New Ingrid Chavez interview

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New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Simonp on Wed Sep 09, 2009 8:22 am

TEN WINDOWS ~ SEVEN SEASONS ~ 09 . 08 . 2009
An interview with Ingrid Chavez

When Ingrid Chavez began to write music again after a 16-year break she had no idea it would be the starting point for another record, but that’s precisely what happened. A Flutter and Some Words is Chavez’s newest release, a multidimensional journey through the seasons of the soul. Produced and recorded primarily in Italy by Lorenzo Scopelitti, the album is as diverse thematically as it is musically. While Chavez shares her poetry in compelling spoken-word pieces, her haunting vocals span multiple tracks in a variety of styles ranging from pop to blues. In an intimate conversation with freelance writer Carrie Grossman, Chavez offers a deeply personal glimpse into the breakup of her marriage, motherhood, her creative process, and the eventual exhumation of her authentic voice.

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It’s been 16 years since you made your last album. What inspired you to start recording again after such a long break?

Well, I was at a point in my life where I needed to figure out what I was going to do. My children were old enough that I could focus on something besides just mothering. Then someone who had followed my career many years ago contacted me and asked why I wasn’t making music anymore. I asked myself the same question and it became the seed of this little journey that I’m on now.




In some ways you’re probably quite a different person than you were 16 years ago when you were writing. How do you feel like this period of time has influenced the art and work that you’re doing now?

Gosh, there’s such a difference between being 23 and being 40 when you go to express what’s going on in your life. I really feel like, although there was this long gap between the two albums, this album is perfectly in time. I needed to grow and understand myself a lot better. My approach now is from a place of being more content with who I am. Before I was just in awe of that world of music and wasn’t completely formed as an artist, so I was easily pushed in one direction or another. It always left me feeling like I hadn’t said what I needed to say as a person. And I had a lot of people say, “This is how you should look. This is how you should sound and this is how you should be perceived.” And there was an aspect of my character that was reflected in what they were saying, but it wasn’t all of me. Now I know a lot better who I am, what I want to say, and how I want to say it.




It sounds like the work you’re doing now is an expression of your authentic self and a weaving together of different areas of your life – whether it be motherhood, womanhood, art, etc. It’s an expression of those things coming together without needing to give up anything for some conventional model.

Well, not to go too deeply into the breakup of my marriage, but I think that going into my marriage and not knowing how to balance my creative self, my internal life, with David’s clarity of vision as this well established musician was difficult because I wasn’t clear. It was easy for me to fall into this position of supporting someone else who was very clear. When the marriage fell apart and I was left wondering what to do, I realized how I could get really lost in the process of finding myself again.




In some ways being lost is essential to being found.

Yeah, it’s the search to find yourself. And there’s a complacency that happens in a marriage where you kind of stop seeking sometimes. I didn’t stop seeking necessarily, but I stopped seeking myself as an individual and sought myself as part of a family instead. I put all of my energy there. I was completely devoted to my children—still am—but I didn’t put my energy into music and writing anymore. I put all of that energy into being a mother, learning to cook, taking care of my family, gardening, and planning beautiful trips. I did everything to the same 100% that I did with music; it just went to a different place. And I don’t regret that at all. I’m really thankful I can say that I devoted all of my attention to my children during that period.




One of the themes I see in your album is relationship— lover or partner, children, place, home, spiritual teacher, self. It seems like a thread through the album, primarily your relationship with yourself and how that’s informed by other relationships.

One thing I heard [my spiritual teacher] Amma say one time that never left me is that you can be a monk and put yourself in a cave and turn the world off in your path to enlightenment, but the real test is within the family and relationships with people. That’s where you can’t shut it off; you have to deal with everything that comes your way. That’s how we really grow and if you’re even halfway conscious of what you’re doing then hopefully you see where you’re failing yourself and the people who are close to you. Then you want to work on those aspects of yourself, whether it’s as a mother with your children, a partner in relationship, or with yourself. There’s always room for growth in any relationship. My music is primarily relationship-based. I only know one person really well in this world and it’s me.




I’ve heard you say that you’re inspired by the changing seasons in New England where you live. You have a few songs on the album, particularly the song “No Goodbyes”, which is about relationship, but also about place. I know you make a lot of music in your house and it seems to play an important role in your work.

