Hello Love,
I haven't been completely lost in the woods. I've been rocking babies back to sleep. I've been raking leaves. I've been reading books. I've been writing songs. Quite a few songs. I have been working a lot on the Side Door project, which is growing like crazy. But I have also spent a boatload of time composing for a new television show.
// LITTLE PICASSO SERIES //
I used to have my studio beneath a visual artists' collective space where sometimes a dozen different people would be toiling away. I first met painter Joyce Ozier when I went upstairs to apologize for all my yelling and screaming when I was demo'ing the song Vessel - "STOP! WAIT! UNHAND ME!". She was pretty cool about it. This Xmas, my wife Kirsten and I gifted each other Joyce's amazing project she calls LITTLE PICASSO SERIES. She came to our home, got a sense of the colours we are surrounded in, then spent an afternoon making art with our 4 year old son Jude. She took Jude's ideas and adapted them with her own touch into a wonderful piece of our own domestically inspired art. What a cool idea to collaborate with children in this way. We are thrilled with the result and I wanted to help spread the word about Joyce and her brilliant concept. She can also do it long distance online if you send her a picture of something your kid has made. Click the link above to find out more. Above is Jude's original art as well the finished product with me, Joyce and Jude, who is, as they say, "on the level".
“Every child is an artist… it took me four years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child.” -Pablo Picasso
// BOOKS //
After months and months of being lost in a second round of newborn babyland, barely touching a book that didn't have cardboard pages, I have finally found the wherewithal to read in the evenings. Here's what I've enjoyed recently:
Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. It's been a much-discussed book and for good reason. The book describes JD's upbringing in Appalachia - straddling Ohio and Kentucky. He grew up dirt poor but beat the odds, attended Yale Law and moved to San Francisco. His love for where he comes from is palpable, and despite the troubles(!) he faced as a kid, he describes the many virtues of Hillbilly culture. He describes a widespread sentiment of hopelessness felt by many poor white Americans with the ease of a true insider. As he entered academia and the world where academia is the norm, he began to feel stretched between two starkly different universes. He doesn't really prescribe answers to anyone's plight - he just lifts the veil between the two worlds and tries to lend a little insight on both sides.
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein. Oh my shiza is Carrie Brownstein a wonderful writer. Her vocabulary, her poetic way of describing just about anything at all. I hadn't ever really listened to Sleater-Kinney (though I've driven by the offramp of the same name on the I-5 many times), and though I would consider myself a fan of Portlandia, I can't even remember when I bought the book. But the way she walks you through the 90s in the Pacific Northwest is captivating and so tactile. She can be self-deprecating and celebratory of her past in the same nuanced usage of an adverb. The zines. The jeans. The scenes. She describes how a counter-culture can be so obsessed with being counter-everything that it can inadvertently prescribe itself the same inward policing and dogma that it is supposedly running from in society.
A Life In Parts by Bryan Cranston. It's stories. So many stories. Bryan writes about his life, his career as an actor, his childhood, his family life, all with a particularly, umm.. Cranston'y tone. He tells many stories about himself that don't exactly show him in his best light, and yet he never embellishes the story to make himself look like a rebel, nor does he ever apologize for his transgressions. It's very matter of fact and honest - as well as charming. I LOVED reading about behind the scenes moments while shooting Breaking Bad or Malcolm In The Middle, but also about all the ups and downs he experienced trying to forge a life in the arts. When something is as incredible and now-iconic as Breaking Bad, it's hard to picture it being anything but what it is. It's a finished artefact. A masterpiece. Like Yesterday or Blowin' In The Wind. It's so beautiful to be reminded that all of these things were made by humans and thus - human. They made spur of the moment decisions. They made mistakes. They learned. They kept trying to make it better every day. It's so easy to discount the great work of others and shrug - "It's easy for them, they were born with that talent.". It's not. It's not easy for anyone. It's all (ALL) work, even when it's fun. Gotta stay hungry.
// TELEVISION //
I have been spending a lot of time composing score for a new TV show for Netflix. The more episodes they send me to add music to, the more I am convinced that this is a really special and unique project. The writing, the visual treatment, the storytelling. It's magical, touching, whimsical and funny. Really funny. I wish so badly that I could tell you what it's called and when you can watch it, but I'm not allowed to do that just yet. Rest assured, I'll be hounding you to give it a try when the time comes. I AM allowed to tell you that I'll also be composing score for a new AMC/CBC miniseries next year called Unspeakable that tells a fictional narrative surrounding the all too factual Canadian Blood Scandal back in the 1980s. I didn't know very much about the scandal before getting involved, but some of the facts surrounding it are completely dumbfounding. Looking forward to digging into it.
Well this has really turned into quite the newsletter. I hope you like all of these words I'm typing. I promise that between all these other projects that I will finish a new album as soon as I possibly can. I want to visit a stage nearby wherever you are. Sounds fun. Thanks for caring. Thanks for reading. Much love to you and yours,
x
Dan