Procrastination

“Talk about the emptiness.”

The song opens with a fanfare of horns before moving into a young man waking up in the morning. He has “dishes in the sink.” He is deeply depressed, living isolated in his head. We murmur “talk about the emptiness” (See “Emptiness for Beginners” from tricycle mag which has been my go to since the early 90’s: tricycle.org/magazine/what-do-buddhists-mean-when-they-talk-about-emptiness/). We confront a deep spiritual journey for me when, after a painful divorce, I started reading a C.S. Lewis book called The Screwtape Letters.

This is a book about a demon training his nephew in the art and skill of ruining people’s lives and moving them over to the dark side. We moved to the chapter where Screwtape is convincing his human subject that tomorrow he will wake up and he will get his to do list done and he will give this subject a sense of euphoria and peace knowing that the next morning he’s going to get up and walk through all the things on his list. Well, the next morning the things don’t get done and the subject moves on with his day going “oh well that’s never gonna happen today, but tomorrow yes it’s coming.”

The next night the demon then reinforces the sense of “I’m going to change the world tomorrow” and that embedded futuristic desire is deeper in his subconscious. So C.S. Lewis states in this chapter that this is the most powerful act of persuasion that this demon has over humans which is to make them believe that down the road these things will happen and it’s almost like a drug that he offers but in the end that person is just procrastinating. Lewis said this is the demon’s most powerful weapon to move humans into a do-nothing state of mind: procrastination! So when Jim Cohn and I were writing and recording the lyrics, pretty much live to a scratch acoustic guitar track, we were talking about The Screwtape Letters and trying to describe what it was like. In part one, we get to feeling that. At the end the lyric goes “In my head… nothing is me.” Interestingly there were more verses interspersed with the hook “talk about the emptiness.” It was hard to edit down the ones that actually ended up in what I call part one.

So, in the last verse of part one we talk about a gully—water running down. We talk about “it’s all in the sound.” This lyric relates to my many trips to Harbin Hot Springs in Lake County, solo or with Jim, starting in the 80s. There’s one section of the hike that is quite steep up to this meditation dome at the top of the property, and during the rainy season, the water comes down very hard. This is where the last verse of part one ends before coming into the instrumental bass solo section. The bass solo ends with a breakdown of loud modeled distortion. This section, which is a big part of the sound design, composition, and inspiration, is to meld what we’ve heard in the spoken word and try to find “what does that feel like musically.”

Interestingly, for this whole writing session for the music of Procrastination, we had a very old Vox bass guitar with a distortion pedal built in and we did this solo trying to emulate water running down the gully. While recording this with Adam Weiss (one of the incredible engineers and associates at Prairie Sun) and a huge contingent of room and close microphones, maybe five amplifiers with an old Leslie speaker and M/S miking techniques. We had an old Vox guitar amplifier that decided right there on the downbeat of the last chord to blow up literally in real time. It started making very strange sounds and you can hear this cacophony and it just swells up and abruptly stops. Thus ends part two.

In part three, we go into “my eyes glimmer under the blue light “ with Kate Van Horn, an amazing artist working at the studio at the time (which is a very common story of what a desperate engineer/producer will do: you see somebody at the studio and on their off time ask them to contribute to your project). Musically it is an (in my opinion) almost over-done repetition of the same line over and over trying to honor the blue light closing my eyes and emptying my mind. Kate Van Horn does four different harmonies, some ambient, some dry, some echoed until we get to the part where the lead singer joins. We have a tamboura (which relates to my education at the Ali Akbar College of Music, a recurring influence through the whole album) droning through the build of this section. At this point this young man has gone through some catharsis and an awakening occurs! This relates to my own life hen, in my 20s, I met an Native American chief whose tribe had been displaced from my rural area of northern Illinois to the desolate Rio Grande by the US government. His name was Chief Eagle Feather, and he introduced to me the life-saving concept of meditation.

As we finish part three we come to the realization, based on a reading by Deepak Chopra that influenced me, that when we start with attention and end with intention we combine them to make a difference and change to achieve goals. Musically, what follows is an affected voice and a very interesting sound design where we took the original drum parts and placed them, edited, underneath the spoken word part about using words/images of laser focus and energizing. We then go into the chorus choir and we do another breakdown with a very weird vocal tone on the hook: talk about the emptiness.

Part four is the ride-out with no more breakdowns: yea! After a very strong fanfare-oriented stanza we do a classic rock-n-roll Ray Charles/James Brown-influenced vocal scat which answers the choir chorus line “talk about the emptiness.” It is almost like a chorus that Prince might write. It’s all about the groove at this point which, in my opinion, feels fantastic. So as this Little Richard-inspired guy goes “yeah yeah” we hear him just let go and it ends up as a very interesting story based on inclusion. I was in the control room with our amazing engineer, Matt Wright, who actually engineered this project with us. Jim Cohn, Jay Klein, and Jeff Sloan were there as well. We had just one open mic in the control room and I was humbly emoting this vibe and it was so nurturing to have these people with me, experiencing a real moment in time. The long production of all these recordings, which was a very inclusive-oriented situation at Prairie Sun, typically occurred when we could find the time to get Jim to come out from Colorado.

Growing up in Illinois, I was, and still am, a huge fan of the Beatles. One song in particular has always killed me, and I am not ashamed to say that I was deeply influenced by “Hey Jude,” so on the third call and response you hear me go “Judy, Judy, Judy.” I am of the opinion that Paul McCartney was doing his rendition of a soul singer from the United States testifying. He was imitating Cary Grant as a cultural icon or bookmark to his own experience. So my humble “Judy, Judy, Judy” got in there and the trance-groove fixes me in that this ride-out, rock-n-roll moment is a release to a certain enlightenment and realization that only rock-n-roll can move us from our normal existence to a state where we are transcending, grooving and dancing, as we did thousands of times while working on this track. I think it drove a lot of people nuts!

I am going to finish now. I have been trying to explain a lot of the concepts of the song, Procrastination. I can’t express enough the importance of that chorus/hook line, “talk about the emptiness.” It is pop-meets-ironic-shout-out to the culture of our American music and how we can let go and let it flow. The chorus line is THE gateway if you are grooving. “Talk about the emptiness.” Forget your troubles. Let go.

Please read the tricycle article based on Buddha’s teachings.

An amazing journey from a very sad procrastinating young man to a spiritual awakening through meditation and then reconnecting with his rock-n-roll-Sunday-night-Sullivan-show-meets-the-Beatles beginnings which changed my life, I think, for the better.