Well the seasons are very important to me because I sit in my studio that has ten windows and look out into my garden. I see if it’s springtime and everything’s in bloom or winter and everything is shut down inside and sleeping. I see if it’s summer, which can represent pure easiness and joy, or fall, a period when things are changing and you have to prepare for the long winter that’s coming. That happens in relationships too. To me the seasons really represent the cycles within a relationship, an experience, or a lifetime lived somewhere. It’s all related. This record took two years and the windows painted a backdrop of my emotional landscape.




One of the songs I really love is “Returning to Seed.” When you went through a change of form in your marriage, it’s almost as if you went down into the earth and found new resources there. Do you feel that some kind of germination process happened when you “returned to seed” through the breakup of your marriage?

Well when I started making this music it was almost like I had gone to this height, fallen off a ridge, and found myself at the bottom. The only thing I could do was start again and go back to that place of rebirthing, approach everything as if it was all new.




It seems like you were re-birthed into a new self-awareness in the process. In the song Terrible Woman you basically acknowledge that, like everybody, there are parts of yourself that may be hard to really accept and embrace, but this is what you are. You want love, you want to be loved, and you want to be able to love someone else in that space.

That song is saying nobody’s perfect- nobody’s gonna be an angel all the time and sometimes when someone’s being hurtful they’re just scared. I really feel like we all have this little hurt child inside of us that is playing itself out in our adult life. You know, you’ve been hurt, you want to run away, you want to punch back. You have to understand that about yourself and other people. Sometimes you just need to hold them, hug them, and say, “Oh, you terrible woman. I love you! You’re just so annoying, but God I can’t live without you.” That’s what that song is about. And that’s what I want. I want somebody to just love me for being the terrible woman that I am. And terrible woman, I’m not saying it in a derogatory way; it’s more in an affectionate way. It’s another kind of love song. It’s like, “Just love me. Just love me for who I am.”




In a way there are a lot of songs on the album that are love songs to yourself. I think my favorite track on the album is the last one, Isobel. When I listen to that song it always touches a place inside of me. We all have a child within and I’ve learned that if I can embrace that part of myself, then I can be with that part of you. In the song you are talking to your daughter, but saying, “Your tears are my own.”

It’s almost like my child talking to my child. Because I was told once that to really embrace your own lost child and to really embrace your own child sometimes you have to see yourself in your own child. You have to see that what you needed is exactly what they need. So now when my daughters Isobel or Ameera come to me and I can see in their face that they really, really need something, I can put myself in their eyes and say, “That’s me. That’s me needing something too.” It’s a very important song to me. I cried when the words came to me, so they’re very, very heartfelt. It’s a very raw song and there’s really no pretense. It’s spoken for Isobel. I want her to know my sincerity, how much I love her, and how much I understand how she feels because I’ve been that little girl.




I’m really glad you left that in. I think it’s significant that you have a song for both of your daughters on the album. I also love the song for Ameera in a different way. That song is about your journey to go meet Amma, but it’s also very much a love song for your older daughter. How did that come to you and where does it fit in?

Well, Ameera’s 15 now and she’s a teenager. Relationships change when your kid turns 15 and I wanted her to know how special she is in my journey to where I am. I wanted her to understand that, when she was first put into Amma’s lap and David, my son Tinondre, and I were pulled over her, that we are a house for her. Not a physical home, a heart home. Even though you don’t think your teenager wants that because they’re rejecting you, I wanted her to know. I was hoping that somewhere along the way a song about Ameera would come without me having to force it, and it did. It’s the last song that was written. I really feel like the things you need come to you if you’re patient and don’t force them.




Earlier you were primarily known as a spoken-word artist and on this album each track stands alone- each track is musically unique. You have so many different genres of music in one album: blues, pop, spoken word, acoustic, ambient. Your music seems like it’s more multidimensional than it used to be.

That’s because for the first time I was able to really take hold of where I wanted to go with this project. When I worked with Prince he directed all of the music and just kind of took my spoken word. There was a beauty and innocence to that record [May 19, 1992] that was really perfect for its time.

