Creative Colombians: Julián Esteban Torres López

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Photo Credit: Julian (yes, this one) - 2010

 

Call him a spoken-word artist, a poet, a writer, an academic or a host of other titles, this is Julián Esteban Torres López. Read on as he reveals the many stories behind his new album and, in turn, offers us his vulnerability. It’s splashed throughout with sound clips and photos from memorable or simple moments in his life.
Sit back and enjoy.

LCO: Introduce us to your newly-released spoken word album Sfumato: A Decade of Spoken Word, Act 1. What would it take for you to consider it a success? What do you want people to take away from your work?
JETL: First, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity and congratulate you on one of the best new blogs I’ve seen on Colombia in a very long time.  You might be setting the bar.  Keep it up! (Thanks Julian!)

I left my heart in Medellín

Now, let’s begin.  I guess to introduce you to the album I should commence by explaining the meaning of the title.  Sfumato comes from the Italian verb “sfumare,” which signifies to shade, to fade, to vanish, to disappear.    Sfumato is a technique used in photography and painting where “the finished product appears as though a veil of smoke had drifted between the subject of the painting and the viewer.”  Leonardo da Vinci himself described sfumato as “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane.”

Photo Credit: Daniela De Los Reyes-Lopez Myerston (2006)

 

I feel that this word – sfumato –captures (for lack of a better term) my first decade as a “Spoken Word artist.”  I use quotations around that title simply because I feel I am more than that.  I’m a writer, yes.  I use words, yes.  I recite them, yes.  However, if you follow my work you’ll realize I have a difficult time fitting myself into one “category” not only because essentialization of anything leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but also for the mere fact that I also write in other so-called “genres”: poetry, flash-fiction, essays, novel, academic papers, journalistic articles, love letters, grocery lists, etc.  The best way I can describe what I do is what my biography often states:

when others try to encapsulate him [Julián] into one particular genre he just responds with, “Simply put, I’m a storyteller. Yo cuento cuentos.” When pushed to elaborate he often proceeds to quote Wayson Choy, “I’m a writer of a certain kind, and I write for the reader who understands how moments, not plots, compose our lives.”

Now, you may ask, what does this bit of information have to do with Sfumato.  Well, since the album covers my evolution during the first ten years of the 21^st century writing for the ears, not the eyes, I’ve had to let go of those years, of that past.  That part of my life has, in a way, vanished, disappeared, and what is left of it are mere shades, mere fading memories captured by these recordings.  Some of the pieces you hear in the album only exist either in my memory or in the actual recording, not on paper or a hard drive somewhere.  In this sense, that decade captured in the album precisely to the sfumato/sfumare of my life as a budding “Spoken Word artist.”  (There I go again with the quotations.)

A child’s Winter ritual

Sfumato also corresponds to that struggle I have with the essentialization of an “artist” into one particular capsule, label, identification, identity-thinking, later used for consumption, commodification, and/or easy-access categorization.  As I wrote in one of my previous columns on Colombia Reports, “Though it seems easy enough [to label someone as X] [...], once challenged to unpack what it means most will recognize that there are inherent limitations to this endeavour as there are any time one tries to essentialize anything.  In the process of trying to construct an identity, one always leaves something out through any trial to include something else.”  That’s how I feel when I am recognized solely as a Spoken Word artist.  I feel left out.

Photo Credit: Nelson Torres (1984)

 

This is where da Vinci’s definition of sfumato runs parallel to my anti-essentialization disposition.  Sfumato – that artistic technique often used during the Renaissance – is the interpretive lens with which I experience the world and myself.  The album is a fading memory “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane.”   The album is the silent foot of my shadow following me home.  And you, as the listener, are the stalker following the silent shadow following me home.

I apologize for my verbosity, but I felt the need to explain such a term and my deep connection to it since it is the foundation of the entire album.  I also suspect most of my listeners/readers would have not previously been acquainted with the word.

Sinful tango

That said, what would it take for me to consider “Sfumato” a success?  If the listener wanted to listen to it at least one more time, then the album would have been a success in my eyes.  In this sense I hope for many successes and anticipate failures as well, but I am fine with that.  However, the major success would come from answering your other question.

What do I want people to take away from my work?  To use a cannibalistic analogy, people who can’t talk to one another, bite each other.  Being vegan, I want less flesh biting.

