you need a sympathetic partner

Having a child is a twist of the tourniquet of bound time. Feel that pinch? Long gone are the dawdling days, the staring out the window, waiting for what might come. You’re a hunter now, flushing words like birds from the bushes they hide in. You can't afford to idle. To invent is to charge ahead. Finally the protagonist in your life’s story is an active agent.

If you are a parent still trading in the inefficiencies of artistic creation, you understand. Please include me in your prayers.

It is only the presence of a sympathetic partner that makes this a tenable prospect. And it is the purpose of this little entry to celebrate this, my sympathetic partner.

Randa Newman had a birthday this week, which provided the occasion for me to marvel again at what I call her powers of compulsion. Powers I never had.

She asks, they respond.

After her beauty — the soul-revealing smile, the curve of hip — It’s what drew me to her in the first place. Is it that we seek what we lack? Probably so. Whether it’s the introversion or an absence of charisma, I have never been able to organize social capital like her.

For instance, a day before her birthday she scribbled a note about the time and place of her party — a local spot near our house — took a picture of it, and texted it to a few friends. This was the result:

Who can do that? Not me.

And this after a month working together on another of our projects: a music video for my new song Meet Me at the End of the World (out March 18). You could put a kid through a public university for what we spent on this thing, but what an incredible experience. And Randa was compass, anchor and fusion reactor. She took the director’s vision and coordinated the three locations and the fifty people who worked on it, sat with the editor to cut it together (all with a baby on her person), and still had the emotional presence of mind to cry at the final cut.

When I asked her why she was doing this — taking on this enormous project while simultaneously wrestling the schedule-nonschedule of raising a breast fed baby — she looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Because I believe in you.”

I’m not sure I ever had anyone who believed in me like that.

If you want to meet Randa and Zuzu and be closer to our world, come to this show Saturday in Nashville. Feb 15. tickets.

It’s the celebration of my return to music and the launch of the first of several new singles this year. I’m playing a full band set, last week’s podcast guest Abby Jane is playing a set and last last week’s guest Carl Anderson is also performing. Ryan Rado (listen to his great episode) is doing some live immersive painting in the audience, and finally, with director Mila Vilaplana’s blessing we're screening the video for Meet Me at the End of the World on the big screen. It’s going to be an exciting night for us creatively, but it’s also a conscious move on our part — Randa, me — to continue growing this community of independent creatives. It’s important to both of us to have regular physical gatherings — people in a room together, mixing it up, seeing what happens. Everything good that happens in your life has to do with being in the same space as another vibrating human being.

When we talked about the music video over dinner last week, we noticed that a large part of the joy was the working together — with each other, with everybody who came together to bring it to life. The end result is absolutely beautiful, and we are all proud as hell. But when I watch it, I think about setting Zuzu down in the car seat at Vu in its airplane-hangar-sized room and its three story tall LED screen. I think about Mason and Emma rehearsing in the studio where we tape the podcast, with the choreographer counting the steps seven-eight ballchange.. I think about talking the grip's ear off about Russian literature because I found out from the gaffer he was a big reader.

It’s the people that matter in the end.

If you’re a fan of our podcast you might be interested to know Randa is taking over as host for this week’s episode, out Thursday. She’s the host and I’m the guest. It was her idea. "I want to ask you some questions," she said, "in a professional context." So I put on a tie and sat on the side of the table opposite from where I usually do and answered as best I could. She learned some stuff about me she didn’t know. We laughed, it got tense, there were a few tears. A distillation of our marriage in 50 minutes. Here’s a moment I grabbed from last night, of her recording the intro.

Before I met Randa I think my priorities were not quite right. Making art was the supreme purpose of life. As Steven King puts it in On Writing — I thought that life was a support system for art. I don’t think that now. It’s the other way around. Art supports, but life is the point.

She showed me that.