But what’s great about this record is that Lorenzo is an artist so his approach to everything is from a really unique place— whether he’s sculpting something or designing an interior space, making a little film or a piece of music, it’s coming from a place where there are no rules; it’s just his own little world. He’s coming from way left field. And I’m coming from this place of understanding pop structure, knowing the elements. So there are some songs that are very pop structured and then there are some that are outside of the rules. Isobel, Returning to Seed, Path of Rain, The First Darshan—none of those songs have a pop structure. So in that sense each song was built without any preconceived notion of what it should sound like, it just sort of evolved.




And what I really like about it is that each piece really does stand alone, like a beautifully unique snapshot, yet all the pieces come together to create a whole. It’s a journey and each part of the journey comes out in technicolor.

It’s because it was written over a two-year period. There were two springs, two summers, two winters, and one fall. I never even really knew if this record would become a record. I was just writing for the sake of accomplishing one song. One song to me was a whole universe. So the fact that all of these songs were completed and made an album is just so amazing.




It’s wonderful that you were able to rediscover the energy that you channeled into being a mother and direct it towards music again. Can you offer a seed of wisdom from your experience for those who want to find their creative voice again?

Well, I think it’s important to be where you are. Okay, this is where I am. What do I have to work with? What is realistic for me? If your life is so busy and you know there’s something you’re not doing that you should be doing to satisfy that creative place in yourself, you have to recognize it and stop even for five minutes to write it down or record it. If you want to be a singer, just carve out time to write, carve out time to sing and sing all the time. My house is so full of singing it’s nauseating for my 15 year old who’s just not interested. But between my 11-year old and me, we just belt it out all the time. That’s what we enjoy doing, so we do it.

You have to find something for yourself, some little hobby or passion: knitting, crocheting, drawing, maybe cooking or baking. It can be anything. A lot of people say, “I’m just not creative.” You don’t have to be a photographer or a writer; you can just plant a little garden. There are so many ways to show how creative you really are. You wing it, put all your energy into it, and do the best that you can. And then you don’t beat yourself up if it’s not perfect because that’s easy to do. It stops people from even starting; they’re afraid of not being perfect.

One thing that I lost in my marriage is that I forgot to make a space for myself. I forgot to make that little space that was mine. It doesn’t have to be big, it can be a closet, some place that you shut the door and bring it down. Just keep carving out that little five minutes, ten minutes. It’ll grow because you’ll begin to see some voice forming in your writing. You’ll begin to see the potential. You have to give that to yourself because you deserve it. And it’s the hardest thing to do. I’m the first one to say, “Oh, I have the dishes to do, I’ll record that later.” It’s not easy.




We tend to be in such a fast-paced culture that we don’t naturally create space for that to arise. It’s almost as if we have to recreate a sacred space in our lives so that our creative impulse can come through. If we’re so busy all the time we can’t really receive it.

That’s the whole thing to me: be where you are, be present, and you will see that everything you have before you is exactly how it should be. There were times during the 16-year period that I didn’t make a record when I was resentful and it was probably a bit of a bad seed in my relationship. But on the other side of it I learned a lot. Sometimes you have to be on the other side of something before you can recognize it.




Having reclaimed this creative part of yourself—not that it ever went away, but reclaimed and redirected it—do you feel like it has influenced your relationships in a new way?


It has. Because I did find that the fact I wasn’t doing what I felt I should be doing created some energy in my relationship. I was trying to make myself complete with someone else. Now I feel so complete as a person and my relationships aren’t necessarily based on what others give to me. I’m giving myself what I need and that is such a wonderful feeling after all these years. When a person feels like she’s relying on herself, that she doesn’t need someone else to fill something in her, she can approach a relationship differently. Now I want to find someone who is independent because I don’t need to live through anyone else. I’m living through myself.




So where do you feel all of this is leading you?

Making this record was such an amazing experience and sense of accomplishment. If I left this life without having done it I would have felt like I didn’t accomplish something that I really needed to for myself, for my own wellbeing. Now I want to take the same amount of patience and see what comes just as organically as this record did. Yes I’d like to make more music, but my life has to fit into being a mother. I want to be an inspiration for my daughters and I think I am even though my teenager can’t really show that yet.

