Wabi Sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. -- From Wabi-Sabi by Leonard Koren
Way back in the spring of 2009 there were a few months when the title for my new album was not going to be Astral Law, but American Wabi-Sabi. Yeah, I know -- phew! the good guy won. But I had my reasons. I had gotten a lot of "huh?"s to my first two CDs and I didn't really want any more, and I thought that maybe part of the problem was that I hadn't given enough clues in the titling and packaging to help anybody know how to approach the music inside.
I don't know where I first heard about Wabi-Sabi, but it was something that I immediately related to. I guess it was a eureka moment, but not in the sense that I suddenly found direction for my work, but more that I found that there was a name for the feeling I had for music already. Since then I learned a little about it by reading Leonard Koren's book Wabi-Sabi. I haven't studied Wabi-Sabi or anything like that. That's one of the reasons that I had "American" in the title -- I didn't want anybody to think that I thought I was some kind of learned Wabi-Sabi agent -- and I wanted to preempt any detractors that would have chastised me for not adhering to the word of the tradition. Plus, it is a particularly American music -- as long as you consider Manhattan part of America. Anyway, the name never sat right with me because it was too heavy and too... well it seemed like titling a bunch of tunes American Wabi-Sabi was like hiring a bulldozer to squash a bug. A bit much, maybe.
You might say that the title of this particular tune today is similarly overdoing it. Obscure, perhaps. Highfalutin and hoity-toity. Well, too bad! Look, it's just one track -- and names of songs are more easily forgiven than names of albums. You don't have to look at the name of a song on an album's spine. And in this case, it being on the internet and all, you don't have to put anything on your shelf to bug you with a fancy title at all! But I evade.
Bottom line is that the title fits the piece. American Wabi-Sabi or no, I still am invested in the idea of providing a frame for the music. I do want to offer some context to anyone who wants to know more about it. I'm not gonna hit anybody over the head though-- that would be boring, and downright rude. If not legally actionable. But I would like people to "get" what I do. Everybody wants people to get what they do.
Moving on... there are a few other things I'd like to mention.
The guitar pictured in the cover art above was built by my friend Al Dulberg (Alex to most), who passed away some 14 months ago. He built it when he was fifteen at a summer camp for would-be luthiers. He was the youngest guy there by probably 10 years. He casually gifted the guitar to me -- as was his wont -- when I was probably seventeen or so. I'm sure I appreciated it at the time, but unfortunately my seventeen-year-old self didn't take proper care of it, and it was exposed to the cycle of seasons and house heating for the next 18 years.
All that time we remained close friends. In my much more reflective thirty-fifth year (or so), around the time my wife and I were planning our wedding (which would be hosted at Al's house), I came upon the guitar and felt deep regret at its condition. I showed it to Al and apologized for my neglect. It's odd, but I don't remember the part that happened next, though that it happened is guaranteed by family members and logistics. Al took the guitar back to fix up himself, in his workshop, for me.
He died of an undiagnosed heart condition before he got to fix it. After his death, I found out from his family that the guitar was sitting on a shelf in his garage, and they gave it back to me. It was in even worse condition than when I had turned it over. In addition to the big split down the middle of the back, the wood had gotten more cracked and warped all around. I realized that it was not going to be repairable -- not within my budget at least -- and it certainly wouldn't be restored to playing condition. But that wasn't all -- one more trauma lay ahead.
The guitar had no case, and, back home, I wasn't sure about what I was going to about storing it. I really didn't know what to do about the guitar at all. I put it in my closet, lightly held in place between some coats and the wall. One day, after I had the guitar back maybe a month, I pulled a small box out of the bottom of my closet, not realizing that the guitar was propped on top of it. There was a terrible bang. The wood was so brittle that a six inch drop was enough to cause the splitting of the soundboard that you see in the image above.
Since then, though, something strange has happened. I don't look at the guitar and see evidence of my youthful neglect of a valuable gift, and I don't see evidence of a chaotic and fragile existence in the new damage. I don't even see a guitar. I see a beautiful wreck, and I remember my lost friend as a high school kid, and as the friend he was for all the years after, and as the man who was going to fix it out of his love for me. It's had the hell beat out of it, but it still exists, and I have it in my possession -- a cherished work of art.
