A Conversation with Dar Williams – HuffPost 6.11.12

Mike Ragogna: Dar, hi. Let’s get into “I Am The One Who Will Remember” from your new album In The Time Of Gods.

Dar Williams: Sure!

MR: It’s very powerful, and it’s so true that many kids in the Middle East will continue to have a negative view of the world unless things change.

DW: Well, it’s looking at a cycle, which is something that gives me a lot of priorities to look at. When I heard, after 9/11, that the Taliban was mostly comprised of the orphans from the war between Russia and Afghanistan, my response was, “So how do we get in right now to places like refugee camps? How do we avoid conflicts so that you don’t have these incredibly marginalized kids who grow up with no parents to sort of temper all of the terrible things of the world and nurture you through it? How do we avoid the kinds of situations that create generations of grown up orphans with no parents, who have no compassion, who know war, who create war, who do things out of fear and a sense of need? How do you break the cycle?” Geopolitically, I’m sure the answer is that you can’t avoid a war. If a war has to happen, a war has to happen. But there’s got to be a time when you say, “We’re creating cycles of war,” because you’re creating cycles of violence. It makes me want to, when I retire, go overseas to refugee camps and just be a full time grandmother to as many children as possible. Something that breaks the cycle.

MR: Of course, in the United States, my feeling is that we have something similar in that there are generations of kids that are brought up in ignorance. They’re brought up to not participate in the government, or if they do, do so uninformed beyond how their religious organizations or extreme groups want them to vote. I mean, Timothy McVeigh didn’t happen out of nowhere is my point.
DR: Exactly. That was why I put in the line that said, “Scour the earth and find the orphans of forgetting,” because that was broad. And it’s true that the location of the song is, in my mind, a refugee camp in some of these really bleak border areas that were never meant to be for habitation, so there’s just not enough water and there’s not enough food and it’s very dusty. There are a lot of them, and they’re all over the world, and most of them are from war. The orphans of forgetting are any kid who’s in that shadow of negligence and who is therefore more susceptible to being raised by words and ideologies than by humans who have words and ideologies. There’s just a big difference between zealotry and even having parents who are really extreme in some way. They’re still parents. A lot of times, kids will take the words and the nurturing and they’ll make their own decisions, and they’ll still have guidance. I really value people besides parents who nurture kids. I have a friend who had a horrific upbringing, and she’s like, “But there was Mrs. So-And-So, my third grade teacher,” and she just made that one teacher her talisman or good luck charm and her model and her goal. Then she found other people that she could also kind of look to, but it really started with this one teacher. For one of my friends, and this is an ideology, I’m sure you’d say she’d listen to All Things Considered. That actually speaks to the idea of a text that’s raising a child more than a parent. But for a kid to hook into things that feel civilizing to them and not extreme can also be okay. We have to look for them. We have to look for the kids who are being neglected by their parents or the system, and it’s at our own peril if we don’t. That’s really what I was saying. But you’re right, the orphans of forgetting can be anywhere. It can be in your backyard.

MR: There you go. By the way, how’s mommyhood been treating you?

DW: I love it! (laughs) But there’s a chance that my kids do need some extra supervision because I do go away. They’ve got some great grandmas on the case and a great dad, so I’m not going to feel that sorry for them. Yeah, they don’t have as conventional a mom in me as some other kids, although when I’m home, I’m way home, so I’m kind of a combination of a stay at home mom and nomad.

MR: Ok, back to In the Time Of Gods. Where does that title come from?

DW: The themes of the songs are based on Greek mythology, and that was kind of an interesting theme. Mike, you used to work at Razor & Tie, and my joke is that I’ve been with Razor & Tie for 17 years, so it’s really important to mess with them! (laughs) If I wanted to pursue this Greek mythology thing, why not? It actually turned out that each of the themes I looked at sprung open and seemed very modern — the god of forges and volcanoes. The more you look at that story, which seems pretty obscure and ancient, the more you see. He’s married to the goddess of beauty, but she’s messing around with the god of war. He just likes to tinker in his workshop. He just likes to be left alone for hours and hours and create beautiful things, but he’s extremely clumsy socially and shy and gentle, and he has a limp. He’s a god, but he has a limp. So he has limited mobility and is constantly reminded of his limitations, yet he creates irresistibly beautiful things. And then in my mind, as a modern character, he then just likes to watch Mythbusters and likes to experiment with TNT, and his backyard is filled with little holes where he detonated stuff, and that’s kind of his anger management. I just thought that to me is how that ancient architect comes alive in the present without any work, on my part, without my forcing and retrofitting this character in. We know that guy who makes beautiful things, who loves his solitude, who loves his life, but doesn’t understand it and hardly comes above ground to be above the subterranean world.

MR: (laughs) I’ve always been fascinated with those myths, and I think that most people who grew up reading them still are. Maybe it’s because they’re such archetypes, like the basis of everything.

DW: It’s so powerful.

MR: What was the reaction on Cliff (Chenfeld) and Craig (Balsam)’s faces when you delivered an album titled In The Time Of Gods?

