Author: WarrenBluhm

Wordsmith and podcaster, Warren is a reporter, editor and storyteller who lives near the shores of Green Bay with his two golden retrievers, Dejah and Summer. Author of Ebenezer, It's Going to Be All Right, Echoes of Freedom Past, Full, Refuse to be Afraid, Gladness is Infectious, 24 flashes, How to Play a Blue Guitar, Myke Phoenix: The Complete Novelettes, A Bridge at Crossroads, The Imaginary Bomb, A Scream of Consciousness, and The Imaginary Revolution.

Then there were the songs

I have been fascinated by multi-track recording ever since I saw Neil Sedaka lip-syncing to “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” on some TV show. I must have been 9.

At some point he tilted his head with a sly smile, and I realized that he was singing the song and his voice was also continuing to do the “down doobie doo down down” background vocal. Somehow I realized he had recorded his voice several times over and was singing with himself.

I wanted to do that when I grew up. More than I wanted to perform in public, more than I wanted to be in a band or the usual musical dreams, I wanted to play with recording equipment. Over the years I made 20 homemade “albums” by recording a track on one tape recorder, playing along with that track on another recorder, and so on.

The last couple of months or so, I’ve been talking about picking up the guitar and writing songs again for the first time in about 15 years. I enrolled in soundcloud.com so that I could share the new stuff online.

The new stuff isn’t ready for prime time yet, so to experiment with the website’s tech I’ve uploaded an “album” I created at the end of 1985. The process was ridiculously simple, and so now Folks Songs is out there for your curiosity. 

Actually, I labeled the upload Folks Songs 1985 because it’s not quite exactly what I recorded then. The original album had two rock and roll songs that pretty much proved I am not a rock and roller, so I have spared myself further embarrassment by leaving them off. I later re-recorded one of those songs, “I Believe in Jesus Christ,” in a more folky manner, and that later recording is what you will hear here.

So here’s a little part of me; hold it gently as you can. (That’s a lyric from the shortest song, “First Date,” but it fits this moment.) While I tinker with the new songs, you can get a taste of what my little hobby sounded like 39 (gulp!) years ago.

Never too late

I posted this little cartoon on Facebook four years ago, and it came up as a Memories memory on Wednesday. I noticed that Red wrote, “You are so cute; you should make this team a daily occurrence,” with a little star emoji.

I really should have listened to her more. Often she would have ideas about what I should do creatively, I would nod and say “I should do that,” and then I would proceed to ignore her advice. Now here she goes again, nudging me from the next life.

I do remember the toon, and I have a vague memory of considering her advice for a few moments and promptly forgetting. Or maybe I was phased by that word “daily.” Would anyone really want to see these critters every day? Would I want to doodle them every day?

From time to time, though … more often than once every four years … I could see it. It’s not too late, and although Red won’t be around to say, “I told you so,” I can vividly imagine her saying it.

The art of preaching to myself

My pastor friend Cory Dahl likes to tell us he preaches to himself and we are welcome to listen in — and he encourages us to preach to ourselves. Scott Alexander, author of Rhinoceros Success, has encouraged his readers to write the self-help book that we want or need to read.

I take their advice to heart. So much of what I write here is what I need to hear. When I encourage you, I’m often also giving myself a pep talk.

Seven years ago, a couple of weeks after being laid off from my dream job as editor of the Door County Advocate in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, I sat down on a bench near a wooden bridge at a park called Crossroads at Big Creek, and I wrote myself a little pep talk that became the title passage in my book A Bridge at Crossroads: 101 Encouragements. I was preaching to myself and inviting you to read along. It was the book of encouragement I needed to read.

I am close to completing two more short books that I need to read. One is tentatively called Write Anything Until You Write Something, a book of reflections about the creative process and how the secret to writing something important seems to be just to keep writing anything until something important comes out. You can’t write something important if you’re not writing at all, after all.

The other is called War IS the Crime, and I wish it was already published in light of recent world events. I’ve been writing a lot lately about how people are essentially peaceful creatures but we keep being pushed to join madmen in committing mass murder with them. I’ve been writing these things because I feel like someone needs to say it and so I will.

Would I like you to buy a bunch of these books so I can quit the day job because the books are another way to pay the bills? Of course I would. But mainly I’m making these books because I need to read what I’ve written, and I invite you to read along.

I think that’s how most books get written, actually — someone thinks, “Somebody needs to say this, so it may as well be me.”

W.B. at the Movies: Lost Angel – The Genius of Judee Sill

Tears — tears all the way through watching Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill, the documentary about the truly great singer-songwriter who released two of the greatest albums of the 1970s but died young in obscurity when the albums just didn’t sell.

I was one of the relative handful of people who “got” Judee Sill instantly. I sat enraptured listening to Judee Sill in the studio of my college radio station and was able to repeat the experience many years later when I finally heard Heart Food, which had somehow escaped even my attention. 

Sill is at the top of my “you have got to hear this” list of artists who didn’t get the attention they deserved when their brilliant work was first released into the wild. I have sung her praises for more than 50 years. Her songs are always interesting, and a few of them — “The Lamb Ran Away with the Crown,” “Lady-O,” “The Kiss,” and “The Donor” for example — cross the line into unspeakable, unmatchable beauty.

“She had more musical chops than any of the people on the scene except for Brian Wilson,” Linda Ronstadt says early on in the 2022 film, which at last is available for rent or purchase on Apple TV and Prime Video, and that puts the finger on why loving Judee Sill’s music has been so frustrating: She really does belong to be mentioned with Wilson among the greatest modern singer-songwriters, but it’s only in the latest 20 years that it’s finally begun to happen, 45 years after she died. 

To hear Ronstadt, Shawn Colvin and so many other talented people talk about Sill’s gift is so affirming, and to hear people finally discovering her genius is so bittersweet.

She was a hard person to like sometimes, and self-destructive, which probably contributed to the lack of attention. The film is sad and illustrates how she was her own worst enemy, but it’s ultimately triumphant because it allows her music to shine at last.

2 quick thoughts on war and elections

With regard to war:

• I disagree with you when you say that war is a “necessary” evil, but at least we agree war is evil.

With regard to elections:

• “Which is the lesser of two evils?” is the wrong question. “When will we stop choosing evil?” is the right question.

The resurrection and the life

In the middle of church the week after Easter, I suddenly missed Red again with all my soul. I wished she was sitting next to me and that we could talk about all we had seen and heard, and I ached because it will never be that way again.

And just as suddenly a peace and a calm came over me, and I flashed back to comforting words I had heard the previous Sunday: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

I realized, after all, that God gave His only son in order that those who believe shall not perish but have eternal life.

If I believe that to be true, as Red did, I will find her among the living on that day when this earthly vessel finally wears out and I make the journey she has already taken.

I have no idea how it works — I believe we’re not meant to know until the time comes — but I’m kind of curious to see this resurrection and life in practice. No, not so curious that I’m in a hurry to find out — I’m still very content to stay in this particular plane of existence — but neither do I fear the inevitable anymore.

(Just as I reached that realization, the sun eased down in the sky so it’s shining on my face through the window. Funny how stuff like that happens.)

Rest and refresh

Sometimes I wake with a to-do list packed with potential achievements and accomplishments only to discover after daylight has passed that it was a day off. Rested and refreshed, I make plans to tick through the to-do list in the morning, or perhaps some of it tonight.

But “rested and refreshed” is a better way to approach a to-do list anyway.

I read once that laborers who put in 25 minutes of physical work, then rest for 35 minutes, turn out to be more productive per hour than people who work straight through. I don’t know if that’s true, but I see how it might be.