I go about my business, mostly here in New York, traveling from mid-town to downtown and back up again, often to Brooklyn, less often to Hoboken or Queens. There is a family that lives across the street, and a sweatshop too, there’s a police station next door and further down the block a halfway house, a Chinese/Mexican take out and an off Broadway theater center.

Sometimes it seems as if things, like writing a group of songs or getting groceries, are dealt with more or less on a day to day basis, as they come up, each reacted to only at the time as they demand to be, and that there is no plan or direction or overall consideration of where things are leading.

But of course that’s not true, there are little decisions made every minute, and the cumulative effect is to define what later appears to be a conscious plan, with an emotional center and compass.

I ask myself when I finished this record—Are these songs unified by any particular concern or feeling? Is there a “story” here? Why did it turn out this way? Is this a rehab record? A breakup record? A 9/11 record? None of the above seemed like obvious candidates, or maybe they seemed too obvious, but I’m often the last one to hear about such things, as I am too close to it and can’t see the forest for the trees.

There was indeed love, anger, sadness and frustration. There were two wars, one out of revenge and the second to consolidate oil interests. Along with many others, I did my best to stop the second one, but it seemed inevitable and the misdirected legacy of a nation still reeling.

Many of these new songs began as melodic fragments. In the past I would often begin songs based on improvised textures and grooves, adding melodies and then later on I’d write lyrics to fit. But this time I began carrying a little micro-cassette recorder with me in my backpack, and if a tune popped into my head I’d hum it, wordlessly, into the mic, wherever I was. I eventually accumulated a number of these cassettes and then after some months played them back and figured out what chords and structures could support these melodies. Some were originally sung in Glasgow, some in London and most in New York. Much of the unscrambling of these coded messages to myself was done in Tunis, at the house of some friends who kindly left me alone in the afternoons and early evenings.

So, without seeming to have made a decision, my creative path was already being laid out for me.

Working from these fragments, from the “top down”, led to what I felt were more organic and possibly heartfelt melodies than those limited by grooves, which by nature are usually based on a few chords, and that was something I was maybe too used to doing. Therein lies the danger—getting into a creative rut, and doing things that are well crafted, familiar, but disconnected, merely well done. So, better to go into unfamiliar territory and risk getting it wrong rather than doing what is easier but possibly untrue. This, I decided, would have been my unconscious decision.

So, that’s the process—and it did lead somewhere.

What’s with the 2 opera arias? Who gave me permission to try that?

“Un Di Felice” is from La Traviata, which I saw while we were on tour in Australia. I’d heard some opera tunes before, and though my favorite cosmic mood piece was always Parsifal, seeing “Un Di Felice” sung live I realized how this was one of those instantly memorable arias, a three minute piece which was one of the ancestors of Western pop songs. I realized they didn’t require the coloratura and extreme vibrato commonly identified with contemporary operatic singing—they could be incredibly moving simply as songs, which is what they are.

And for me they, like the wordless singing I did on The Forest many years ago, these were the opportunity for an emotional release and catharsis—one that opened a door that allowed some of the other songs to be written.

After the tremendous release of doing the first aria I thought to myself “one is going to seem an aberration, I need to do another one-how about “Au Fond Du Temple Saint?” It was a piece I’d heard years ago and loved.

The words are, as far as I can tell: consist of two guys getting all mushy and excited over a woman who has just entered their field of vision. Not very profound stuff, but the tune is thrilling. I had interviewed Rufus Wainwright for the PBS show “Sessions at west 54th”, so I knew he was an opera fan, and might be amenable to joining me in this risky venture, and he was. Having grown up in Montreal he was also able to help me with the French pronunciation, which was handy.

Barber added some nice non-traditional touches—accordion and prepared piano, but mostly we kept the music pretty much as written, though we sang it pretty much in our normal voices.

On my last record strings played a prominent part, they were a big part of the sound and the “idea”, and I hoped that I could tour with a small section to represent this new direction. Eventually, seeing that budget permitted it, I stuck with one group—the Tosca Strings. It was fun, on some nights it sounded glorious, I didn’t lose money, and in the course of touring I managed to push the idea further—I continued to add more songs, and I thought to myself, “I should take this further on my next record.”

The strings combined with the band (which is essentially a percussive rhythm section with me occasionally playing guitar) brought out an emotional richness in the new songs and even in the old ones. This seemed to be a perfect expression of what I was feeling personally—a sort of twisted sentimentality and romanticism. (Romanticism in the classical sense, not all songs were about love or relationships). And combined with the physicality of the bands’ grooves and swing it really all made sense to me. It seemed a meeting of apparent opposites, something that I’d begun to explore on my last record, inspired by such disparate sources as ’s recent records and the Philly soul records I grew up with. I knew I couldn’t make records like either of those models, but I saw in them ways that these two polar extremes, at least to Western ears, could be brought together.

