The Songwriting of Joe Henry

About a decade ago I interned at an Arts Journal called Image. Also about a decade ago I had two little albums called Fuse and Trampoline in constant rotation. So kudos to Image for finally interviewing one of America's best songwriter/producers, Joe Henry (click here for the interview). He touches on something that could also be said of Dylan's songwriting. It's the idea of leaving gaps in the song, room for the imagination to play, to fill in the gaps imaginatively and thereby co-construct the song. This is the very act of manifesting mystery. There is a given world. We are also. Within this little space we get to imaginatively co-create and fill in the gaps left out of the fabric of Being. In his best songwriting, Henry crystallizes and compresses this very act. He says as much in the interview:

"It is of paramount importance to me to walk on the wire where songs are both specific enough—emotionally and in their imagery—to invite you in, yet with enough prevailing mystery intact to keep you from ever feeling like the song can’t continue to provoke revelation. If a song is a house, the writer needs to leave enough doors and windows open that listeners can come and go freely. As soon as you nail an idea to the floor and start directing the flow of traffic, the house has become a museum and a relic, not a living space: you can peek in, but you’re not allowed to lie on Mark Twain’s bed or touch his pencils."

Since Image is the Journal of Religion and the Arts, I'll add that Henry articulates right here the distance between art and the church as I experience it in the phrase "nailing an experience to the floor." The one opens a door, many doors, invites imaginative play, suggests, implies, allows experience to unfold, and meaning to be co-created. The other shuts doors, prepackages meaning, coerces behavior, if only through rigid policing of in-group norms. The fearful attempt to fix meaning in place does some violence to the nature of reality and experience and diminishes vitality.

A line from Henry's song "You Can't Fail Me Now" may help here: "We're taught to love the worst of us / and mercy more than life / But trust me, mercy's just a warning shot across the bow / I live for yours / and you can't fail me now." Ah.

Hm, I wonder if Joe Henry was raised in the church.

Wonderful blog on Joe Henry.
"You Can't Fail Me Now" as NPR's song of the day.
The liner notes to Joe's album Civilians.