The family jam

Great art starts at home

We’ve largely forgotten that genius only grows from rich soil, and that rich soil is almost wholly found in the initial nucleus of a family and community.

[edit: sorry for all of the subscribe buttons - a malfunction on substack today that won’t let me see them in the edit to delete. Take it as a divine sign that you really must subscribe.]

Not everyone is an artist in the sense of having a vocational calling to share their work publicly. But everyone has an artistic impulse that should be developed and used in a human, normal, daily way. It makes us human, it makes us sensitive to beauty and reality, it gives us a much richer experience of life, and it ultimately aids in helping us appreciate the artistic geniuses of our time.

In a past piece I mentioned that my inspiration as a singer-songwriter is inherently tied to the fact of my mother having been a folk singer in her late teens and still occasionally playing some of those songs at home when I was growing up, simply for the joy and pleasure of it. She and her friend were very good - but her friend got married at 18 and the rest is history. Notable is that Joni Mitchell, who arguably cut the path not only for the female folk singer but folk singers for the generations to come, is from my hometown. But we don’t come from her; she, like the many others who didn’t end up famous, grew out of the rich soil of Saskatchewan, where families and friends laughed and sang around fires in the summer, and huddled over hot chocolate together in the winter by hearths. She is a manifestation of our heritage as well as someone who cultivated it.

Along similar lines, in the winter especially, my brother and I occasionally sang together when I was back in Canada for a couple of years in between the various adventures of my life between London and Vienna and Los Angeles and various coasts in Canada.

We didn’t do it enough.

But I’m so glad we did this one, imperfectly and off the cuff one day.

And it’s a critical reminder to me today about the power of the family structure to first instil a basic joy in artistic things. Little ever grows without that first intentional and organic childhood exposure, I think.

My mom on our old, loose-keyed piano and her classical guitar, whose varnish cracked as soon as she bought it, walking home from the bus stop in the freezing Canadian cold; the time every Sunday in church with what are now regularly critiqued as “70s” hymns but which songs still fill my heart with a bit of hope and loveliness; the choir I was in that competed internationally and won, despite its humble roots in a little-known Canadian prairie city: the irreplaceable vignettes that paved the way for everything I came to love and create.

Simple and humble artistic engagement can be the kindling for a lifelong love and ability in the arts. It was the case for me, and is a piece we need to pay attention to if we want the arts to again thrive.

Parents: it doesn’t have to be perfect. Yes, I’d love for everyone to know classic literature and the joy of Haydn; but even the simplest songs and stories can ignite a child’s heart with delight in the power of words, color, and song in a way that lasts forever, especially if God has placed a gift there to be uncovered.

Here’s our years-old cover of Foy Vance’s “She Burns”:

I also adore Foy Vance’s original— “She burns like petrol-soaked paper and fireworks..”: