This album is not an album; it is play.
process and influence for "How Can I Possibly Sleep When There Is Music"
Friends,
If you have not yet heard, last week I announced HOW CAN I POSSIBLY SLEEP WHEN THERE IS MUSIC. A double LP of singing-poems! This record is the culmination of a process of poetic response/adaptation and musical collaboration.
While it is a record indebted to a range of influences (poetic, musical, visual, relational), it is also one that recognizes that the process of translation (language/medium) and collaboration draws these influences into new terrains and modes of expression.
The written piece below is excerpted from the liner notes of the record and is an attempt to trace the inception and shaping of its on-going process. Of course, life’s messy nexus of decisions and encounters could go back much further, but for now, I fasten a pin to a chance meeting in 2017.
In the fall of 2017, I met Beverly Glenn Copeland. He had come out to a show I was playing at Thunder and Lightning, a small tavern in Sackville, New Brunswick. Having discovered his record Keyboard Fantasies a year before, I was in awe. After the show, he greeted the band, seriously and sincerely reviewing each of our playing and recognizing the ways we interacted as a band. The next day before we were leaving town, Glenn invited my bandmate, Bianca Palmer and I to his studio. Over a couple hours, we shared stories, works in progress, and at one point, improvised freely -- myself at the keyboard, Bianca on a “spirited” drum machine and Glenn singing. During our conversation, Glenn talked about his Buddhist practice and creativity, often returning to the idea that “humans are both creators and conduits of eternal creative energies” beamed in from the Universal Broadcasting System. I started to recognize how the playfulness, calmness and incredible patience of his personality, music and spiritual practice were all one. I left that day - floating.
Arriving home after the tour, I found myself re-dedicated to my local library. After Glenn’s conversation, my interests turned towards Buddhism and poetry that reminded me of Glenn’s spirituality and playfulness.
On weekly visits to my local library, I would glide down the aisles, drawing upon any word or phrase that caught my eye. In reading, I would play my guitar, aimlessly fingerpicking or strumming. At certain times, a poem would call out. The first one was by Ryōkan Taigu, in which he described the act of meditation. I naturally played the blues. Why the blues? Because the blues is meditation. Both are meant as a way to still the mind, to allow for thoughts of overwhelming emotion to pass through oneself. Of course, at that moment, I was just reacting to the words.
Poetry and music became an inseparable practice. I would read for hours, and when a song called out, I would play. Some poems felt so comfortable as songs; not a word was out of place when I began to sing. Others began to naturally extend themselves to other songs I had been writing, blurring and unravelling into their own worlds. My aim was not to faithfully reflect the original intention of the poems, but to respond to them as they struck me. In this way, my poetic adaptations are better understood as responses or interpretations, following language and bending or modifying it to meet me in the moment of its resonance. “Reading” poetry in this way becomes a way to activate thought and expression. So much of the poetic tradition arises from this very fluidity between mediums. For a Tang dynasty poet like Du Fu, the personality of one’s brush stroke was as important as the tenor of one’s voice or the way their words carried into a song. For the Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych, tapping out rhythms with a rod helped structure the musicality of his verse. For a Zen monk like Ryōkan Taigu, his act of expression was beyond these considerations: “When you know that my poems are not poems, then we can speak of poetry”.
It is Ryokan’s gesture of non-conformity that informs this project.
This album is not an album; it is play.
It is this “play” that I recognized in Glenn’s approach to life, and this “play” that I recognized in the community of musicians I approached to improvise around these “responses” I was collecting. The band on this album consists of Alex Lukashevsky (electric guitar), Felicity Williams (voice), Josh Cole (electric bass), Anh Phung (flute), Evan Cartwright (percussion) and Phil Melanson (percussion). I like to imagine their freewheeling approach to playing as the Buddhist notion of 10,000 things - encapsulating “everything”, “vastness”, “the cosmos”. The album is a dissolve of the singer into the nebulous and shifting world that surrounds and encompasses it. For all their intensity, the improvisatory strands of the players converge as a net; an interconnection of forged paths. Speeds and slowness are only relative distinctions. I call the band the Ryōkan Band, as Ryōkan’s words unlocked this practice of responsive songwriting and playful improvisation.
There was no grand conceit in bringing together Ryōkan Taigu, Bohdan Ihor Antonych, Maria Rainer Rilke, Yosana Akiko, Du Fu, Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, W.W.E Ross, Li Bai, and La Fontaine. They were poems I came across that resonated and opened themselves up to song. It is in this shared resonance that a connection is forged. These are poems that reached me; they mirrored back thoughts of my own writing, while challenging or opening up new pathways and ways of thinking. In hindsight, the poets in this collection were fringe or cultish figures in their time, challenging the poetic tradition of their contemporaries. In their works, they share a recognition of creativity as an unknowable and spiritual force (Glenn’s Universal Broadcasting System), while also focusing on intimate relationships of friends and lovers.
While it is partially informed by translation style, the poems that I was drawn to were cutting and direct, often using conversational, unadorned language. They carry an imperative that is powerful, sincere and beautiful.
There is a context to these poems that is equally important to their understanding. But this album is an acknowledgement of the recurring universality of their sentiments. If a song resonates with you, let that be a light towards their poetry.
Yours truly,
Luka Kuplowsky
In future posts, I plan to highlight the work of many of the poets (and translators) featured on the record, providing both a sketch of their work, influence and the process of working and responding to their language.
For now, you can pre-order the record here.
photo credit: Colin Medley
(left to right) Alex Lukashevsky, Josh Cole, Anh Phung, Evan Cartwright, Luka Kuplowsky, Felicity Williams, Phil Melanson
(left to right) Luka Kuplowsky, Glenn-Copeland, Bianca Palmer
PS.
Whenever I share one of these entries I’ll give you a window into the moment of writing –more specifically, the food/drink/music/film that has filled this specific day.
Listening to the hum of the washing machine (and later Lou Reed’s The Raven)
Eating fried egg on a bed of greens (prepared by Evan Cartwright)
Drinking Coffee, black