Fearless

 

 

See Marc Zegans perform Oct. 10 at the Lily Pad.

Sonic, spatial sculptures elicit emotion and, just possibly, soothe the soul.

 

 

What? I’m seriously buzzing. And yet…poet Marc Zegan’s words on the power of rhythm and rhyme are making sense. I get it.

 

But it could be the drugs.

 

Shortly before meeting Marc, I was washing down another potent dose of prescription painkillers with some coffee at Peet’s in Cambridge, hoping the caffeine would enable at least a few synaptic connections to fire through the medicinal fog. A Medieval-style dental procedure had left my upper lip so swollen that I barely recognized my own nose. Speaking was not only a chore, the sounds I made had all the familiarity of my new nose. And yeah, despite the assist from the pharmaceutical industry, the stubborn pain had adopted an undying — and literal — in-your-face stance.

 

The irony of my situation was not lost on me: I’m interviewing a spoken word artist while my own mouth looks and feels like a train wreck. Luckily, I’m mostly listening — getting a crash course in Marc’s medium.

 

Especially in a pre-technological society, the metering and rhyming patterns used in storytelling were crucial for memory, Marc said. The sculpting words shape both the sound and air, and the pattern provides people something to follow in moving along with the story, he said.

 

“Our bodies react to that,” Marc said. “Repetition is something that we resonate to.”

 

Apparently, it still applies in a technological society, too. Marc has been performing regularly at various venues.

 

Really? Poetry concerts?

 

“It goes back more than 20 years,” Marc said. There was a confluence of forces, such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, as well as the judge-evaluated poetry slams in Chicago, he said. The hip hop movement has been another driver, he added.

 

The poetry has a focus on life lived, Marc said. The work is “engaged and visceral,” he added, with the artists “speaking from one’s authentic living. There’s great joy and virtue in that.”

 

But hasn’t high school left everyone with a bad aftertaste regarding poetry? How do people voluntarily get up off the sofa and head out for an evening of spoken word performances?

 

Some fellow writers go for the sense of community, Marc said. “And a lot of people start out as audience members because they’re friends of poets. They go, and then they’re surprised.”

 

The “unvarnished presentation” can feed both the spirit and the psyche, he said. “It’s the direct speaking…and the need to be healed that brings them out.”

 

And something about that “unvarnished presentation” makes me realize that Marc and his fellow poets must be some of the bravest artists around. This is pure, raw expression, creating an artistic level of vulnerability that would scare away anyone even remotely weak in the knees.

 

There are no distorted guitars to hide behind, no stacks of synths to distract, no layers of paint smudges to fudge interpretation. It’s the artist, his voice and his words. Judge as you will.

 

No amount of painkillers could make me that brave. And yet Marc is opening himself like a book with poems inspired by such personal subject material as his divorce, his battle with cancer and sex.

 

His book of haikus, Pillow Talk (with graphite sketches by artist Gabrielle Senza) is all about sex, leaving some readers turned on, others turned off, and some in laughter. On my first flip through, I found one that reads:

 

back of the movie theatre

fingers climb under short skirt

“damn!” pantyhose

 

And I started laughing (despite the overworked pain receptors in my mouth). His CD Night Work, recorded live last year, touches on a broader range of topics. The poem Puddle, for example, was inspired by a trip to Walden Pond.

 

It was a cold day in February, Marc remembered. Looking around at the winter-stripped trees, Marc realized how reality clashed with the idealized version of the same pond. This was no longer a body of water in some vast expanse, he said, but rather one bounded by highways, a railroad and communities.

 

Whether he’s writing about sex, personal struggles, or his observations, “I’m open to that spark,” Marc said. “And I know it when it see it.”

 

 

 

FIRST TIME

As a pre-schooler, Marc had been challenged by the teacher (along with his classmates) to make a piece of art. And so he did, and he loved the drawing he had created. Then the other kids started offering their critiques, badgering Marc for “scribbling” instead of “drawing.” The teacher chimed in as well, telling Marc, “Yes, you’re just scribbling. Make a real picture.”