Photo Credit: The man in the photo himself (2006)

 

In this Text Messaging culture, where we “lol” and “wtf” our way through life, I’d like to remind the listener of the many other things one can do with words: the power words have, depending on how they are used, to move a human being, to make one think, their ability to unite us, their ability to help us relate to one another.  I hope that by me allowing myself, via my words, to be vulnerable, that maybe I can also help others be vulnerable, help them be more human.

It is our vulnerability that makes us human.  It is our vulnerability that allows for love.  It is the door we want to open so others can walk in, so we can walk in, so we can trust, so we can know if we truly want to walk in or if it will be unhealthy for us to do so.  In short, so we can connect.

Wandering love

It is through these vulnerable times and connections with others when I feel most human.  It is not through the rush I may get from jumping out of a plane, but from expressing the fear of skydiving with another human, and we look eye to eye, and we share how we both want to skydive but know we probably never will because we are too paralyzed by the thought of it to risk our lives.  And we cry and comfort one another and understand our shared humanity through the other and one another’s fears.

To use another cannibalistic metaphor, I want the listener to taste my humanity, and in this tasting I not only taste the listener’s humanity but also taste my own.

I hope that my vulnerable words in Sfumato help bring people closer to themselves and to others.

The many forms of love,#1

The last thing I want is for my work to estrange or alienate.  As Giovanni Baldelli once wrote, “Society is prior to the individual in the sense that each individual enters society in a condition of utmost dependence that he cannot question or refuse.”  Faith in others is developed before faith in oneself for the sake of survival because of this universal human condition, thought Baldelli.  As a result, for an individual to every fully self-realize and flourish he or she must not be alienated from others or the self.  I think we often see vulnerability in a negative light, as if one is weak if one demonstrates it.  However, in my humble opinion, we need to recognize and embrace those vulnerabilities, and at times share them with others, in order to flourish into the people we may desire to become, in order to realize our individual and collective potential in the world.  Sfumato is my vulnerability.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

LCO: To what extent does “being Colombian” contribute to this album? One of the most popular tracks is “I Left my Heart in Medellín”. Tell us a bit about this piece specifically and what it means to you.
JETL: Being “Colombian” contributes a lot to this album for the mere fact that my clearest memories are the ones I had before I moved to the US, memories I had while growing up in Medellín.  Before my brain was entangled in two languages, images, thoughts, memories seemed clearer.  So, when I write stories about Colombia, my protagonists tend to be children because I left as a child.  Though most of my short stories, even my novel (work-in-progress), have this essential element, some examples can be noted in Sfumato in pieces such as “Mother’s books,” “A child’s Winter ritual,” “Inheritance,” “Sinful Tango,” “Not enough blankets to keep warm,” and “Puberty.”

Mother’s books

However, it is not until listeners stumble upon “I left my heart in Medellín” and “Medellín” that they can understand the deep love I have for my home.  It’s a love that when I wrote those two pieces was rooted in memories, emotions, and a desire to become re-acquainted with my natal land.

I’ve lived ten years of my life in Colombia and the other twenty scattered around the US, Chile, Canada, and Japan.  With so much moving around I have never quite felt at home.  The only time I remember having that feeling was when I was living in Medellín as a child, and recently since I have been living in Medellín in 2011, minus 8 days.  This meant that for two-thirds of my life I had an emptiness inside me, a vacuum.  I always felt like a foreigner, a stranger, an outsider.  Homeward-bound but never quite there.  Even during the times I returned to Medellín before 2011 didn’t feel like I was at home because I never stayed here long enough to re-grow roots.  Until now.

Medellín

The piece “Medellín” in particular came out of the feeling I had while living in the US as an illegal alien, undocumented migrant, or whatever you want to call us.  In all, I was “illegal” for about 12 years of my life.  For the better part of that time I could not return to Colombia because my parents feared that if we returned home we would not be able to re-enter the US.  I’m a citizen of both Colombia (born) and the US (naturalized, December 2007) now.  However, during that time when I couldn’t return to Colombia, which was about eleven straight years, that emptiness inside me just kept growing parallel to the feeling of being homeward bound without being able to go home.  “Medellín” is my ode to that experience and what I thought my re-acquaintance with home would be like upon my return.  The piece was written two years and 8 months before I finally returned.

“I left my heart in Medellín” means precisely what the title suggests.  The only difference is that I made the city as my lover, a lover I reminisced about often.  A lover I wanted to grow old with.  A lover that felt like home.

