Adorning the Dark: Week 7

"Art nourishes community. Community nourishes art." Andrew's been saying this for years, and I've seen beautiful ways that's played out in his relationships, in the Rabbit Room community, and in some of my friendships, also. I hope you have, too. Let's talk about that.

After the low sales of Love & Thunder ... I got the fated phone call that I was being dropped.

Oh, how I wished Rich Mullins were still alive, just to have someone to talk to. I didn't want to be worried about money. I wanted to be a barefoot vagabond musician who laughed his way through trouble and sang about Jesus to whomever would listen. But when you have a wife and three babies, you can't just not think about money. ...

He said, "Andrew, I have two things I want to talk to you about. First, and I'm sorry to say this, but in the light of the sales of your last album, we're not going to renew your contract for the next two. Second, I know you've been talking about writing a book—a fantasy novel, wasn't it? I spoke to a literary agent named Don who's interested, and I'd love to connect you two."

Even though I could tell he was throwing me a bone with the book contract, it was a kind gesture and I appreciated it. (As a side note, Don ended up being my agent and helped secure the publishing deal with Waterbrook/Random House for On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, so it was a very good bone the label threw.) But in the moment I was devastated.

It never feels good to fail. Even if I knew all the Sunday school answers—answers I actually believed, by the way—the truth was, a bunch of people who believed in my music did a lot of work and put a lot of money on the line to try and sell it, and there was something about it that just fell flat somehow. I wasn't a valuable enough commodity to keep on the roster. ... I can still remember the brick-in-the-gut feeling I had when the call was over, the eerie, foreboding sense that something significant had just happened which would alter the shape of my life.

Here's what I didn't tell you about that phone call.

For years I had badgered the label to let me record Behold the Lamb of God, and for years they had said no. Finally they wrote me out of the contract for it, saying that they didn't want it, and it wouldn't count as one of the required albums on my contract but if I wanted to find the money myself and release it independently, I could. The day I was dropped from the label I was standing in Osenga's backyard while he and Ben were in the basement studio recording electric guitars on "So Long Moses."

I hung up the phone, took a deep breath, wiped a tear from my eye, and walked back into the studio. The guys were probably laughing at something and didn't notice at first that my face was pale.

"I just got dropped from my label," I told them.

They stopped laughing and offered their condolences. Then after a few moments of silence someone said, "So about this guitar part. Do you want it to come in at the top of the chorus?"

And we were off and running. It was God's kindness to me that I was not only in the middle of a project and had so much work to do that there was no time to wallow in self-pity, but I was surrounded by friends, by community, by people who told me implicitly by their involvement in my life and work that this was still worth doing, label or no label. It felt so good to walk back into the basement, roll up my sleeves, and try to craft an album about Jesus.

That's community. They look you in the eye and remind you who you are in Christ. They reiterate your calling when you forget what it is. They step into the garden and help you weed it, help you to grow something beautiful.

Discussion: How has community played a role in your life and art?

While he doesn't directly mention this in his book, Andrew has an old song from Clear to Venus called "Hold Up My Arms." In it there's a line that says, "So hold up my arms / Like Moses in the desert, when the battle ran long / Hold up my arms / We can go at this together when my arms aren't strong." Have you ever experienced a time when you couldn't keep going without the help of a trusted friend? Have you been able to hold up another's arms so they can keep going?

(And did you notice that we might not have had Wingfeather—and thus this very discussion!—or Behold the Lamb if that horrible phone call hadn't happened?)

Come on over to the forum for more discussion!

TONIGHT: Behold the Lamb of God is streaming live at the Ryman! It's going to be wonderful. Get your ticket here.

Adorning the Dark: Week 6

Before we dive in today: CONGRATULATIONS to our dear Andrew—Adorning the Dark was named Arts & Culture book of the year by the Gospel Coalition! I love what they said about it. Click here to read more. (And click here for BTLOG info—Andrew's 20th annual Christmas tour is underway! And it's being livestreamed next Monday, so if your city isn't on the tour or is sold out, come to the livestream!)

