The Kintsugi Art of Sara Bareilles
Sara Bareilles' new album Good Grief arrives at the end of a very hard year, at the end of a very hard week and on a very hard day. And I couldn't start a Broken Record blog post about grief without mentioning the world's grief at losing the singer-songwriter-turned-humanitarian Dolly Parton this week. But I have a post in the works on punk music and ideas of disruption and I have decided to save my words for Dolly Parton as a counterpoint to that.
This piece is the convergence of many random things. First of all, obviously, my own continued experience of personal grief (not just my mother passing the first few days of this year but other deaths and family griefs), all for which this album seemed so movingly timely for me personally but also our national grief in the United States, the World's grief in seeing the consequences of American malfeasance, our collective professional grief over the consequences of technology and communal grief at the lost of our generational objects, people and music.
I have also been taking a Nick Werber online class on Black Sheep and we've just gotten to the part of the class where grief uncovers suppressed rage. So I have been exploring the grief attributes around the lost self and the disconnection from friends and family around the lost self.
The word kintsugi also came back to me Friday night. My husband started reading a book on Japanese ideas of beauty around aging and told me at dinner about it and I said I already knew. (I had written a poem about it.) Kintsugi is literally a pottery technique of repairing broken pottery vessels by mending the broken parts together with a special lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The process creates silver or gold lines across the pot that are very beautiful.
In the last song of Bareilles' new album Good Grief she says, "I am not broken" but it has been my experience that we are all broken vessels (and none more so that those who try to pretend to be perfectly unbroken). Many of us all glued back together with gold. And nobody represents this process better than the uncanny wisdom and blue notes of Sara Bareilles. She is a masterclass of merging heart truths with the best melodies.
The simplest and newest example of this can be found in her new song about her deceased friend, "Just a Kid," and in the chorus she sings, "he is everywhere" and the note she hits expresses his literal ethereal everywhereness. It's just the right note. The one right note.
Just a Kid
Sara Bareilles' new album captures many griefs of her own, the loss of two personal friends, struggles with infertility, national grief, broken-hearted grief, the grief inherent every day for those who experience depression. The album also has songs from the Andrea Gibson documentary, a meditation on a very particular grief that exists prior to actual death and separation.
But let's start at the beginning.
Unbelievably Sara Bareilles first album Careful Confessions (2004) was independently produced and the very first song (a song I can only hear on certain, very strong days...of which today is not the day) is the powerhouse of unrequited grief,
Gravity
What an auspicious beginning, this one. The way the note soars up when she sings "keeping me down." Wow. See that's what gravity does. Keeps things down on the ground.
Little Voice (2007) was her second album, but her "major-label debut" and she brought forward some songs from the first album, including "Gravity." But this album had her big first hit, "Love Song" a song written to a record company and Bareilles' first commentary on the music business. But the irony here is that Bareilles would go on to write some of the best love songs ever written (both hopeful and tragic).
Kaleidoscope Heart (2010) had two other big hits, "Uncharted" (which has a very funny cameo by another one of my favorites, Ben Folds, plus footage submitted by Sara Bareilles fans, including Folds).
But this next song is the song that put Bareilles on the map for me. I've always loved this one because it releases my grief over all my troubled interactions with a family member.
King of Anything
"You got opinions, man. We're all entitled to 'em."
(A good song for grief-rage.) You go, girl.
But I still wasn't a big Bareilles fan after this song. It's very serendipitous how Bareilles songs came to me over the last 10 years or so, floating in on YouTube algorithms. I never made an effort to listen to her albums. The emotional bombs just kept dropping into my random playlists. It's like they knew what I needed. Songs from this album that did that were "Hold My Heart"...
The Light
Bareilles is very good at capturing uncertainty with uncanny certainly. Bareilles songs are full of references to light and breath and the imperfect and different versions of ourselves that surface before and after love.
"Such a beautiful mess
Intertwined and overrun"
Machine Gun
This is a pretty unique song about fan trolls, a topic you think most songwriters wouldn't be able to make seem interesting (I mean, beyond gossip). But Bareilles manages to bring miraculous insight into a catchy melody. This is probably a very early incel song.
The way she wails,
"Maybe nobody loved you when you were young
Maybe, boy, when you cry, nobody ever comes"
Wow. She's callin' it out.
The album also has the following two heartbreakers:
Breathe Again
An early favorite but another one so brutally honest I can only listen to it on certain days.
"And the distance betweenThat was sheltering me comes in full viewHang my head, break my heartBuilt from all I have torn apartAnd my burden to bear is a love I can't carry anymore."
Lord, give us strength.
Bluebird
One of my favorite piano parts of hers, how it tracks flight (or the flying away).
Kaleidoscope Heart also had a song on the Target version of the album,
Send Me the Moon
"Watch from the groundAs the gold fluttered down from the sky"
She's a bonafide poet for sure.
Once Upon Another Time is an ethereal 2012 EP (produced by Ben Folds) and the title track is good but this is my favorite:
Bright Lights and Cityscapes
"I don't want you to burnNever mind what I said beforeI don't want any less anymoreYou are carbon and I am flameI will rise and you willRemain"
Carbon and flame will come up again in the Good Grief song "Forever."
