A New Release!
Officially announcing the newest Pharaoh’s Daughter album release this June… “Songs of Desire…” and the final push of its 18 year labor, merging timelines into albums past.
Album Artwork by Siona Benjamin
I’m sitting in the basement of my brother’s and sister-in law’s house in Hillside, NJ. It’s Saturday night after the first days of Passover and I just approved the final master of my new Pharaoh’s Daughter album.
Songs of Desire, produced by Omer Mor, will be a part of Zorn’s Spectrum series on Tzadik Records in June.
Ironically, it is the time of year in the Jewish calendar when the full ‘megillah’ of Song of Songs, the inspiration for this album, are chanted in synagogues all over the world.
These songs are a celebration of sensual awakening and love as metaphor for liberation, just at the time of year when blossoms are opening. It would have been the perfect time to release this collection, a body of work that has taken 18 years to finish… and it didn’t happen.
I had to let that go.
I had to let a thousand things go.
From the moment I felt that the music was settling into its skin until the April 1st deadline, I agonized over every detail of this album’s release. The anxiety clouded my judgment, and I felt little brain implosions were going off at every turn.
It’s been 12 years since Pharaoh’s Daughter put something out. I wanted it to be just so… What does that even mean?
I wanted it to be beautiful.
I wanted it to be as good or even better than my earlier work.
I wanted it to be an emotional haven for people to swim in, giving others the gift that music has given me.
But, it isn’t going to be “just so,” and honestly, thank G-d it’s not “just so.”
Da Vinci famously said,
“Art is never finished, only abandoned-”
my brother Yisroel reminded me on Yuntif, when wave after wave of regret of not choosing the right sequencing, fearfully forgetting credits, selecting the wrong version of the album cover, or a thousand other details would taunt me between the gastro-challenging olympic meals.
Da Vinci’s words, vaguely familiar, hit me hard.
For me, abandoning my art feels like choosing one baby over another.
The word abandonment for art is particularly intentional and really strong. How that has shown up in my life, how I have searched for love, and what comes through me artistically are all very intertwined.
I remember releasing Daddy’s Pockets, my first Pharaoh’s Daughter, produced by the truly gifted Richard Julian in 1999. The title song, one about a primal abandonment, made me a songwriter who could sublimate painful experiences.
(There are also love songs, traveling songs, and animal ones… all in English).
Production wise, I had begun the basic tracking in 1995. It took four more grueling years to reach the finish line. Much like this go around, every decision taunted me because it meant abandoning another.
The summer of 1998 while working on the final mixes of the album, I would lay in an outside garden every night after the sessions on my portable foam mat (in my G-d sent $275 artists loft shared with my friend Andrew Vladek) and listen to the frogs croak in the pond in front of me.
Under the stars, I processed the simultaneous birth and death of the album- and of myself- making peace with all the things it was, and all the things it wasn’t. If I wasn’t going to finish this, I would never be able to move on. Perfect is truly the enemy of good enough, and I was learning the hard way.
By January 1999, I was so relieved to release my first album. It felt amazing and I was proud of the songs, and how the production came out. I sent it to Michael Dorf. He loved it, and signed my second album to Knitting Factory Records. From there things slowly took off.
Even in the 90s, I knew I could not put myself through the decision making torture. Not worth the agony. I vowed I would move more intuitively, more gracefully… like swinging on a trapeze from the end of one idea into the next decision till I’m flying.
Out of the Reeds, produced by Anthony Coleman took about three months from beginning to end.
That was a miracle.
It was all very organic, recorded live at the Knitting Factory - magical, raw and extremely imperfect, and probably my most successful album in terms of sales and career shaping.
Anthony, the musicians and I recorded tirelessly for a short time. We celebrated every milestone along the way with Roast Duck in Chinatown, NY Noodletown. We worked hard, played hard, and left very little room for second guessing with all of our lavish dinners. No space to overthink for too long.
Despite their different gestations, with one of my “babies” being a hard labor, and the other one popping out - I truly don’t love one album more than the other.
Each piece of work after that had a different trajectory, its own birthing story…. Which brings us to this 6th Pharaoh’s Daughter album, “Songs of Desire,” 18 years in the making.
After one of the holiday meals was over, and everyone went to sleep, I did one of my before sleep rituals binge watching the brilliant late night satirists of this political landscape- Kimmel, Meyers, and Colbert.
I felt assaulted by what’s going on in the world: the war/cease fire in Iran, the major instability and theatricality of the geopolitical messaging, and most metaphoric of all - a spaceship beginning its circumnavigation to the far side of the moon…
And just like that, one mistake or regret after another about my music became increasingly more inconsequential.
It’s true that the work I’m releasing is important; and, in the scheme of things, these details don’t matter. It will be what it will be. We are blip.
I turned off the news and went to sleep. In the morning, outside on my brother’s epic front porch, I gave myself time to breathe and witness the blossoms of spring unfold in this semi-utopian orthodox enclave. I was reminded of the holiness I used to feel on holidays growing up.
In this space, I was reminded of how tight and frenetic my life is, and how there are other, more spacious ways to be in the world.
When the three day “chag” was over and the separation into regular life ritual completed, we listened to the revised masters.
This was truly the last decision to be made, and this one actually felt just right.
The levels boosted, the songs felt more spacious and impactful- even the sequencing was growing on me (minus a few glitches and regrets).
Afterwards, my brother and I researched the Da Vinci quote. Sure enough, AI confirmed that given how many famous masterpieces he left incomplete made it a compelling story for it to have been written by him, but - he never actually said those words.
The quote belongs to French poet and essayist Paul Valery. In 1933 he wrote an essay about his poem Le Cimetiere marin (The cemetery by the Sea):
“In the eyes of those who anxiously seek perfection, a work is never truly completed… but abandoned…. “
This quiet roof where doves walk to and for
Between the pines and tombs, throbs like the sea;
The noonday sun composes fire below-
The sea, the ever-recommencing sea!
O what reward after a thought’s long gaze
Is calm of gods upon a roof of blaze!
What pure work of a fine cause consumes
So much flickering lighting in the air!
What peace seems to be born of all these tombs!
When over them the noon stands still and fair,
The sea, the sea, forever re-begun,
Gives back to light it’s immaterial sun
Fair sky, true sky, look at me as i change!
After such pride after such idleness
But full of power, i give myself afresh
To this bright space, so calm and yet so strange;
The house of death is crowned with quiet flame,
And life begins beneath that blazing frame.
Yes mighty sea of delirious dreams endowed
With skins of panthers and with ancient might,
Unmoved beneath a thousand idols bowed,
The hydra drunk with its own azure light,
Biting its tail in a tumultuous ring
In a silence that the world seems echoing..
The wind is rising! We must try to live!
The vast air opens and closes my book,
The wave in powder dares to leap and give-
Fly, pages fly! I see you burst and brook
Break, waves break, with your rejoicing foam,
Rush toward the rocks toward that quiet home!
Throughout the poem, Valery analyzes and questions stillness/movement in relationship to both the cemetery and the sea. Pledging allegiance to each one becomes something to wax poetic about, examine and reconsider.
Is it the definitive finite space, or the unpredictable pages of art flying, and becoming like waves in his sea?
“We must try to live..”
We leave the artwork, and step right back into the current of life - only to begin the cycle again.
So, from this quiet suburban home, in the middle of the night approaching dawn, Congratulations to me for finally abandoning this work of art…
NOTE: Written Saturday night, but finally “released” Friday morning.. :) Letting that go too.
Can’t want to swim in the new sounds! “The sea, the ever-recommencing sea!” Loving you…