RPM 2020 – DISAPPEAR/REAPPEAR

RPM 2020 – DISAPPEAR/REAPPEAR

I finished the goal of writing an album in the month of February. Wouldn’t have happened without the encouragement from my wife and friends – Katyraven, Particle Dots, Smokey VW, Bud, Mungo and a few others. 

The original album concept was to create a musical soundscape based on a diptych that my artist/painter wife Katyraven created for her most recent exhibition “Portals Unseen”. I wanted to create a soundtrack for her installation and the soundtrack project grew as her work continued to develop. 

I wanted to replicate her two canvases that were staged in a corner at 90 degrees from one another, touching at the edge of two separate canvases, as if folded and pulled apart. It has a symmetry not quite similar to a Rorschach Test, with ink blobs folded on a sheet of paper, but almost. They were created as a diptych that was inspired by the idea of Quantum Entanglement.

I began my soundtrack ideas with an intro and an outro that mimicked her two canvases, and mimicked each other. First track and the last track of the project. It was exciting how the two pieces evolved.

Simultaneously the RPM Challenge arrived in February 2020, and several of my fellow collaborators and I were immediately reminded of a very special friend, Michael Marquesen, who’s loss we suffered in October 2019. 

This RPM Challenge has been a difficult one, feeling his absence but also feeling his presence. That inspired me to create the next 2 tracks – Disappear and Reappear, to be arranged in a similar Rorschach test format. Second track and second to the last track. 

I continued to modify my initial musical concepts of Katyraven’s installation, her well developed ideas of portals that connect us to spiritual destinations, and my thoughts of my connections with Michael beyond this life. I thought about Jesus, his death, his burial, his resurrection. His promise to return. Disappear/Reappear has a new meaning that I can relate to this project.

The Broom Stands was written the night that everyone, including my wife, was standing brooms in the kitchen because the planets aligned and some people thought this was unique, or divine maybe? We had brooms standing in our kitchen until morning. Inspiration. I’ll take it when it comes.

Still thinking about Jesus and this project (that seems to include so many seemingly unrelated ideas), I thought about how the hammer and the nail worked together in the crucifixion, to make it happen, hence, The Nail Is The Hammer’s Friend. Deep thoughts, for sure. 

My creative mind considers everything that had to happen before we have that eternal gift. The suffering, the loss, the sadness that comes with it. I believe that there will be a reward in the end. We were promised. I’m trying to depict all these things in a single album that I wrote in a month. I’m still trying to understand it, but regardless what anyone thinks of my creative process or my beliefs, this album is dedicated to my friend, Michael Marquesen, who was a musician’s musician, a generous and inventive guy that continues to inspire me beyond this life. I pray we meet again.