The Blessed Unrest (2013) was a huge album packed with just amazing songs, the big hit being "Brave" ("sometimes the shadow wins"...song written by Jack Antonoff) but the album also had...
Chasing the Sun
(also written by Jack Antonoff)
I wrote a poem from this song for a Dictionary project. It was about my first childhood friend, Jarrid. He died of leukemia when I was 9 years old (grief) and every time I have seen his parents since I have always encountered their grief at his passing as if my very living body reminded them of their grief.
(Grief.)
They were both at my mother's Santa Fe funeral in June and it was the first time they've ever greeted me with lightness. This had to do with a comforting dream his mother had had about Jarrid. This song reminds me of him and how we would run as far as we could across his ranch "yard" to catch the horizon.
Manhattan
"I’ll tip toe away
So you won’t have to say
You heard me leave...
....And I’ll bow out of place
To save you some space
For somebody new"
These ideas will come back in Good Grief too. in the song "Say Leave" about the impulse to "get small" after a breakup.
This comes up a lot in the Black Sheep class.
(Grief.)
Satellite Call
Probably my very favorite. Just the satellite sound of it. You can see it!
"This was written for the one to blame
One who believes they are the cause of chaos and everything"
It's like right out of the Black Sheep class notes!
But also amazing and beautiful.
Cassiopeia
A fun interstellar counterpoint to "Satellite Call."
1000 Times
A song of wishful thinking, which is endless fuel for all the breakage of disappointment. This song needs to go up and talk to "Gravity."
"'Cause love is a cageThese words on a pageCarry the painThey don't free it"
She will also come back to this idea in Good Grief in the song "Wind is the Weather."
December
"You've always been a problem child." The sad thing about New Year's Eve is always the sad year-end audit. Let Sara Bareilles explain.
There was a 2013 live album from a piano-only performance at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta (pretty amazing the energy she generated with just that) where she ended with a breathtaking version of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's ...
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
At some point, she also did an amazing live cover of A-ha's "Take On Me."
Right around this time Bareilles says she started to get dissatisfied with the grind of album, tour, album, tour and she started exploring other creative avenues, including a Broadway musical.
What's Inside: Songs from Waitress (2015) contains the songs from the very successful musical Bareilles created. The single was "She Used to Be Mine" but the musical also has "Soft Place to Land" which she later re-recorded with John Legend. And my favorite from the album (I've never seen the musical),
You Matter to Me
(featuring Jason Mraz)
"Simple and plain and not much to ask from somebody"
In 2018, Bareilles was part of the cast of the NBC TV Easter live production of Jesus Christ Superstar with John Legend, Brandon Victor Dixon and Alice Cooper. By the way, Micaela Diamond was also in that cast and she also played 1960s Cher in the Broadway musical The Cher Show (2018–2019).
Amidst the Chaos (2019) is another big album full of great songs. It has....
Orpheus
Also one of my very top favorites.
"I knowYou miss the worldThe one you knewThe one where everything made senseBecause you didn't know the truthThat's how it worksTill the bottom drops outAnd you learnWe're all just hunters seeking solid ground"
Beautiful, beautiful song.
Someone Who Loves Me
Orpheus in the song above. St. Jude in this song.
"My bones won't hold me up...
To stand up when the bottom dropsThe weight of all the worldCan blind me to its beauty "
Another amazing song.
Soft Place to Land
This album also includes the re-recorded "Soft Place to Land" with John Legend.
More breath holding.
"When pain is all that they offer
Like the kiss from the lips of a monster
You know the famine so well, but never met the feast
When home is the belly of the beast
The ocean is wild and over your head
And the boat beneath you is sinking
Don't need room for your bags, hope is all that you have
So say the Lord's Prayer twice, hold your babies tight
Surely someone will reach out a hand
And show you a safe place to land"
Boats and oceans will return again, too, in Good Grief song "Forever."
In 2020 Bareilles did an AppleTV show called Little Voices and she didn't make another album until this year's Good Grief, a generous release of 14 songs.
In the meantime, she helped produce the amazingly emotional and heartwarming poet Andrea Gibson's documentary See Me In the Good Light and two songs from that documentary appear on Good Grief,
"Salt Then Sour Then Sweet" with Brandi Carlile and co-written with Carlile and the poetry of Andrea Gibson and the video has scenes from the movie. Amazing, amazing song....
A Love Story
Also written by Andrea Gibson. This one is so like the movie and so, so moving, Gibson writing about her big love for Megan Falley. The lines are a miraculous combination of Gibson and Bareilles.
"On a birthday candle's flame
I wished to glorify my given name
And prove my worth by making myself known
I watch the years collect and gather
And my bright future knows I'm staring at her
She never asks about the glory, she just wants a love story."
[Gibson tells the story of meeting a man who had lost his wife of 50 years and the day she died she promised to send him signs.]
"He told me I was living proof of her to him that very day
It took my breath away, his sadness
And I held it to my chest
And I let it break me open and be blessed
Demolish me, my maker"
[This could be Amy Grant lines right there.]
