"Words are only words but we turn them into gifts... then we seem confused as their meaning slowly shifts"

A treasure lost

Bob Dylan - yes, that's him on the left - once said that the album he was most proud of was the one on which he played harmonica for Victoria Spivey. That's her next to Bob. (Dylan used a photo from these sessions on the back cover of his New Morning album in 1970. Maybe his way of saying that he was trying to get back to something that mattered after some time in the musical wilderness? The sessions themselves were held in 1962.)

But this piece is about the guy sitting in the photograph. He is Big Joe Williams. One of the blues greats, known for playing a 9-string guitar and being a little, well, cantankerous.

Many years ago I went to a concert at a place called the DeMontfort Hall (or something like that) in the city of Leicester, England - a short journey from Nottingham where I lived. It was called The Blues Tour or something similar and it featured a whole bunch of great US bluesmen, none of whom could carry a UK tour on their own at that point. John Lee Hooker was there, others I've forgotten and, to me, the star of the show, Big Joe.

He was so large that he shuffled on stage with the help of a walking stick that was shaped like an old style wood saw - it was an elongated triangle of wood with a handle cut in the top. I guess a simple stick wasn't enough to help this enormous figure of a man. He sat center stage and someone brought him his guitar and placed it in his lap. It was hard to believe that this mountain of a man, who could barely walk and struggled to lower himself to a sitting position could actually play the guitar that was handed to him. But he did! Like nobody I had ever heard. His style was unique, his voice beyond belief. Of all the players on this tour it was listening to Big Joe that I felt I'd finally heard The Blues. The musical form I'd read about, listen to modern version of, and never fully understood what all the fuss was about. Listening to Big Joe I got it. This man didn't sing the blues, he was the blues. He had lived what the songs were about. The early Rolling Stones might have introduced a lot of us to the blues which then led us to John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and others. But they were all, no matter how well they did it, playing the blues. Suddenly I saw this man who inhabited the blues.

I was never one for standing outside stage doors after gigs to get autographs (almost all the ones I own are in the form of signed books). But Big Joe affected me. I went to the back of the building and found the tour bus. Back then, and for these guys, security was nonexistent. Sitting there in the front two seats of the bus (he couldn't make it further down the aisle) was Big Joe. Handing him my program I asked him to sign it. He gave me a weird look and mumbled something I could not hear. I then realized he was asking me for a pen. Luckily I had one and I gave it to him. Holding it like a dagger in his fist this man whose fingers had deftly pulled sounds from those nine strings I didn't think a guitar could make, now struggled with the pen as if he'd never held one before. In letters as large as the man he jerkily scribbled JOE across a picture of himself. And handed it back. 

I treasured that program for years. Everywhere I moved it moved with me. Only recently did I realize I don't have it any more. I have no idea where or when it left my possession.

Big Joe left us in 1982. My memory of that meeting has never left me, and never will. I have no idea why I was thinking about this event from long ago - I just was.

Back in stock

Amazon.com just ordered more copies of or words to that effect. So please ignore any comments about them being out of stock. If you order the book, it will be shipped. And the new price is just $10.

As a reminder, it's a limited edition of 200 signed copies and more than half of them are gone. So please tell your friends who like poetry to grab a copy now. 

And if you already have a copy and feel like writing a review at amazon, please do. Just scroll down the page that is linked to above and you'll see a "create your review" button. My thanks to those who already did this - your kind words mean a lot.

Any Minute Now: a new song

As I said in a post a short time ago, when I'm working on a new album I have to draw a line in the sand. I have to commit to what songs are going to be included. But a writer cannot stop writing.

I've been asked by a few people if living here has changed my writing in any way. And I guess the answer has to be yes, it has. I don't fully understand the changes yet. Some are subtle. Some are obvious. The reference in this song to the mountains is one of the latter examples. But something tells me that this place also sends you into yourself to examine things you otherwise might not. I'm not sure - I won't really know until I've lived here for some time. But here's the first song written in its entirety in Santa Fe. 

ANY MINUTE NOW

It's raining in the mountains

I can see it from here

Any minute now the sun is going down

And when we wake

The sky will be clear

And we can take a ride into town

I live my father's anger

He passed it down to me

Any minute now my eyes will cloud

The blood comes rising up

For everyone to see

And the words become pointed and loud

I want to get the time back

I squandered in the past

Any minute now time will just run out

It goes without me saying

Time has always run too fast

We're gone before we know what it's about

I dream I'm in a room

And the room is full of women

Any minute now the real fun will start

All the one's I loved

From here to the beginning

It's no wonder I wear a damaged heart

It's raining in the mountains

I can see it from here

Any minute now the sun is going down

But when we wake

The sky will be clear

And we can take a ride into town

Lyrics and photo ©2009 Dave Tutin / openD LLC

In praise of collaborators

Someone once described a major London ad agency as being "so confused they're stabbing each other in the front". One of the things I hated about working in advertising was how selfish it made you with your own ideas. Anyone who has never worked in the industry probably assumes it to be a world of collaboration, where everyone combines their talents to make ideas better. But the truth is, in thirty-six years of being first a writer, then a creative director, I had this kind of relationship with only a handful of people. 