Photo Credit: Daniela De Los Reyes-Lopez Myerston (2006)

 

LCO: The album is a series of stories told through creative prose, sometimes addressing the person you’ve written about directly. How much of it is true and how much is fiction? Where do you draw the line?
JETL: As I said earlier by quoting Wayson Choy, “I’m a writer of a certain kind, and I write for the reader who understands how moments, not plots, compose our lives.”  The album, as you have correctly pointed out, is a series of stories, a series of moments that have composed my life.  Though I consider Sfumato to be a piece of creative fiction, of course there is something in each piece that has some root in my life at the moment it is written.  However, sometimes I start with an emotion that I may be feeling at the time, then I create a story that tries to extract that emotion from the reader.  Sometimes it’s a piece based on a true story, like “Not enough blankets to keep warm,” Track 14 on the album.  And so on.

Not enough blankets to keep warm

I never draw the line because the reader never knows what is fiction and what is non-fiction.  It’s also difficult to draw the line because sometimes I feel like the story guides me instead of the other way around.  I’m finding that to be the case with the novel I am currently writing, which is tentatively titled Valencia.  I had an outline and plot that very soon had to be discarded because my characters ended up taking hold of their own turns in life, and I felt like I just went along for the ride.  There have been times when I myself have been surprised and shocked about what my characters have done since I didn’t plan it.  So, no, I don’t draw a line.  I just write.  But what I write is rooted in some real life experience of mine.  From there, though, it could go in any direction.

Photo Credit: Catalina Torres (2002)

 

LCO: Where do you read your work aloud? Any dates lined up? Can you suggest a few open mic nights we can check out in Medellin?
JETL: There was a time when I performed a lot – Cambridge and Boston Mass; all over New Hampshire; Buffalo, New York; Orlando, Florida; San Francisco, California; Kelowna, British Columbia.  I was on stage over a hundred times.  Then, there came a time when I just didn’t want to do it anymore.  By 2006 I had reduced my performance schedule to just a handful of times that year.  By 2007, while living in San Francisco, I only performed once, with a very fitting poem for the occasion, “With this poem I retired as a Poet,” which is Track 15 on the album.  Since February 2007 I have only been on stage a few times: 2008, New Hampshire, “Voices,” “With this poem I retire as a Poet,” and “Puberty;” 2009, British Columbia, “Puberty;” and 2010, British Columbia, “I left my heart in Medellín.”  Those final three times were for special occasions.

With this poem I retire as a poet

Though I haven’t been performing doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing.  I have taken this time to get back to the basics.  I have been focusing on the page instead of the stage.  Along with poetry, I have also been working on a novel, short stories, opinion columns, and all of the academic writing that comes with being a PhD candidate.  Because of the latter two reasons my writing energy has been somewhat directed for me.

Since I haven’t been thinking about performing for a while I haven’t been looking for an open mic scene in the city.  However, though I semi-retired from serial performing, I think with the release of “Sfumato” I would like promote the album by doing some shows around Colombia; starting, of course, with Medellín.  Who knows, maybe a call by the masses will get me to come out of retirement.  I will keep you and the LCO readers updated.

Photo Credit: Daniela De Los Reyes-Lopez Myerston (2006)

 

LCO: Your physical voice is obviously a huge part of your work. Do you approach writing poetry differently knowing that it will be heard aloud rather than read from a page?
JETL: That is a very good question, and yes, I do.  If I were writing for only myself, it wouldn’t really matter much to me.  That’d be more like writing in a diary capturing moments of my life.  However, when you start to write for an audience, you have to recognize that the medium is very important to how one wants to transmit the message.  There are certain things that will help enhance the message and others that will distract, depending on the medium.

Sign language

I have become quite aware that my disposition changes when I write for the stage than when I write for the page.  I never write for a recording, which would also entail a different strategy.  If I write for the stage, now anyway, I am very aware that the audience is only going to hear my words once.  I want the listener to understand my piece the first time around without me having to explain it.  However, when writing for the page, I can be a little freer in the sense that I know the reader can go back and reread it as often as he or she likes.  However, to write a piece that works just as well on the stage as it does on the page…that’s the goal.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

During this decade I’ve realized that my voice is my instrument.  Depending on how I play this instrument, it can help me situate the listener into a particular emotional trance or emotional state that may aid the words to touch the listener more effectively.  The first few stanzas of my poem “The timid tongue of my poetry,” which is not featured in this album for some odd reason, I think describe what I mean well.