"A childhood made of wishin'
Naïve and superficial
Compared to what is given, they don't even hold a candle
Nothing that I asked for
Has ever been as true
As what was coming for me when it comes from you"
There's a spoken word section of the song with Andrea Gibson at the bridge (from her poem "The Nutritionist)" seamlessly sewn into the song. Just amazing. One of my new favorites.
"Raising your bite against the bitter dark...your brilliant fists of loss."
"Live, live, live."
Two songs were pre-released, the song "Home" (about a conversation on grief between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert, sort of sympathetic grief) and "Still Crying" (literally the physicality of grief written by Aaron Dessner).
She has two songs that reference the sheer amount of tears produced by grief, "Capsize Me" which talks about a river of tears that can can baptize her and "A Love Story" with tears enough to create a wishing well.
"Nervous Breakdown," and Ingrid Michaelson song that reminds me of Joni Mitchell's similar take of losing one's mind from Court and Spark, "Twisted."
Heartland
She has a song about the national situation, which is just perfect. It captures ideas of America, womanhood (referencing Lady Liberty and the Emma Lazarus poem), and the song shows off her vocals.
"build me back up from these charnel grounds
And fight for me to stay alive
That's the only way we survive in the heartland"
Bareilles also two new heartbroken love songs,
Idiot Heart
Which covers scars and broken parts and arsonist art and her never-ending reserve of melodies.
And "Say Leave" which deals again with her/our tendency to want to "fade into the background" during heartbreak that reminds me of the same impulse in "Manhattan." (I mean why should he get Manhattan? Which he didn't actually because Bareilles eventually moved back to Manhattan.)
This song is about the temporary nature of love and should have been followed directly by the permanence of...
Forever
A song that fits all sorts of loss scenarios and the "miracle of grief."
"Everything alive will learn to die
Alive is life arriving every minute at a time until it’s time to leave...
If you are the boat, I am the ocean
If you are the flame, I am the carbon"
Bareilles has two songs about her struggles to bring a child to term and depression:
Ladies in a Line
Amazingly this is another song where Bareilles can take something potentially dry and clinical and turn it into metaphorical beauty.
"Empty arms with lists of names
The cruel truth of starting late...
The thing that keeps me going
Is a quiet kind of faith
That what is meant to find me will find me
Anywhere I am anyway...
Grief is a blanket, it covers everything"
I wish Dolly Parton could have heard this one.
Wind Is the Weather
The song closing the album so movingly. You can read some of these lines in many ways, about depression medication and/or infertility.
"What can't be held together
Was never meant to be...
Words may not save you
But they can help unleash
What is already true...
No one can take you from me...
You might feel crazy
But, babe, that's just passing through...
Worship your weather
Storms will come through
Lightning to shock
Rain to release
Fog to obscure
Searching for peace
Wind is the weather"
All songs above were written by Sara Bareilles unless noted otherwise.
Sara Bareilles is the only artist, by the way, whom my brother Randy and I share on our top ten artists lists, a fact he seems not all that happy about (good grief).
Anyway, a few years ago I sent this kintsugi poem to a person I did not know very well (via Facebook) on their birthday, which is always risky business (and risk often lends its fuel to grief). But sending someone a gift on their birthday often feels like the least ridiculous thing to do.
In any case, the poem is about the beauty in broken things and the art of repair. And if you have ever been involved with things that break over and over again, (hearts, bodies, clay pots), you will know this art very well. If you listen to Sara Bareilles you will also know this art very well. And you can know something like this with the wisdom of melody or the wisdom of words or the wisdom of touch. The poem brings touch to bear because it was originally meant to have been written on a Braille machine. But mine broke the day I went to type it out (grief).
Broken pots lines are lined with gold to highlight the cracks that otherwise would only be available to read by touch. And the final line of the poem is about the beautiful rightness in how the blind read with that kind of wise touch.
This poem was never acknowledged (grief) and I long believed it should never be read thereafter, but I don't think Sara Bareilles would approve of that kind of silence anymore. So nor do I.
My friend Mikaela taught me how to use a Braille machine and she even wrote out for me how to type out my name in Braille.
I used https://www.abcbraille.com/text to translate the poem and in Braille it looks like this:
But since you can't touch it, you will never know how it feels.
(Grief.)
Kintsugi
This is the art of repair,
a gold-addled lacquer
celebrating broken things,
all the fractured places,
so many they resemble
acceptance and plan,
a teapot covered
in a network of spidery resilience,
an overlay of meandering
imperfections. For those
with a preference for touching
and its silence,
this is where the beauty
is found, where the flaws
are loved with moving fingers,
where the breaks
are mended in recurring
processes of repair,
in a recurring request
for patience in order
to slowly smooth out the snags
of a hard clay’s rip and tear.
This is the pot we carry,
the pot itself
carrying a profoundly perfect fuel
borne inside our brokenness,
carrying long hours
of golden glue and time
graphed across a surface,
the many, many tears,
crying in a cross-hatch
the color of platinum,
the mark of survivors
who will keep mending
until they are crushed
for good, when all they can see
anymore are the ruptures.
This is the form for them;
and the very best form for the blind.
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