When we lived in Yonkers NY, my family had a terrier mix named Casey, a loving sweetheart of a dog, but (it must be said) none too bright. They say in the newspaper business that “dog bites man isn’t news, but man bites dog is”; my family would add that “car hits dog isn’t news, but dog hits car is.” And that’s how we best remember Casey: As perhaps history’s first dog to upend the dog/car power balance. If Casey saw a quarter-inch of daylight between the front door and its jamb, she was off like a bolt, up the sidewalk or out into the street. This particular day it was the latter, and, though lucky enough to be too late to meet the front of the minivan whizzing down Frederic Street, she was nonetheless precisely on time to pound its side panel with her quizzical little face.
As these things do, it all happened so fast—the thud, the squeal of brakes, the driver running back to ground zero—that it took some time for us to realize that Casey’s inert form at our feet had been undone not by being hit, but by literally walking into a door-- although in fairness both she and the door were moving much faster than usual.
Anyway, as we tried in vain to coax some signs of life out of her, and wondered if there was some kind of 911 for dogs, we assured the driver that it wasn’t her fault, and braced ourselves for the worst. Then, like a scene from Finnegan’s Wake for Dogs, Casey lifted her head and bolted off like she’d just remembered that she was supposed to be making a break for freedom. Thunderin’ Jaysis.
Because of all those escape attempts, the other thing I remember about Casey (maybe this is true of all dogs; I haven’t had one since) was that she clearly thought that, as long as she couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see her; and if she didn’t want to hear you calling her, she wouldn’t.
I thought of Casey as I scrolled down my Twitter homepage recently. I follow @AdviceForWriters. It’s mostly quotes from famous authors about good writing habits, how to create memorable characters, that sort of thing; I’ve often thought that anyone glancing at my Twitter page would find it odd for a musician to be interested in advice about writing. But recently it dawned on me that only I can see my homepage: Everyone else sees their own homepage. (I know, I know, that’s Twitter 101 but new things I learn shove out the old things I used to know. Also, let’s not forget that I figured this out faster than Casey ever did.)
Since we’ve come this far, I’ll tell you how I had planned to answer, should it have ever come up, the question “why AdviceFor Writers?” Because, if you replace “writer” with “musician” or “songwriter,” and “writing” with “music” or “song,” a lot of it translates perfectly. Examples [brackets show my edits]:
- A problem with a piece of [song]writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk. HELEN DUNMORE
- A good [album] title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious. WALKER PERCY
- One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words [lyrics] for thoughts. SAMUEL JOHNSON
At the height of Four to the Bar’s destructive powers, our basic schedule included a four-hour Sunday afternoon gig at Peggy Gordon’s in Woodside, followed by a clamber into the back of a van and a deathwish thrill ride to Bay Ridge or McLean Avenue in the Bronx, where we played a second four-hour gig. (Somehow I still look back fondly on this period of my life; I’m sure the complimentary beer helped.) But once in a rare while we’d have a Sunday night free. I remember one of those nights, with the afternoon gig done, the gear packed up, and I standing amid the throng in Peggy’s, listening to Tommy Goodwin blasting out a set of reels, and having this feeling of... just… rightness, and optimism, and completeness, like all the angles among the walls, ceilings, and floors of the room had suddenly corrected to 90 degrees.
Tommy is a talented musician and, as Dame Edna might say, a fine example of his type, but it’s unlikely that anyone ever called him “the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion,” as someone at the New York Times apparently did about Eileen Ivers and the fiddle. My point being, the sense remains that my thrill came from the music itself. I turned to Jane and asked something like “How could anyone not love this? Isn’t Irish music the best kind there is?” If it helps, I’m embarrassed to admit this; if it helps more, it seemed silly even immediately afterwards, to make such a myopic statement. But in that moment, the words felt right, and that’s what came out.
This all came back to me as I read “How Broadway Conquered the World,” an article by Clive James in this month’s Atlantic. James’ insightful, witty article is about the Broadway musical as an art form, but I found myself underlining a lot of it and writing “Irish Music, too” in the margins.
Like most musicians, my tastes are broad; even within the western folk tradition, I love music from Texas to Cuba to Catalonia. But there seems to be something about the Irish musical idiom, whether the music originates in Ireland or merely passes through the place, that enables it to (to borrow one of James’ phrases) “cross the globe without a passport.” You’ll find Irish pubs and Irish bands in just about every nation that allows alcohol and music; the same can’t be said of (say) the Russian equivalents.
I think back on these transcendant musical moments, when the words or sense of “I love this” come unbidden, and now I wonder if the feeling is in fact less like loving than being loved, by something larger than one’s self. And, like the other kinds of love—philia, agape, romantic love, divine love, even canine affection—it’s something better experienced than examined. James again: We fall for the music that touches us “because of its inherent enjoyability, and not because of what can be brought to it by way of explanation.” With good songs, “some alchemy of words and music, some enchanted something or other, benumbs the critical powers.”
Science thinks it has identified the part of the brain that perceives music (for that matter, science also thinks it’s found the neural neighborhood where God lives). So what is it about “The Mason’s Apron,” played at a speed sufficient to lift small aircraft, that makes me feel simultaneously like I'm at one with the universe and like I want to play air bodhran? A musicologist and/or neurologist would be able to answer, no doubt. But I’m not sure I’m ready to hear.