GRACE OF THE BEGINNER

My favorite kind of joy these days is the kind that arises without provocation, unrelated to circumstance. That's the kind of joy I felt a few weeks ago on my birthday.

I mean sure lots of people were calling and writing and saying they loved me, which was wonderful. But the sweetness of the day felt largely unconnected to all that. I was just peaceful, at home in my body, okay with my age, and grateful for all the twists and turns that brought me here. (Speaking of graceful aging, Arianna Huffington wrote this beautiful piece on turning seventy which is very much worth a read.)

I've never been all that sentimental about birthdays but they do give one an opportunity to take stock and give thanks. Of the many things for which I am grateful music is chief among them. I cannot overstate how amazed I continue to be that songwriting is a major part of my life after so many years of simply being a fan. That I can now make the kind of music I want to hear, that various thoughts, feelings, fears, and insights can find a home in songs I write, will never not be an incredible thing to me. 

Ben and I released the second Radnor & Lee album, Golden State, on June 19. We were keenly aware that this is an incredibly delicate and fraught time to be releasing music, which is why we pushed back the initial release date. But we were both super proud of the album and excited to share it and it didn't feel right to sit on it much longer. If you haven't heard it yet please give it a spin wherever fine music is spun these days. And if you enjoy it please spread the word. I got down some more thoughts about music below, which during this pandemic, has taken on for me and many others a deeper significance.  
 

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“Whatever happens out there is right.” 
 
This was the simple prayer my friend, the violinist Kerenza Peacock, and I offered up before we took the stage. Moments later, in front of the ninety or so people who had gathered in the intimate dark of Hotel Café’s Stage Two, I took a deep, centering breath before I strummed the first chord on my guitar. A guitar that was – I was about to learn – comically out-of-tune.
 
By any metric it was a notably lousy way to start a show. Nothing signals to an audience “Don’t have faith in me” more than an inability to strum even a single in-tune chord. I turned to Kerenza like “WTF” and began to tune my guitar. I couldn’t help but laugh as I told the audience about our pre-show prayer. “I guess this is what’s meant to be happening.” I then told them a thing I'd heard Miles Davis used to say. He said he never performed, he only rehearsed in front of an audience. “So welcome to our rehearsal.” The crowd loved it. I got my guitar tuned. And we launched into our set. 
 

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Six years ago, I started writing songs with my friend Ben Lee. Ben wrote his first song when he was ten. I was getting a later start. But songs somehow tumbled out of us every time we got together and what began as a lark or potential side project turned into something we both began to treat with increasing seriousness and dedication. Our first shows in Los Angeles were for less than a hundred people and we’ve now played to audiences in Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, as well as across the U.S.
 
Though we wrote all the songs for our first album together, Radnor & Lee began as a one-guitar band, that guitar being Ben’s. But in the late winter of 2017 – reeling from a breakup – I wrote a crudely-strummed song by myself with the few chords I knew on guitar. Ben liked the song and I began playing it at Radnor & Lee shows and audiences seemed to like it too. I began picking up the guitar at my house – which had sat idle for years – with increasing frequency. I was far from virtuosic out of the gate but I seemed to have a feel for the instrument and progressed relatively quickly. At some point Ben said, with his unique brand of enviable enthusiasm, “Let’s be a two-guitar band!” 
 
And so here I am, three years later, typing this with calloused fingers: a song-writing guitar player who practices and plays every chance he gets.

Perfectionism has been perhaps the great demon of my life. I’ve long had a ruthless inner critic who – in the face of mistakes – unloads lethal and confidence-crushing rants. How was I to honor this new love of mine while not being crushed by doubting voices and perfectionistic taskmasters?
 
The answer was: I had to get comfortable with being bad. At least for awhile.
 
We assume that people want to see mastery or perfection in the realm of art. That might be true, on some level. But on a deeper level I think what we really want to see is passionate struggle. People really going for it, striving even if they miss. I’ll always be more invested in a singer like Joe Cocker or Janis Joplin who sound like they’re not going to hit that note than I will be in an operatic superstar who clearly will. The stories that move us the most are not those of uninterrupted triumph but rather tales of struggle, setback, resilience, and redemption. I think this is because we know ourselves at a core level to be flawed beings. Thus we intuitively trust stories with cracks and dents, with characters who are worn, frayed, and lived in. 
 