And now, onward.

Here’s a strange memory: when I was a kid in Illinois I discovered a pile of shoveled sidewalk snow in someone’s front yard. At some point I decided that that snowpile needed a boy-sized tunnel dug right through the center, so on the way home from kindergarten I stopped every day for about a week and worked, though I had no idea whose house it was. After fifteen minutes or so I’d head home so my mom wouldn’t be worried. All day at school my mind was occupied with that tunnel. It wasn’t as if I had never dug a tunnel in the snow before, and I’ve often wondered why I remember this one so vividly. But there was something simple and delightful to my little six-year-old self about working at this tunnel alone, in secret, a little at a time for a whole week. The day I finally broke through to the other side I brushed the snow off my pants and stood there, mittened hands on my hips, admiring my work. Then I felt someone watching me. I turned around and saw a woman in the house at the window, peeking out at me with a kind face. She might have waved. I pretended not to see her. I was deeply embarrassed as I realized that she had probably been watching me for days.

Memories choose us. Of all the things that must have happened during my childhood—little adventures, moments of shame or joy or comfort—only a few images, like this one, rise to the surface. And they don’t just rise once. They come to me again and again as if there’s some mystery hidden in all the plainness, as if someday I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and understand why that snow tunnel is stuck in my head.

The next week as I passed the house (on the other side of the street) I noticed that the pile was gone. I’ve always suspected that the woman and her husband never intended to leave it by their driveway, but they noticed a little boy stopping to dig every day and graced me with a week of peaceful, pointless work. I wonder if it gave her something to do, someone to watch for, something to talk about with her husband at dinner during a long, featureless winter.

Earlier today I was working on a new song, alone in the house, and it felt just like digging. I wonder if someone was watching from a high window?

While the obsessive tendency can be a boon to someone with a career in the arts, the thing can come back to bite you. Because, like it or not, if you want to get paid to do this stuff you have to actually do the work. And once you realize you’re responsible for your family by either caring for the children or providing a full-time income, art—no matter how fun it was in the beginning—becomes work. It becomes a chore. It becomes burdensome. It’s suddenly so much easier to get excited about that other project that just won’t leave you alone. And so you start something new, which is natural and quite welcome. But then that gets old and you start four more new things, and you realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew and nothing gets done, least of all the project that got you going in the first place. So as much as I may gripe about my teachers and parents and the busywork I was expected to do, there comes a time for us all when we have to reckon with it. Sometimes you have to do the work even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you have to put away your wants and do what needs to be done, which really means dying to self in order to find life. This is a way of practicing resurrection. ...

Those of us who write, who sing, who paint, must remember that to a child a song may glow like a nightlight in a scary bedroom. It may be the only thing holding back the monsters. That story may be the only beautiful, true thing that makes it through all the ugliness of a little girl's world to rest in her secret heart. May we take that seriously. It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool's hope may be the best kind.

If you're called to do this sort of work, then keep those dear ones in your mind as you fight your way up the long mountain of obedience. You'll be tempted to slow down, or take an easier route—but it is only by discipline that you'll finish, and it's only in finishing that you'll be able to offer up your humble work to those weary souls who may need it.

Discussion: What stories or songs have met you in a dark night?

Do you have the trouble Andrew does in focusing on a project long enough to finish it? What do you think that's about? Can you think of any times you've been able to push through it? What helped?

Come on over to the forum for more conversation. (I love hearing from you guys. You've engaged and shared so bravely.)