It was really nothing new. Pop musicians had been doing it for decades, but I saw it maybe as a way to reconcile my own personal demons…so I hoped I’d find my own personal way to do it. I purposely decided to keep the same approach I had on my tour, to integrate the strings and the other arranged instruments as part of the band, rather than just using them as icing and sweetening. Since the band was mainly a rhythm section there would be lots of sonic space for the other stuff to be heard.

The Tosca Strings have been working in Austin for years. I heard some recordings they’d done of tangos, which were great but only told part of their story. I was told that rather than performing these tangos in the expected chamber format, which would be within the usual classical or academic venues, they decided to put this music in its original context, in a rock/country club. So, once a week, on Thursday nights, they performed at the Continental, a club that is usually a home to Texas rock, swing and country music. Glover Gill, the instigator and tango obsessive behind all this, was a veteran of local punk bands and of the wide-ranging Austin music scene, so this kind of leap may not have been as surprising there as it would have been elsewhere. And it worked, the dancers and listeners came and soon it became a weekly event.

While down there recording them for this record I saw and witnessed some of their other pursuits—at a club on 6 th St. in Austin they organized an evening of performances of short pieces all written by local musicians and composers—ranging from pieces by members of Trail of Dead to others by The Golden Hornet Project. And then on another night Pat Dillett and I saw them accompany a Finnish surf/klezmer guitarist/singer calling themselves the She Devils. Sometimes they play in the Austin symphony. It all fits. In NY this would be extraordinary, newsworthy, but in Austin it’s sort of typical.

Mauro Refosco plays percussion and mallet instruments, and I’ve worked him since the mid 90’s when we recorded and toured together. Since then he’s worked with an amazing array of New York musicians and composers. Bill Frizell, Vinicius Cantuaria, and most recently he and Smokey Hormel have a joyous thing called Forro In The Dark, an ongoing series of evenings of Northeastern Brazilian music at a bar on the lower east side.

I met Paul Frazier when I was working on my last record. Previously I knew he’d worked with the revamped Chic and then Imani Coppola. He became an invaluable musical ear both on the road and in the studio, able to pinpoint potential problems and stuff that was bad bad, as opposed to good bad.

During all this time, I dreamt.

Bread Shoes

I’m in a public toilet, about to piss in the toilet or urinal, which has flooded somewhat, so there is water on the floor, and I have to step in it to pee. As I do so I can feel dampness on my feet, the water has begun to soak through—which I now realize is not unusual, as my brown slip-on shoes are actually made of bread. The shoes are like the inside of a small loaf of crusty bread, but the bottom is now soaked and about to fall apart.

Animals Do Know.

I dream that the cats, my daughter’s cats, can actually understand everything I say. And have been able to for many years. Therefore they know that I’ve been saying they’re retarded, or stupid, or crazy—that means they also know what I think of them—they go on as if they don’t, but they do. This secret knowledge eats at them and makes them even more crazy than they were to begin with. The effort they make to maintain appearances, to keep up the pretense of geniality and routine, is sometimes just too much for them, which is why they sometimes lash out at me, or at others, for no apparent reason.

Narrow escape

Los Angeles suburbs. I park my car, a matte black mustang, in a dirt parking lot, and walk down an enclosed passageway to a house to visit some friends. One of the “friends” is Carrie Bradshaw, not the actress, but her TV character—another is her sometime TV boyfriend, Mr. Big.

I see a large brown and beige mottled German Shepard come sniffing at the screen door and then disappear—and for some reason I am sure this is a drug sniffing dog and that it will return soon, this time accompanied by plainclothes cops. I myself don’t have any drugs, and I assume Carrie and Big don’t either—but maybe there are other “friends” there, or maybe Carrie did a line or 2 at a recent party she attended and there are miniscule remnants on her leather coat. Who knows, I only know they’re coming back.

So, I warn everyone, and I say I’ll grab what I can and see them outside, or elsewhere. I grab my laptop, and Carrie’s, which looks identical to mine and is next to it, both of them are in neoprene bags, and I head out, down the little passage to the dirt parking lot.

As I am getting in my matte black car I see the dog and the swat team heading down the alley/passageway and realize my “friends” are busted…the fact that they have nothing is irrelevant…conventional wisdom tells us that the police do what they want.

Faceless Denouement

Either I have misplaced my laptop coming out, or maybe I left it by a tree while loading the car, or I left it there when entering the house and I never actually brought it in—I now realize it’s missing, and of course, it’s my life. Looking around, I notice it nearby, leaning against the trunk of a tree, looking slightly disheveled.

It’s intact, more or less, though even from a distance I can see that someone has opened the black neoprene case and didn’t close it afterwards. Looking at it closer I realize that the screen has been neatly removed, it’s blank…as has been another the touch pad, and something else that goes in the slot on the side has also been removed. I can’t see any damage though, the removal of these parts was clean and surgical…but there is no way to use it now, it’s lost its “face”.