It’s been a very valuable journey. I’m so glad I had the courage to say, “Why not?” So what, I’m 44. Do I feel any different than I did when I was 20 as far as what I’m capable of doing? No. I’m better than I was when I was 20, way better, so why not? I encourage any woman at any age because it’s never too late. You’re the only one who can tell yourself it’s too late. I hope this is an inspiration. Whether you like the music or not, you can understand that anything’s possible. That’s what I feel about this record.
MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON MANAFON
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Blemished on Wed Sep 09, 2009 1:49 pm

Thanks Simon. Interesting stuff.

Have to say it's a little odd suddenly being exposed to the 'other side' of whatever went on / goes on between DS and Ingrid. I guess the comments about David's "clear vision" are probably an understatement and fit with this sense one gets of his incredible drive.

The experience was obviously so critical to what David's produced musically in the last few years (although not Manafon I presume, other than perhaps in the idea of R.S.Thomas and the contrast between his difficult family life and poetry) and now we have some of the other side of the coin. It's almost too much information!

I wish I didn't find myself being intrigued by his still wearing a wedding ring, taking photos for her and appearing to be in that rather poignant photo on her flickr site (The weight of the world). Maybe it's sometimes better just to look away and just focus on the music rather than its emotional impetus!
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby david on Wed Sep 09, 2009 3:13 pm

í think a mention from the above and the comment is below the belt ....and hurts

and schould never have found its way on this forum....


thanks blemished....


knowledge is over rated....
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby becky on Wed Sep 09, 2009 6:07 pm

david wrote:í think a mention from the above and the comment is below the belt ....and hurts

and schould never have found its way on this forum....


thanks blemished....


knowledge is over rated....


:shock: I'm confused...I'm intrigued by the photos in your personal album, they look like the interior of the Samadhisound studio..or are these easily purloined from another source? Should we be laying palm fronds down on the ground here? ...or did I blink and it's not so much September's here again as April 1st is here again...?
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby becky on Wed Sep 09, 2009 6:09 pm

I can only presume your 'avin a laugh aren't you mate?!
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby david on Wed Sep 09, 2009 9:59 pm

becky wrote:I can only presume your 'avin a laugh aren't you mate?!



Laughing my bloody head off mate.....
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby thricegreat on Thu Sep 10, 2009 1:57 am

hey becky - those pics are generally available ones of samadhisound studios and I don't get what's wrong either with the previous comments about knowing a abit too much sometimes - I also thought what Ingrid had to say altered my perception somewhat...and considering all the vitriol under the bridge IT IS odd to see such beautiful and romantic pics taken of her by you-know-who...I can't see what's wrong either in expressing that!
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby billster on Thu Sep 10, 2009 3:35 am

I know its daft, but hearing her new song and looking at her new video..you'd think they would havfe been such a grand couple.
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Hawk on Thu Sep 10, 2009 2:39 pm

billster wrote:I know its daft, but hearing her new song and looking at her new video..you'd think they would havfe been such a grand couple.


Like Cathy and Heathcliff?

I am strangely endeared to Ingrid. The new album seems a very important personal accomplishment and, from what I've hard, is very easy to listen to. I could happily paint with it in the background, although it doesn't touch me much... mind you, I'd probably end up painting something less morbid than I usually do... The cover artwork is nice! :-)
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Sylvian dearth of manafon interviews

Postby billster on Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:09 pm

Sylvian interview wise..is that? Doesnt seem much.
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Silver Moon on Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:59 am

I'm not the biggest Ingrid Chavez fan around, but that's a really good interview!

-K-
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Barbierian on Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:14 pm

I agree with you Kera and and I have to say that having read her interview I now have a greater understanding of her especially as a wife and mother myself. I identified with an awful lot of what she said, particularly about losing your identity when you dedicate yourself totally to your family - I respect her now but moreover I really wish they could have overcome their differences because it looks to me like they really were a great couple and that makes me sad.
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Re: New Ingrid Chavez interview

Postby Nicrobliz on Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:57 am

Barbierian wrote:I agree with you Kera and and I have to say that having read her interview I now have a greater understanding of her especially as a wife and mother myself. I identified with an awful lot of what she said, particularly about losing your identity when you dedicate yourself totally to your family - I respect her now but moreover I really wish they could have overcome their differences because it looks to me like they really were a great couple and that makes me sad.

Ditto.
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