Vessels bobbing in the water
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Hello Internet
My first fully produced collection of songs released on Bandcamp this past Friday and will release on streaming apps this Friday (my first foray into that world…ugh). To celebrate the occasion/begrudgingly put on my Promoter Hat, I wanted to share a bit about each song this week leading up to the release.
Today’s post will be about the album art and track one, which gives the album its namesake.
Obligatory promotional links:
About the album art
Vessels is an 11-minute work of songs about heartbreak, perspective, and growth.
The album art features an Enso circle, which I learned to apply to artistry from Philip Weinrobe’s School of Song class on home recording. An Enso circle is drawn in one fluid motion and, with all its imperfections, is meant to be a true reflection of the artist in that moment of creation.
These songs were all recorded on a single Sunday afternoon in my home as full unbroken takes. For a long time I was paralyzed by all the advice around home recording that focused more on the production (and usually buying something). Philip’s lessons helped me simplify my process and prioritize capturing a real and true performance of the song.
It is my hope that this captured afternoon of performances is made more real by allowing the natural elements of that day into these recordings.
The touchstone for this sort of “performance over production” mindset was a video shared by Philip during the class - this performance of Wild Heart by Stevie Nicks. I think we all have a few songs like that where we keep going back to some alternate version over what got released. This is only one of many many many in that vein.
About track 1: Olenka
performed by 1 vocal and 1 classical guitar muted with a vibrakill
Olenka is the main character of an old Russian short story called The Darling by Anton Chekhov. I highly recommend George Saunders analysis of this story from his book “A Swim In The Pond In The Rain”, two insights from which I’ll share below:
First: We see most of the story from Olenka’s perspective, but by the end we learn we weren’t seeing the whole picture of who Olenka was. It’s not that she is an unreliable narrator (the story is told in third person), but even just narrating from her perspective inherently paints an incomplete picture, save for a few clues that there’s more to the story than what Olenka can see.
Second: Saunders comments on Olenka’s habit of reusing pet-names for her lovers. He puts it like this:
“We want to believe that love is singular and exclusive, and it unnerves us to think that it might actually be renewable and somewhat repetitive in its habits. Would your current partner ever call his or her new partner by the same pet name he or she uses for you, once you are dead and buried? Well, why not? There are only so many pet names. Why should that bother you? Well, because you believe it is you, in particular, who is loved (that is why dear Ed calls you “honey-bunny”), but no: love just is, and you happened to be in the path of it.”
That last line was a revelation for me, and prompted the writing of this intro-song once I realized that this was the through-line I didn’t know I was writing about. These songs about letting people and feelings move in and out of your life implied a greater natural force at work. We’re just caught in the path of it. Empty vessels, bobbing along in a river of natural forces, tipping over to both fill up and spill out the water, again and again.
Co-writing credits: A Swim In The Pond In The Rain by George Saunders; Blue Spotted Tail by Fleet Foxes