To kiss you without touching you
was the ambition
of all my poems

this is the tongue of my poetry
timid
frozen

the language of the isolated
of two lips united at birth
but alone
without hands

mere semblances of unrealized sentiments

but my words have body
that dance without fear
without shame
that touch without leaving fingerprints
that love without sweating
that disrobe with fingers that appear only when

you read my writings

There’s no future without a present

So let me

And, in terms of my voice in the album…words that disrobe with fingers that appear only when you hear my voice.  I want the listener to feel without me having to physically touch.  The voice allows me to do that.  Sometimes I even feel like a carpenter trying to place the right nail here, there, etc., trying to hypnotise my listener.  I don’t want them to stop listening, so at times I try to entrance them with the voice and the carpentry.  I learned this method from Gabo.

However, over time I’ve learned to keep my voice in check.  In the early years it was like a wild lion set free in the Roman Coliseum looking for a feast of tasty gladiators.  Now I am much more cautious as to when I will allow the voice to take a bite out of the listener.  I’m a better carpenter now.

Rain Date

LCO: Talk a bit about language, the way you play with words, rhythm, rhyme, and other techniques. Have you written also in Spanish? If not, have you considered it? If so, how do you think about words differently?
JETL: When I immigrated to the US from Colombia I started to experience something quite frightening.  I began to forget how to speak.  I left Medellín when the basics of grammar and the Spanish language were being taught, and I entered the US during a similar time.  However, for the latter, since I didn’t know English, I had to start as a beginner.  So, by the time I was finally able to defend myself and survive with English I had missed the technical side of learning the language.  Further, during the process of learning English I began to forget a lot of my Spanish since I was not using it much.  This resulted in me not being able to think clearly in either language since I didn’t feel fluent in either.  This gave rise to my biggest fear, which I still have today: forgetting how to think, how to communicate, how to express myself verbally.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2009)

 

It is partly because of this fear that I became a poet.  I would sit in my room for hours with a pen or pencil in hand filling notebooks.  I did not want to forget how to think.  I did not want to lose language, what I had left of either of them.

Mother’s books

This is what also sparked my desire to completely consume books.  I needed to be surrounded with words.  I thought this would be the only way my biggest fear would not come true.  In a way, my piece “Mother’s books,” Track 3, is somewhat based on this phobia; the ending in particular.  Nonetheless, because of this fear and this experience of not feeling fluent in either language I could not express myself well.  This turned me into a deep well of emotion since my thoughts were quite limited.  In turn, when I finally felt comfortable with English, for example, and began reciting, you could feel the emotions in my words because those words had been drowning in those emotions for so long.  My piece “Antiquated Lips,” Track 11, is very well rooted in this experience.

Antiquated lips

A strange fear for a ten year old to have, don’t you think?  Nevertheless, I have that experience to thank for planting the seed.  I became a writer because of it.  In the process, especially during my teenage years as a budding writer, I found ways to play with words so I would not forget them.  Here is where rhythm, rhyme, and other techniques came in.

For example, I’ve been a track athlete since I was thirteen or fourteen and have only owned a car for maybe 3 years of my life.  (I’ve been carless for almost nine years now and I don’t regret the decision one bit.)

Being on my feet constantly by walking to my destinations and being a track athlete for almost two decades – especially my time as a hurdler – has allowed me to become quite acquainted pace and rhythm.  In a way, I feel that some of my pieces, when I recite them, very much resemble how I would run the 300-metre hurdles or a 400-metre race.  And since I was constantly running or walking, the pace I kept while I tried to memorize my poems, for instance, ended up influencing the rhythm of some of the Sfumato pieces.  Other times, however, the pace and rhythm of walking or running set the tone for the birth of poems as I drafted them in my head before actually putting the words, and emotions, down on paper.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

When the words finally come out on stage, in front of the microphone, I feel like the emotions and rhythms and paces are an amalgamation of different pieces of music.  If my words on stage were a painting, the paint brush would be dipping itself in some hues of Beethoven, some shades of Sandro, a rainbow spectrum mix of Django Reinhard’s gypsy jazz with Monk’s improvisational jazz, and a bit of blues.  Those are the colours of my voice.

A trace of a dream

I have also found that those colours change when I change languages as I write.  I haven’t done much writing in Spanish, but when I switch, I automatically feel like a different person.  I feel differently.  I think differently.  As a result, I have a different experience with my instrument and my pen.  I’ll share some short pieces I’ve written with LCO.

