Inside a Song: "Spirit Tree"

Content from an interview with Lawrence App about "Spirit Tree" one of 12 (+) songs on his 2007 CD Dream of Separation.

WV: Tell us about Spirit Tree? What inspired it? What influences are in it? What parts you especially like...

LA: At the time, I was reading a book of Rumi's poetry. He used the image of a tree that really moved me. It was getting into the hot time of year in Florida.

Sometimes ideas for songs, the inspiration, comes in a more impressionistic, more intuitive way, rather than specific concepts linked in a linear way.

I was feeling a certain amount of sadness and loss. And also just being worn out from trying to fix things and make them go my way; specifically with my relationship with my daughter, and my job at the community college, a number of different battlegrounds that I had chosen, and would fight. Of course you never really win at those things

Rumi's idea of a tree being a symbol of god or the spirit, as a place of refuge was my starting point for Spirit Tree.

I was also listening to an internet radio station, Radio Darvish, playing Persian music. I probably listened to it every morning for at least an hour for a couple of years.

So between Rumi's poetry, and the Persian music, a mix of Persian influences was coming in, and that was the impressionistic start of it.

Writing the Song. When I actually started writing the tune, the guitar lick that starts the song and is the motif that runs throughout. It was actually something that came out at random. Between my breaks while playing at Bahama Breeze, while noodling around on my breaks, that riff came out. I kept playing it over and over, it was stuck in my head. These things kind of came together.

I had a clear idea somewhere in me of what i wanted, but getting it to come out the way I wanted it to took a lot of work. I don't know why, some tunes just come out easily, other ones just take so much work. I labored over that tune for 4 or 6 months. I had parts of it, but it wasn't satisfactory...part of it was the lyrics, trying to get the ideas across, the feeling of utter defeat or surrender. "admit that I have failed' and "victim of my passions, my own worst enemy."

Sometimes I have to, for the cadence of the song, not use proper English, saying I am my own worst enemy. I was coming to that realization and trying to get those ideas across, really very heavy ideas, but still keep the lyrics poetic, keep the flow poetic, keep the imagery consistent so it doesn't sound like a psychology text.

I remember another influence as far as the lyrics. I was reading the poetry of Billy Collins, at that time Nine Horses. There were specific poems by both Rumi and Billy Collins that impressed me deeply. I can look them up.

About the Music. One thing I was really happy with was the bridge and the transition afterward. The verses as they run are fairly flowing. Then in the bridge, the music becomes increasingly dissonant. The energy becomes more angst-full, expressing even more irritation, even anger, both in the lyrics and in the music, the saxophone solo.

I had a fun time writing the chords. They are not traditional chords. Even explaining to the musicians working on it, don't look for traditional chords on this, they aren't. We recorded this song in a live video session, years before recording it in the studio. And when I saw the video, it really struck me how the middle section is so dissonant and pent up and tense, and then the music comes back down to rest. There's a kind of a pause before the last verse.

I just really like the way the sax trails off and settles down to this.. it's like a big breath, "ahhhh." OK.

I don't think I realized the value until the last few years, that when things are difficult, or even when I'm trying to just be present to what's going on, to stop and be aware of the breath.

There's a fairly conscious effort on my part in the music that I write and even that I play to not be so busy. For a long time I felt because I could do so many things and had learned so much about music and could play all these different things, that I had to cram every song full of as much as I possibly could to prove myself. I feel like I've gotten past that to an extent.

Rather than show what I know I feel it's important to give space for the music to breathe, so what is there can come out.

A lot of times people... myself included, either they can't and don't want to hear all this stuff going on...There's a place for that, for music that's very dense and has a lot of layers of things going on, I'm sure I'll do more of it myself.

More to come.