It's understandable to a degree. After all, getting that next, more senior, higher-paying job relied totally on getting credit for your ideas. And for the same reason there were always those willing to 'steal' that credit. 

Having said this, the world of music is not much different. Many people who were "in the room at the time" have ended up with a 50% share in a song - to which they contributed, maybe, one chord change, or one rhyme.

So why am I now writing in praise of collaborators? 

Well, I read a few days ago that Paul McCartney had said something to the effect of how he was "spoiled" by having John Lennon as his earliest collaborator. (Later in the life of The Beatles I believe the two wrote predominantly alone - but I do believe they collaborated on the early songs). Paul said that he never felt as comfortable with any of his later collaborators.

This made me realize that collaboration is actually a test of character. You have to trust your partner implicitly. 

I have recently embarked on two major collaborative efforts. Which means I must have found partners who fit this description. Both of them are writers I worked with before in the ad business, both of whom have since pursued artistic goals outside of it.

MALACHY WALSH.

For years I carried around in my head the idea for a movie. Well, I thought it was a movie. Turns out it is a TV series. I cannot go into detail about the idea because we are currently talking to guys in Hollywood about getting it made!

But here's how it came to life.

The other bad aspect of the advertising world is that it makes people feel they have to be great at everything and, of course, few people are. I have a talent for certain kinds of writing - others I'm not so good at. Which is why this idea never got written down. It was outside my comfort zone.

So, frustrated at wasting what I thought was a good idea, I shared it with my friend Malachy. And bingo, sparks flew.

You see Malachy had studied writing for the stage at Columbia University. He had all the talents I lacked. He understood how to craft a longer story line in four acts. Whenever I tried to write down this idea it turned into a short story! He understood how to craft characters through dialogue, rather than description. Better still, he brought these specific characters to life by truly sharing my enthusiasm for them and for the idea. He's not a bad film maker also.

It's now our idea, not mine. Any success it achieves will be ours, not mine. That, I have learned, is the true result of honest collaboration. And it feels good.

JEFF SHATTUCK

Jeff is another gifted writer I had the pleasure to work with many years ago in advertising. Due to a brain injury (best he explains it himself - cerebellumblues.squarespace.com) he has switched his focus back to songwriting. Much like me he had started out in the music world only to have advertising take over and pay the bills!

Jeff has been working hard on putting an album together. And it's nearly finished. Along the way he has been kind enough to share with me his lyrics as they were coming together and early mixes of his finished songs. He writes great stuff.

Somewhere in this process I happened to mention that I have a problem. A nice one, but a problem nonetheless. I am much more prolific with words than I am with music. The result is I have many finished lyrics that I would almost certainly never get around to putting to music. 

Much to my surprise (as his own are extremely strong) Jeff asked if I would send him a lyric or two so that he could write the music.

The first one turned out great and we have now collaborated on four songs. As I've said before, titles don't mean much on their own but they are:

Borderline Love

The Forgotten Place

Waitress Blues

Easier Said Than Done

Recognizing that the digital world has changed forever the definition of an album - Jeff recently suggested we finish these songs and release them. Which is what we intend to do.

A few days before this, Jeff had posted on his blog a photograph he'd taken. It's the one at the top of this piece. I loved it. And immediately suggested it would make a great cover for his album. It was then that he responded, "What about a cover for our EP?" He asked if I had any thoughts for a title and I came up with DEEP SALVAGE.

This title came to me because it captured the second great pleasure I have discovered in collaboration. A gifted collaborator can "salvage" ideas that otherwise might never see the light of day.

It's hard to be your own critic. It's natural to favor what you wrote most recently. And having this second outlet for my lyrics has been an immense surprise and an immense pleasure.

So, Jeff and Malachy, my heartfelt thanks for teaching me that even though I may have moved to the desert I am less alone than ever before.

Our visitor makes front page news

From The New Mexican, June 17, 2009.

We're not in Manhattan any more.

Of that we had beautiful proof today when a normally nocturnal young Bobcat came to drink from the fountain in the little garden outside our front door. What an incredible sight. And, we are told, an extremely rare one. Luckily my camera was close by.

A belated happy birthday to Bob (May 24th)

TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE*

(for Bob Dylan)

 

Thanks to him

the song was destroyed

re-imagined

restructured

rebuilt

 

I don’t think

he planned

to destroy his life

in the process

But hindsight shows it

to be

an inevitable side-effect

 

Now

he creates songs

more like they were

before he arrived

 

But he sings them

with a voice that

has been destroyed

 

Destroyed by every

imposition

Destroyed

by weight multiplied by time

 

So few seem to grasp

the favor he has been doing us

for a long time now

 

Recreating what he destroyed

is his apology

 

Thanks to him it’s all there

To be destroyed again

And again

 

 

 

©2009 Dave Tutin / openD LLC.    

* Together Through Life is the title of Dylan's most recent album released in 2009.