“En escondidos nos encontramos”

Tu cara se esconde
entre las metáforas de mi poesía

Pero mis dedos tienen ojos
y cuando escriben en mi cuarderno
te pueden ver
desnuda
como eres –
versos que bailan la cumbia
cuando tu madre cree que estas durmiendo
versos que tocan el acordeón
sin molestar el pueblo emborrachado

mis dedos te ven
entre la secreta vulnerabilidad de un poeta con otro nombre

Te conozco
como si fueras mis propias huellas

“Los bosques hablan con sus ramas”

Cuando el viento corre de su casa
y pasa por los corredores de soledad
que deja el otoño
quiebra las manos y brazos de los árboles

no me importa si es el de encima o el de abajo,
y no encuentro cualquiera

pero con mi primer lágrima despiertas para cepillarla de mi mejilla

y se puede escuchar la voz
y lágrima
de un llanto colectivo

Photo Credit: A random unknown (2005)

 

“Congoja”

Las únicas palabras que tengo
son estas

Todo después
es pura emoción

“Tus cosquillas”

Entre mis dedos te encuentro
y me das cosquillas

lamo mis huellas dactilares
en la esperanza que pueda tragarte entera

me alarma cuando te siento
y no me puedo reír
porque sé que estas durmiendo

y yo,
todavía despierto,
noto que busco por tu labio,
por eso lloro
lloro porque sin esas gotas de miedo
no hay vida

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

LCO: Write a special little piece just for LCO readers? We’d love it!
JETL: It’s tough to come up with something on the spot.  However, I will debut a piece with LCO that I have actually been working on since 2001 and just finished it today.  Since this interview is the first for Sfumato’s release, my decade’s work, it is only fitting…especially considering the poem’s title and its content.  So, here you have it, ten years in the making, my piece for you, LCO readers.

“Vulnerability”

I once supposed Truth
to be a woman,
but I was wrong.

Instead I found Hope,
and she bit me,
leaving teeth marks
on all of my sides.

Her tears were just water,
no repentance;
saltless empty sentences.

My ears have scars to prove
the whispers
of my past
linger…

…like echoes.

I hold the torn pages from my journal
to my chest
with Hope
someday
they are read
by the literate.

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

LCO: Who are your favorite Colombian writers/poets/influences?
JETL: I’m quite saddened by the fact that I am not too familiar with as many Colombian writers as I am with other world authors.  My parents were never big readers, so we never had books around the house.  Since I left Colombia at a young age I ended up immersed myself in other literature.  However, lately I have been in a process of rediscovery, of becoming and overcoming.  The piece in the album entitled “Medellín” expresses this sentiment quite nicely.

Medellín

Though my first love was Gabriel García Márquez, I’ve recently been getting acquainted with the following Colombian writers: Luis Segundo de Silvestre, Clímaco Soto Borda, Alvaro Salom Becerra, Alvaro Vélez Calle, Jorge Franco, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.  Every new work I read makes me fall more and more in love with Colombian literature and poetry.

However, aside from Gabo, because it has not been until recently that I have become acquainted with many other Colombian authors, I have to give credit where credit is due.  I’m an avid reader and have found that consciously and unconsciously I tend to carry a little bit of each author with me.  The list is long, and though not exhaustive some of the biggest influences over my creative fiction have been the following writers: LeoTolstoy, Dostoevsky, John Irving, Oscar Wilde, Alexander Dumas, Wayson Choy, Nietzsche, Charles Simic, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Cervantes, Lorca, William Golding, Asimov, Salinger, Haruki Murakami, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Mary Shelly, Emerson, Poe, Saul Williams, Plato, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gil Scott-Heron, James Baldwin, Robert Graves, Saramago, Natsume Sōseki, Orwell, Maya Angelou, Isabel Allende, Zora Neal Hurston, Shane Koyczan, Summer Whitmore, Jack McCarthy, Reggie Gibson, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Eduardo Galeano, Orson Scott Card, Douglas Adams, Tennessee Williams, David Sedaris, Bryce Courtenay, Milan Kundera, Chuck Palahniuk, Arundhati Roy, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Author Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thoreau, Huxley, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Connor Oberst, Josh Ritter, Salvador Dalí’s autobiography was a riot and superbly written, and even Karl Marx – who originally wanted to be a poet – had some interesting poetry and beautiful love letters to his wife.

Another country

I can also not leave out my friends. Not only have many of their original works inspired me, but our times together in writing workshops or the amount of hours some spent on editing my work helped me evolve into the writer I am today. Abrazos to Jeremiah Gould, Dabestwe Natasha, Joe Gilbert, Courtney Ann Smith, Sam Sobel, Sarah Dopp, Caitlin Flynn, Tim Greenlaw, Julie Koslowsky, Michael Frissore, Michele Filgate, Jeff Lewis, Claire Weiss, Donna Kirk, Maryte Gurekas, Amanda Powell, Julie Beth Himmelwright, and Lindsay Naito, among others. I owe them more than I could ever repay.