Adorning the Dark: Prompt 5

"The other reason young songwriters’s songs are too long is that their songs are about five things instead of one," Andrew says in chapter 11. That's a hard impulse to control! So today we're going to practice together, using the writing exercise Andrew learned from Anne Lamott. Ready? This one is a writing prompt and a craft. ;-)

  1. Get a little notecard or a piece of cardstock, or something like that, and measure a one-inch-by-one-inch square on it. Very carefully, use the tip of a scissor to poke through the middle of that square, and then cut along the edges so that the middle square comes out. Now you have a one-inch picture frame!
  2. Choose an old family photo. (You can print one out if you can't find a scrapbook.)
  3. Put that one-inch picture frame over the photo. Move it around to see what shows up inside it. When you're satisfied (or intrigued, or inspired, or antsy to start)—
  4. Write only about what shows up in that one-inch frame.

Back to Andrew: "Don’t write about Uncle Clarence if he’s not in there. Maybe write about his shoulder there in the corner, but focus on the blurry painting on the wall in the background, or Aunt Gertrude’s pearl earring. Lamott’s point is that you can fill pages and pages with what’s in that tiny space. One thought leads to another, leads to another, leads to another, and when that string runs out you can return to the one-inch frame and find another telling element to get you running."

You can also do this without a photo! Curl your thumb and index finger into a little square (it will probably be about an inch or a bit smaller, but exactness doesn't matter too much for this). Hold that little finger-frame up and move it around. You can "zoom in" on a tree branch, on a feature of someone's face, on a part of a building or sign, on what's on the shelf, on no more than half of the dog. Doing this, like using a frame in a photo above, helps you to cut out the clutter and focus on one small thing. And once you can identify one small thing, you can write about it.

Adorning the Dark: Week 5

This week (chapters 10-11) Andrew's getting into some real nuts-and-bolts writerly advice, which I suspect we've all been waiting for. Today we'll focus on chapter 10, since there's a built-in creative prompt in chapter 11 that'll be perfect for Friday.

A song is like a spell. You learn to say it exactly right, inflect the words just so, play the thing at the perfect tempo, and then sometimes you’re truly wielding a mysterious power. The spell can then be repeated by others. You don’t even have to be there. By God’s grace, a good song can inject beauty into some unsuspecting passerby and lead them to the truth. At a concert you can see it happen: people holding still as statues, arrested by the chord progression, the musical hook, the unfolding of a story or idea, the slight modifications to each verse or chorus to keep their attention. Something as real as a tectonic shift may be happening in their magnificent souls, like the mechanism of a primal clock ticking closer and closer to the triumphant sounding of the bell in the tower, a revelation, a scattering of birds that gives them an apocalyptic glimpse of something more, something lofty and grand that reminds them how small they are, or perhaps something miniscule and profoundly intricate that reminds them of the grand mystery of their selfhood. The song is a tightrope, and the listener is inching along, enraptured by the hope and light raveling in the middle distance. Don’t, for goodness sake, distract them. Hold your breath. They’re lost in another world, peeking through the fur coats at the wintry glory of Lantern Waste. They’re holding still while a butterfly lights on an outstretched forearm. When that happens, the world falls away and you’re both a channel for and a recipient of grace.

That’s what it means to serve the work and to serve the listener. Proceed with utmost care. Whatever you do, don’t let their glasses fall off. Don’t break the spell.

“Write it like you would say it.”

I can’t tell you how many times over the years that maxim has snapped me out of whatever florid garbage I was writing. It’s a good idea to emulate your heroes, to ask yourself when you get to the bridge, “What would Paul Simon do?” Or when you’re writing a sermon, “What would Spurgeon do?” Or when you happen upon a guitar part which, miracle of miracles, sounds unique enough to try and build a song upon, to ask, “How does James Taylor get into a part like this?” Steal boldly, I say.

But most often, when I’m scribbling in a notebook the nonsense that I hope will become a not-unbearable song, when it’s late and I’m sleepy and I’m stuck, stuck, stuck, I remember those words: “Write it like you would say it.” It usually opens the door to the lyric I was looking for. It keeps me from putting on airs, which we’re all prone to do. People can spot a fake a mile away. It’s the difference between reading a speech from a podium and looking someone in the eye and telling them, “I love you.” It communicates to the listener that you’re not pulling any punches but you’re not blocking any either. “Trust me,” it says. “This might hurt, but if we make it out alive we’ll be better for it.”