An absolutely meaningless post

Posting poems makes sense. Posting the lyrics to songs makes a degree of sense but in reality it's not really a song until you have the music also. What makes no sense at all is posting the titles of songs and nothing more. But that's what I'm about to do. Maybe this is for me rather than for you. I'm setting a goal, drawing a line in the sand of endless creation. I know what my next album will be called and the songs that will be on it. So, in their current meaningless state and in no particular order, here they are:

Harvesting Light

*

No More Secrets

*

To Be With You Now

*

Love Is The Only Surprise

*

The Old Machine

*

Marking Time

*

Reality Will Break Your Heart

*

In Broken Sleep

*

The Likes Of You & I

*

Merciful Release

*

Waiting For My Heart

*

The Last Road

The Lucky & The Damned: a new poem

THE LUCKY & THE DAMNED

The shiny wetness

on the fingers

The softness of flesh

kept hidden

for a reason

The moment of fusion

when the world

disappears

in its own stupidity

The extraction of all fears

in the form 

of a fluid

denied its purpose

again

and again

Is this

what we live for

Is this

life

Is this

all there is

Is this

it

For some of us

   - the lucky and the damned -

the answer is

yes

the answer is

yes

the answer has always been

yes

©2009 Dave Tutin /openD LLC

Somewhere in a parallel universe

I never expected to be back in New York City so soon. But picking up a totally unexpected award for my poetry was as good a reason as I could think of.

I said to my wife, almost absent-mindedly, that if the book won gold we'd make the trip, if it won silver or bronze we'd stay home. Now forgetting that this comment is contrary to everything I grew to hate about the medal system while working on advertising for Coca-Cola connected to the Olympic Games (I fought the ingrained belief in America that only gold matters - that a silver medal is the same as "losing"), when I won gold I had to keep my promise!

It was an odd trip in many ways.

First, we rediscovered what a nightmare travel is in the US these days. We'd only made it from Albuquerque to Dallas before American Airlines delayed our connecting flight by three hours. They said it was due to weather on the East Coast. But, doubting their explanation based on years of too much travel, we got ourselves on a flight to JFK airport instead of Newark and managed to arrive half an hour earlier than originally scheduled. Nobody will ever convince me that the weather in Newark is so different from the weather at JFK - they are only 22 miles apart. A note to inexperienced travelers - Newark, JFK or LaGuardia, it doesn't matter. If you're headed to New York City any one will do.

We stayed in a new hotel - so new they are still building it - called Cooper Square Hotel. Maybe this was a mistake but I don't think so. And this is where the story gets hard to tell. It would be so easy to assume that returning to NYC so soon after leaving it for the wide opens spaces of New Mexico we were looking for justification and would focus on the negative aspects of the city no matter what.

But this would be wrong. New York City has always been and remains a great place. Potentially. No, what we encountered, unfortunately, was the same reason we'd left in the first place.

NYC has always been driven, at least since the 60s, by young people. They were attracted to the city because it embraced change. Because it offered the experience of feeling you were at the heart of something, at the epicenter of progress.

Sadly, it is still a city of young people - young people with trust funds. And no brains.

We shared our hotel with people who reminded us too much of the new neighbors we suffered during our last days in our Tribeca loft. Young people with absolutely no awareness that they share the world with others. Young people who are oblivious to the effect they have on those around them.

And it shows in the smallest things. Like slamming doors. 

As hard as we tried we could not get our old neighbors to understand that letting a door slam behind them, rather than closing it gently with their hands on the doorknob, was a selfish act. Comically,they blamed the door, not themselves.

Their counterparts are now in every upscale hotel in New York it seems. At 2 or 3am our fellow guests would return to their rooms and our bed would shake as they let their doors slam behind them. When closing them quietly would have taken maybe an extra second or two of their time.

But it's not about time. It's not about consideration. It's about living life as if no one else exists. And that

is what makes the young people of today so radically different to the kids of the past. Well, in New York City at least.

So, we suffered this knowing that we would be leaving in a few days. We collected my award and we got to catch up with a few dear friends.

And - I guess in a desperate attempt to convince myself that the old New York was still alive - I dropped by St Mark's Book Shop:

And I'm happy to report that they now sell my book, or words to that effect.

I hope my good friends in that wonderful city can forgive the observations of an aging poet on the lack of consideration displayed by the trust fund babies and drop by and buy a copy. You'll find the price is half of what it has been at amazon.com (I'll be dropping it there also as soon as I get around to it). They have just a few copies but if they sell those they'll order more. And the more copies they have the greater the chance that people who have never heard of me will check it out!

So thanks in advance for your help in getting my work to a greater number of readers.

And my apologies for saying what a blissful relief it was to get back to Santa Fe - where if you hear a door slammed, you know someone is angry. Not rich.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this piece, while I was in NYC I started work on a song. I only have the first verse and chorus. It goes like this:

If all those years ago

I'd stayed instead of leaving

Would different people now be dead

With different people grieving

Somewhere in a parallel universe

It's no better

In fact it's worse

Trade a blessing

for a curse

Somewhere in a parallel universe

©2009 Dave Tutin / openD LLC