It was just over halfway through his 17-song set in Amsterdam on a cool September evening that Joe Henry played “Kitchen Door”, a song I had, until that moment, overlooked on his wonderful 2023 record, All the Eye Can See.
Inside t’ Zonnehuis, with only his son Levon Henry on alto clarinet as accompaniment, Henry leaned forward a little and spoke about how the songs on his 16 records have come to be there.
“I don’t know where songs come from. I don’t want to know. I’m not a writer who writes as much for self-expression as I think I write for discovery, so anytime I approach the engagement of writing, I try to be as seducible as possible. I want to be swept away. I don’t want to control anything. If I am ever working and I think I know where the song is supposed to go and I find myself trying to steer something, I quit for the day as I am not interested in what I have to say as much as what the song has to say.”
He paused before adding it was unusual, then, that he knew exactly what the song he was about to sing next was about, and also to whom it was addressed. “It was in the early days of the pandemic lockdown and my dear mother had passed away,” Henry said. “I lived on the other side of the country from my parents and it is a very big country and I didn’t know how to safely get to be with my dad and my siblings. It took me three weeks to finally find safe passage to join them.” When Henry was at his parents home in North Carolina, he found himself “sleeping in a tiny bed that had been my bed as a five, six and seven year old boy and I heard myself address the ceiling as a question and I knew exactly who I was talking to”. And when Henry plays “Kitchen Door” - an unadorned quest for post-death connection with his mother - I feel like the singer-songwriter is talking to me, emotionally dishevelled, walking on quicksand in the wake of the unexpected news that my own dear mother has an awful terminal illness.
And I ask aloud just where you are
and think I hear you say,
“I’m everywhere, my love, that you can find ”
(Joe Henry, “Kitchen Door’)
A little over two months since that evening in Paradiso’s most loveliest venue I am again listening to “Kitchen Door” as I turn to music to help me through the sorrow that’s descending on me like a cloud settling on the earth, in the wrong place, unbidden, but there nonetheless. Because this is the great - the majestic, the mysterious, the magical - thing about music that those of us who can’t exist without it know with a surety that is inscribed deep inside us: it’s there for us, in joy and in sorrow; when a baby is born and when someone’s last days have come and those who - like me, soon to be left behind - need solace; ably supporting us at the two points in our lives that cannot exist without the other and the very things that make us human.
As I returned home on the train yesterday, still stunned at news from Umhlanga that my mom is close to death, it was the music of Gillian Welch. She has been a close companion since I first heard her rich, keening laments on the 1996 album, Revival and songs like “Orphan Girl” and “Annabelle” off that debut and “Look at Miss Ohio” and “I Had a Real Good Mother and Father” from Soul Journey held me in their embrace as the cities and fields that mark my homebound journey moved in silence past the train window.
The day before that it had been Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree, a collection of songs drenched in such anguish that Cave doesn’t even try to remedy his close throated vocals on the dirge-like “Girl In Amber”. An exquisite modern day evocation of mourning that I’ve kept close since it was released, “Skeleton Tree” - the song - refracts what it feels like, what you do, to keep vigil for the dying when you’re far away, unable to sit at their side, paying the price for the distance between you.
“Sunday morning, skeleton tree
Oh, nothing is for free
In the window, a candle
Well, maybe you can see”
(Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, “Skeleton Tree”)
Muzi’s Mama, is helping return me to the north coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal where I grew up and where my mother’s life is now drawing down. His is music that is ignited by ancestral fires, captured in original electronic beats and rhythms and wreathed in a lyricism that exposes even more of the producer’s gifts, and I’m holding onto the EP’s six songs (especially the stark “Believe”) with all my might. Streaming into my headphones is also Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell, the opening track of which - “Death with Dignity” - feels especially hard to listen to when dying is as torturous as it is for our beloved mom.
But there are also songs that elevate as they embrace.
Like Lana Del Rey’s take on a song my mom loved when we were children, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road”, breathtaking in its simplicity and reminding me that nostalgia can be pure and vital.
Like Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ “Father And Son” which brings back the story my mom has often told about our brother Mathew, now standing awe-inspiringly strong at the frontline of caring for our mom. He was named, she said, for the singer’s other song, “Matthew & Son”.
Like Barbra Streisand’s ‘On a Clear Day’ which our mom loved, taking us to the cinema in Durban North to see the Streisand-starring film, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and helping me feel, in a way I didn’t yet understand, the force of womanhood.
Like Iris DeMent’s “No Time to Cry” which - like most of this extraordinary artist’s music - wasn’t so much played as occupied my very being when our dad died, still too young and so very suddenly, 20 years ago.
Like Kacey Musgraves’ “Mother”, with its lyrics aimed right at my heart …
“Wish we didn't live
Wish we didn't live so far from each other
I'm just sitting here
Thinkin' 'bout the time that's slipping
And missing my mother
Mother
And she's probably sitting there
Thinking 'bout the time that's slipping
And missing her mother.”
I leave you with this dear reader.
If you believe in these things, give thanks to the universe for those among us who are compelled to make music, even in a world that seems less and less able to recognise its awesome value. I know I do. I know I couldn’t get through these days without it.
My mother also named my brother after Matthew & Son. What a beautiful linking of music and memory. Dear friend, may the songs continue to soothe you through this time.
So poignant and beautifully written dearest Diane. Thinking of you all constantly. It sounds unimaginably sad. Thank you for sharing this wonderfully apt music. Sending much love.