Discussion: When you're casting about for a hero to emulate, what is it about your their work that speaks to you? How can emulating them help you grow? How can it keep you from growing?

Come on over to the forum for more conversation—including how you would say it.

Adorning the Dark: Prompt 4

This week's creative prompt is from Andrew himself! If you follow him on social media, you have probably seen all of the pencil drawings he's been doing lately. (If not, go give him a follow! He's on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.) Here's the sketch he did last night, along with his comments below:

https://www.facebook.com/andrewpetersonmusic/photos/a.10151538890141968/10156452129631968

So there you have it. Go Google "How to draw a tree." Pick a video and sketch away. :-) And if you post it online anywhere, tag Andrew! I bet he'd be thrilled to see you practicing your THAGS right along with him. :-)

Adorning the Dark: Week 4

This week we're reading chapters 8-9 (I just realized this morning that I forgot to include that in Friday's post!), and there is almost too much good stuff in here to cram into one sitting. So thankfully we have forums! This excerpt is from chapter 8, "The Black Box." I'm going to put some of his words in bold, just to help them stand out for discussion's sake.

So, songs require patience. Books require endurance. Songs are 100-meter dashes. Books are marathons. You have a lot more opportunity to question your sanity when you’re battling your way through the jungle of a novel for a year.

But how are they the same?

They both take work. Different kinds of work, but it’s all work.

They both require imagination—“imaging” something in your mind that doesn’t yet exist—and also creativity, which is the work of incarnating the idea.

They both require courage. That isn’t to say that I’m particularly courageous, but that I’m particularly afraid. Afraid of rejection. Afraid of failure. Afraid of ridicule. Fear is a mighty wind, and some of us merely have a creative spark.

Perhaps most important, they both require revision. And revision usually means collaboration. Whenever I talk to students, one of the key points I try to make is that their teachers aren’t crazy or cruel to make them edit and revise their papers. Author Jonathan Rogers gave me that advice on things to talk about at school visits. Not only do the kids need to learn revision, they need to hear from someone else that their teachers are right. The thing the Resistance doesn’t want you to know is that revision is the fun part. My brother, an author and playwright, is also a formidable editor. He understands story as well as anyone I know, and he delights in revision.

Once he told me that the hard part is finding the clay, the raw material of the story. It takes work to harvest clay. You have to go to a stream and grab a bucket of mud, mix it with water, sift out the rougher sediment, pour off the water, allow the moisture to seep through a cloth for days. That’s your first draft. After that you get to flop the clay onto the pottery wheel and turn it into something better than mud, hopefully something both useful and beautiful. That’s revision. Whether you’re writing a song or a story, you have to shape it and reshape it, scrap it and start over, always working it as close as it can get to the thing it wants to become. But first you need that muddy lump, the first draft.

After that, when the shaping begins, how do you know if you’re on the right track? You share it with someone. (Again, courage is a requirement.) But not just anyone. Share it with a better writer than you. Share it with someone who’ll be careful with you, who will tell you the truth in love. Sometimes you’ll thank them kindly and ignore them completely because what do they know, anyway? Other times they’ll confirm your worst suspicions, because you knew all along that something wasn’t working, but, let’s face it again, you were being lazy. You just wanted to be done. That’s the cancer. That’s the nest of roaches you have to exterminate from your story. Roll up your sleeves and kill them dead, because the world has enough bad stories. Nobody said it would be easy.

Discussion: Which of these requirements (in bold) is most difficult for you? Which is most exciting?

Andrew talks most in this passage about revision. Why do you think that is?

If your creative work is neither songwriting nor novel-writing, how would you characterize that kind of work? What does it require that is the same? What's different?

Come on over to the forum to talk about other sections of this week's reading. I can't wait to hear what stands out to you.

The stories are true.