Nova Ahead 7

So maybe it was a mistake to talk about my teeth, though it did make my grandmother laugh, which at the end of the day, I will consider a win. I say this only because now I’ve got some folks counting their own teeth, and everyone has significantly more than I do, so any commentary I’ve received has been that of incredulity. I do appreciate you all receiving my being so candid with you on a variety of things, so I guess that’s just part of the territory. I burned a few Christmas trees last night and I still smell like smoke, it’s a satisfying result of a satisfying tradition; those things go up so fast, and there isn’t anything quite like standing around a fire and looking up into the moon. The light made on the ground and the light in the sky as two points in the dark, the first a combustion and the second a reflection. That is actually a pretty great way to look at expression in the face of such monumental histories of creative work, and in this day and age, we have unlimited access to it all, and in some cases, it’s impossible to avoid the onslaught of creative output coming from all directions via our 24 hour social media drips. And since we can broadcast anything at any time, how do we know that our lenses are properly focused, and we aren’t just engaged in spinning our own wheels? You can be pretty proud of making a decent fire, but when you look up at the moon, how can you compare those lights?

So Mike Roberts. Have you seen this guy? I honestly cannot remember how I met him, we were likely put on a show together in the mid to late 2000s, and he is just so affable, how could I resist? He’s a beautiful human, quick with a joke, and quicker to be helpful and understanding even in a situation where you wouldn’t expect it. His voice though, holy mackerel; it’s half depression era hobo, half journeyman doowopper; I would listen to him sing product jingles. He rides the cry break like a surfer on the locals only beach. The “cry break” is a staple of country music, where a singer elongates or breaks in the middle of a note to mimic being racked with emotion, usually going into falsetto. I believe this is a connection to some of the origins of country and Appalachian music in the Middle East. That wild yodel has a lot in common with the sounds of the muezzin calling folks to prayer from minarets, and ships with hyper-diverse crews bounced all around, and these crews shared music and instruments. This is how these influences end up inexplicably sown into disparate communities all over. People travel, and people communicate, and when you combine these two truths and multiply them by the vast numbers of humans who have moved (and been moved) throughout time and across any multitude of distances and places, no weird sound should seem completely illogical; curious, sure, but there is always a trail of breadcrumbs back to a source. I bring this up because Mike Roberts traveled to Inner Mongolia some years ago and fell in with folk musicians there. Sometimes I feel like I can hear a twang with a footnote when he’s singing; a quick flourish that may be a snapshot of some late night under what must have felt like a different moon. 

I think maybe I get too carried away looking up there, and I know it isn’t made of cheese, I mean I have a scientific mind to an extent. But I also know that I’m never going to the moon. Its light is an improbable reflection of the fiery sun, and all I can really do is marvel at it. I try to focus on the fire that I can build, but sometimes I do envy the ancient cultures that could only wonder. Michael Roberts has left and returned, absorbing old sounds in both hemispheres and somehow made them his own. He has built a sound fire that shines like the moon; this is an enviable result to a task that can lay stretched out in front of you forever. The light we see in space is old but the feelings we take from it are new, and we strive to make something here on the ground that might light the time ahead of us; we’re all making little time machines that may never succeed. Even these essays may just end up in the recycling, or as lonely unclicked links; but I like to think they reach you out there. Michael Roberts will be playing on the Nova Stage for the start of our new Livestream Series on Friday January 8th, tune in to hear some great songs, and I’ll sit down for a quick interview with him afterward. We’ll be featuring different performers each week with interviews, so keep checking out novaarts.org for updates, new essays, and videos.