 

Photo Credit: Lindsay Naito (2010)

 

LCO: Have you started working on Act 2 yet? Any ideas?
JETL: If all goes as planned, Act 2 will be ready by 2021.  Each Act corresponds to a decade.  The reason I’ve decided to release decade albums instead of annual ones is because in ten years one can listen/see the developments of the craft, the evolution of the artist.  “Voices,” for example, was written in a rainy night in November of 2001 as I sat in my car at a parking lot at the University of New Hampshire.  It seriously came out in a very Kerouac spontaneous prose style where I just let it flow, without edits.

Flashlight

As I meditated in the driver’s seat I closed my eyes and just wrote down, in about 30 minutes, what came to mind.  It resulted in “Voices.”  After having that experience, a few months later, I wrote “Flashlight.”  In both of these pieces – “Voices” and “Flashlight” – you can find the influences of what I was into at the time: the Black Arts Movement, the Slam poetry movement (i.e., Saul Williams, Shane Koyczan, Reggie Gibson) , the Beat Generation (Kerouac), and Jazz (as in, Gillespie, Monk, Mingus, even the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt) .  Along with others but those two pieces in particular are what I recognize as my spontaneous-prose-conceptual-jazz period.

Voices

Now, compare those two pieces to “Medellín,” written in April of 2003, and you start seeing a shift from that period toward more refined conceptual storytelling.  “Medellín” was my bridge.  My style and voice was changing.  I remember I recited an early version of “Medellín” at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Mass, in 2003 and after the show Reggie Gibson – the 1998 National Poetry Slam Champion, whom just happened to have also been reciting that same night – came up to me, shook my hand, and told me he really liked my piece.  That simple gesture helped me cross the bridge fully and start focusing less on the spontaneous jazz of my words and more on my storytelling.

Photo Credit: Daniela De Los Reyes-Lopez Myerston (2006)

 

Now compare those three pieces to “Mother’s Books,” “Inheritance,” and “Puberty” (which is my favourite piece in the album), all written around 2005-2006, and you start seeing a bigger shift toward storytelling and learning more how to use the voice to enhance the message and content, not distract from it.

Inheritance

I guess what I am trying to say is that in a decade my style and my voice changed a lot.  It’s not too often that you can listen to an album, unless it’s a greatest hits album, and notice that change because they are often written in a year.  I like the encounter that comes with experiencing and deconstructing the evolution of an artist.  It’s not often that an artist can sit down and say that pieces like Track 6 and Track 16 I could never write again, even if I tried, because I was a different person then than I am now.  I was a different storyteller, writer, whatever you want to call me.  Seriously, I have tried and cannot write another “Voices.”  And so, I will continue to record decade albums – unless I change my mind, for some reason – so that process of development can be explicitly noticed, explicitly exhibited.

Photo Credit: Casie-Lee Miller (2004)

 

In a way, each album is a Workshop, and the hope is that with enough “workshopping” (to coin a term), each Act will keep getting better.  If not better, than I am pretty sure each will sound different.  The pieces I did not include in Act 1 because they were written for Act 2 are very different.  But, you’ll have to wait a decade to listen to them.

You don’t, however, have to wait that long to listen to Sfumato. As of Monday, 13 June 2011, I will make all 20 tracks downloadable for free for the first week. All I ask in return from my listeners is that for each track that is downloaded that you share the link to that track with at least 10 friends. On June 20th I will close the downloading option. However, thereafter if for any week the album receives 200+ hits, I will make Sfumato downloadable for free once again during the following week, and so on, and so on, and so on…

Eclipse

I hope to come out with eight albums, each one released on the first year of every decade.  The dream is that on my 100^th birthday, on February 21^st, 2081, I will retire my voice and have a collection of my life, my diary, my autobiography to listen to.  I will sit back on my rocking chair on that day, listen to every single album, Act 1 through Act 8, and reminisce.  I look forward to that day very much.  And, yes, I do plan on being here in 2081.  I’m taking all of the proper steps and precautions now in terms of lifestyle choices to make sure that eighth album is released.  If you’re around, I’ll invite you to the after party.  Make sure to bring your dancing shoes.  If the bouncer doesn’t let you in, just tell him the centenarian sent you.

Puberty

Thanks Julian!

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