 

 

WORST TIME

Tasked with writing a short poem for seventh grade, Marc came up with something not unlike the quote “I think, therefore I am.” But he had never heard of Rene Descartes, nor was Marc familiar with his philosophical contributions. Unfortunately, the teacher didn’t believe him, and accused Marc of plagiarism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One victory at a time

 

 

Catch Jennifer Greer Oct. 10 at the Lily Pad.

There she was, singing for an audience at the Nevele Grande Resort in New York.

 

 

Jennifer Greer’s career as a musician was still years away from beginning, but a talent contest for young children staying at the resort had drawn her into performing. And, like a sign of her musical abilities that future audiences would come to know and love, she won.

 

But the win fell short on satisfaction.

 

As the fourth, third and second place finishers were announced, each went up to claim a prize from a pool of choices. By the time Jennifer’s name was called as the top-place finisher, the only prize left was a sewing kit with the resort’s name emblazoned on it.

 

The Cambridge-based singer and songwriter remembers the story with a laugh, thinking about what an 8-year-old girl would do with a prize sewing kit. Still, like the foreshadowing of her talent, the event also had a glimmer of other lessons.

 

She has released two CDs in the past six years, and is getting ready to record a third.  Her voice and piano playing have won the praise of critics, and her songs have earned accolades from magazines and radio stations. First and foremost, Jennifer expresses gratitude and appreciation for all of those things. At the same time, like any artist, she wonders how and when those victories will snowball into bigger goals, such as expanding her audience.

 

As the progress comes incrementally, Jennifer’s next step is to begin recording a new CD this month. Comparing the songwriting process to putting together the pieces of a puzzle, she said, “my job and greatest joy is to figure out how all the pieces unfold and come together.”

 

This time around, she is planning a style that is more aggressive and more direct than before.

 

Her prior release, The Apiary, drew comparisons to jazz influences, as well as the likes of Tori Amos and Norah Jones. All of that is valid, but Jennifer cites Joni Mitchell as her primary influence.

 

Other influences include Fiona Apple — “the textures are right there, you feel like you’re in the room [with her]” — and Stevie Wonder — “the songs are so joyful, they’re pure rhythm.” In fact, her passion for rhythm and mile-deep groves is underscored in her crowning of Led Zeppelin as “the best band ever.”

 

That power, accentuated with “thick, heavy drums” is something she wants to explore in the new CD. And like the overall sound, the writing process on this CD is different than before, too.

 

“I write more slowly now. I do much more editing. I can take one hour on a line of lyrics,” she said with a laugh. The spontaneity is still there, but the work now involves “lots of fine-tuning,” she said.

 

And, in another departure from prior works, “very few of my songs are about myself anymore,” she said. Sparks of inspiration now are more likely to come from characters in books and movies, current events, interactions with friends, and her fly-on-the-wall observer skills.

 

Even with a variety of sources providing ideas, she noted that “the lyrics are the hardest thing for me to do.” Not that it was always that way.

 

From the time she was 12 until she reached 25, Jennifer was an avid, prolific writer of poetry. She had a book she was putting together, and getting ready to publish.

 

“And then it just evaporated,” she said. That creative river of words that she had been pouring onto paper suddenly, and inexplicably, went dry.

 

“I was beyond puzzled. I was deeply upset,” she said. “I was quite certain that poetry was what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”

 

But the void created when the poetry disappeared was getting filled by something else.

 

“Where I had been hearing words, I started hearing sounds,” Jennifer said. That drove her back to playing the piano — something she hadn’t done for years. The move meant winning back a way to express her art.

 

With the victories she has notched in the years that followed, it seems the change in creative direction has worked well for her. But, she wouldn’t mind if her creative fountain started spouting words again, instead of music.

 

“I’m hoping when I’m old the writing will come back with a force,” she said.

 

 

 

FIRST TIME

“The first song I ever wrote was to my dead hamster.” The late ‘Sally’ inspired an emotional and musical outpouring from a very young Jennifer. “I was devastated. I didn’t even go to school the next day.”

 

 

WORST TIME

The challenges of playing live can keep even the best performers on their toes — or their faces. At one particular gig, Jennifer was tortured by a loose bolt in a mic stand. As she sat at her piano, playing and singing her songs, the mic slowly began to succumb to gravity. Not wanting to interrupt her song, Jennifer kept going, following the mic’s descent with her face. By the song’s end, her mic and face were buried in the piano.