Much of early life seems to be about isolating our strengths and leaning into them. It’s increasingly difficult as we get older to voluntarily become a novice again. The ego simply doesn’t like to be humbled. But there’s also a kind of grace in being a mistake-prone beginner. Think of our affection for babies and small children. We love them all the more when they mispronounce words, have their faces smeared with food, and struggle to take their first steps. Their fallibility is essential to their lovability. But somewhere along the line we toss all that out and make achievement, accolades, and straight A’s the markers of our worth. We lose the sweet messiness and holy opportunity of imperfection. 

I had the great good fortune of getting to work with Al Pacino for six months in 2019 on “Hunters” for Amazon Prime (which was just renewed for a second season!) Al’s an undeniably great artist but I can say that after working with him and studying him up close for those months a huge part of his greatness is the relish with which he is open to failure. He doesn’t just accept failure as part of the process, he gleefully waltzes towards it. And like a great professional athlete, he can shake off a bad shot, take another crack at it and then melt the camera lens with his brilliance. His self-esteem doesn’t seem in any way dependent on how good or bad his last take was. He just keeps moving forward, hungry to land on the truth of a scene. 
 
I found this quality of Al’s to be endlessly inspiring. He likes being in free fall. He likes not knowing what’s going to happen next. He seems to consider failure not something to be avoided but rather charged towards, an essential - if not the most essential - part of making art. Because he knows that just on the other side of failure is where the gold is. 
 

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I mentioned to my friend Brenda once how silly I felt picking up the guitar at forty-two and she said the very best thing she possibly could have said in response. “But just think: when you’re seventy-two you’ll have been playing for thirty years.” 
 
I loved this as a reframe for myself and I think about it often. My musical story isn’t that of a teenager who formed a band with his mates that took over the world. It’s one of a guy in his forties who started writing songs with his friend and discovered he was actually good at it. That it made him happier than anything else. And rather than deciding that ship had sailed, I realized there’s no ship, no schedule, no ticking clock. There’s just me, a guitar, some stories to tell, and all the time I need to tell them.
 
That night at the Hotel Café with Kerenza was the last time I gathered with a crowd. California’s stay-at-home order was soon to be issued. Not every moment of the show was as precise as I would have liked. But I sang and played with real joy and a lightness of heart. It felt like I was in an intimate and meaningful conversation with the audience, flaws and all. Which is all I ever demand of music and stories. And in that way, it was perfect.

Mikel Jollett is not only a great follow on Twitter he's also the frontman of a band I love called The Airborne Toxic Event. I got to chat with him about his harrowing and wonderful memoir Hollywood Park for the 92nd St Y. The Airborne Toxic Event released a new album of the same title on the same day. Both the book and the album are highly recommended. 

Four must-watch documentaries: Becoming, Lenox Hill, Crip Camp, and Freedom Riders

America Failed John Lewis and C.T. Vivian: After the two civil rights giants both died last Friday, we should lament that this nation continues to require their kind of heroism.

I set Trump's Tulsa rally ramp speech to music. I didn't change a word (he said all of this!) It had a fun viral moment on-line.

Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind: In a rare interview, the Nobel Prize winner discusses mortality, drawing inspiration from the past, and his new album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”

Davie Grohl: The Day The Live Concert Returns.  

A fun and insightful chat with musician Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and comedian Kate Berlant. 

Tears for Fears' Curt Smith and Daughter Perform "Mad World" from Quarantine. 

Bruce Springsteen's Playlist for the Trump Era

Sat down with Ian Cron on his Typology podcast to talk all things Enneagram (specifically being a 3 with a 4 wing, which is what I am. If that means nothing to you - or even if it does - give it a listen. The enneagram is fascinating and Ian really knows his stuff.) 

A fascinating and insightful video from the New York Times: Is It Basketball... or Socialism?

A gorgeous, moving interview with the writer and farmer Wendell Berry.

In need of a laugh? This should do the trick: Huntington Beach: The Tom Cruise Space Station

Still more laughs: My pal and HIMYM co-creator Craig Thomas' first piece in The New Yorker: Studio Notes on Your Rom-Com Screenplay.

This song really moved me: Andrew Peterson - A White Man's Lament for the Death of God's Beloved  

And finally, a perspective-granting marvel of a short story by Amy Hempel:
 

THE MAN IN BOGOTA
 

“The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge – though not, she threatens, for long.

"I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.

"I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.

"Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.

"When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then – that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.

"Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.”

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As always, if you're enjoying these please spread the word (people can sign up here) And if you're new to these check out past Museletters. JR