifted by these moments in the most unexpected places. I’ve been sitting in that basement room at the end of long work days for the last couple of years, chipping away at these songs – recording a guitar part here, a vocal part there. Sometimes it seems totally insane, illogical and even vain to continue to doggedly pursue these dreams of music. But I’m searching. I get a glimmer of something that speaks to me in that dark cave and I keep digging away at it. There’s one such glimmer on the backside of the last verse going into the chorus of “Daylight.” Kris Dale put this beautiful chromatic descending bass line in that pulls you into the chorus. When I laid down the Djembe track later and listened to it all together, it’s like a shaft of light punched through the wall and everything was illuminated.

This past Sunday night, the very talented Charles Williams lent his guitar to “Walk Away.” Charles is so humble, incredibly knowledgeable and able to play in almost any style that it took a while to hone in on exactly where he needed to fit in the context of the song, but once he did, it was like connecting a circuit. Again, the lights came on and the song came to life. He pretty much played his ass off in a couple of takes. His tone, the way he digs into the notes and even his breath you can hear in the track as he weaves his amazing solo that rides out the end of the song.

It occurs to me that this feeling of illumination is always more likely to occur when there is more than one person involved in the process. Without another person, there is no reflection --- it’s as if the light you make on your own just continues out into the dark void infinitely until it is eventually nothing but a memory imprinted on your iris. It’s so hard to believe that what I have is good, or worthy until I hear someone as gifted as Charles or Kris put their shoulder behind the wheel and move it effortlessly into being.

I can listen to what I have captured from a recording session a year ago and cringe at every single syllable I sang, every clam of a guitar note and wonder, “Where did the magic go? What the hell was I thinking?” But I sit down in front of the microphone and begin to make repairs and maybe, if I’m lucky, I can free myself of myself and sing something in a way that I have never been able to before. I can cut the tether and just soar out there for awhile. But damn, it is hard to do that. It requires more faith than I think I have sometimes.