DW: Well, they have a new guy on the floor who’s kind of in charge of the whole project, and I remember meeting them for coffee — the product manager and the head of the floor. One of them is a real fan and supporter, and then there was this new person. And the new person, he’s very handsome. He has sort of ice blue eyes, and he just looked straight ahead at me. (laughs) The room just fell a few degrees. Nothing happened. His face was just immobile, and this manager is saying, “I think what she’s saying…” So he was trying to kind of warm things up, but this little café just got a little cold. This guy just said, “I’d like to hear some of this material.” (laughs) And it turned out fine. I think that they were afraid that I was going to say, “I am Athena, I am the goddess of justice! I beat my breastplate! I have an owl named Nike! I wear a toga!” There are a lot of places where I kind of go off the path of Greek mythology, like “Storm King,” who, in Greek mythology, is Zeus, who arbitrarily, when he gets angry, throws thunderbolts at people. He very much represents randomness and the moods of the universe. I changed that over to “Storm King,” which has to do with Pete Seeger and how he is very much like this mountain in our river valley, the Hudson River Valley, that vigilantly and lovingly watches over the boats and bikes and cars of the Hudson Valley. I changed it, and I was hoping that Razor & Tie could trust me where, if it was archaic and weird, I could change it to a modern archetype that we all recognize and are valuable to point out. We don’t value the guy who hurls thunderbolts around arbitrarily. Those are the black sheep of Wall Street. We do value the decent, vigilant, peace keeping, peace loving father figures. So, I would switch it and change it. But also, a lot of the ancient stuff does still fit. They took it in stride. (laughs)

MR: Nice, they are good sports. I want to also touch on “Summer Child.” You were talking about motherhood before. Is “Summer Child” a culmination of your kids?

DW: Yes, absolutely. I have to say, it was instructive to me. They recommend in art school and art classes to take as close a look as you can until you stop feeling inspired by something. Looking at the myth of Persephone, if you really look at the fullness of that, which is that she was kidnapped by Death and became Death’s bride — what a bummer! (laughs)

MR: One of the more cheery stories in greek mythology.

DW: Yeah, and she was brought back to Earth to be with her mother, who was the goddess of the harvest. There was celebration, but there was a decision that Persephone would have to go back down to Death for six months a year, hence the seasons. When I was reading that, I was thinking about how vindictive Persephone’s mother must have felt to sort of say, “I got her back, but go to hell!” (laughs) And then I thought, “Well Summer and Spring are beautiful times. They are pure in celebration. They’re purely beautiful in so many ways.” There’s nothing vindictive about it, and I thought, “Maybe this is my thing about feeling triumphant, that because my kids are still young and they’re still running around and everything is so exciting and they still hold my hand on the walk to school.” I’ve beaten time. I’ve beaten mortality and the inevitable changes. That’s not what the seasons are about. Time is about appreciating having all this ability to sort of capture the eternity of a moment, but then knowing that you’re going to have to let it go at some point. Winter will come. So I was watching my kids running around and watching my son and his friends and all these arms and legs. (laughs) It’s all chaos! And I felt that moment of eternity, and I thought that that’s the gift of Summer. You can see your kids trapped in that humid air. It’s like time stops just a little bit so that you can stop and appreciate it. But that’s in the context of knowing that there will be a freeze and that time will go on.

MR: Beautiful, Dar. With “I Have Been Around The World,” I would say you’re feeling more at home or in the skin of a citizen of the planet.

DW: Yes, yes. Specifically, I was taken in by my husband, who’s a big foodie, and we have dinner parties and have friends over. We are pretty connected at this point. It really is a life that I would wish for anybody in terms of the number of people I can call on for any number of problems or exciting conversation. I have a friend for everything! (laughs) People that I really trust and people that I don’t really like that much but I kind of love anyway because they’re such great people in the community. You’re absolutely right that the song is very much about that world that I’ve found, and there just happened to be a Greek god who doesn’t have a throne. It’s a goddess, Vesta, who sits at the hearth and stokes the hearth of everything, and it’s great that there’s a god assigned for that… one of the major gods. It’s just the one that really keeps the fire burning. I understand why that is so important now, and I think I was ready to forgo that as a traveler and just say, “Oh, my life is on the go, and I’ll just collect these little adventures, and sometimes, I’ll visit my cold, creaky home and boil an egg, and then I’ll get back out on the road.” That song is definitely a Dar song, but because it’s something that the soul really gravitates too, I think that’s why it was present, even in ancient times.

MR: Wow. Speaking of stoking the fires, you also feature a song that’s kind of a call to action, “Write this Number Down.”

DW: Yeah, that song I wrote for my daughter. We adopted a girl from Ethiopia, and she’s just the light of the house, and she’s very strong in every sense. She’s strong willed, she’s strongly charming and funny, and a bit of a wise child. She runs really fast. She’s very physically strong. Ethiopia is quite an incredible country, but it’s just been through so much, and it’s hard to find stability even amidst the incredible beauty and progress that that country has made. This is not to knock Ethiopa, but I kind of feel like in the United States, even if you’re feeling shafted by the legal system — and I make some reference to that — there are networks of people who will work with you to try to get your day in court or to try to get you justice. Realizing that just gave me such a sense of pride and faith in this country. It’s true that terrible things happen in the courts still, I wouldn’t say that we’re completely in line with complete justice. As I said in the song, we’re still overcoming forms of slavery. But there’s Lambda. It’s legal assistance really geared towards gay rights. And the ACLU, and there’s the state CLUs and there are all these places, and we get very upset about them, but sometimes, people feel unhappiness. But everybody is working towards justice around the periphery of the system itself to make sure that the system doesn’t inadvertently sort of shaft us. I feel like that’s in place. There are secondary things. But it’s great to say to a daughter, “If something happens to you, God forbid, you’re going to have gazillions of strong women to draw on no matter what your income is, no matter what your situation is. We’re totally there. We’re not going anywhere.”

MR: Dar, “lambda” is a Greek symbol for balance, which certainly applies here.

DW: Ah! Exactly. And the Human Rights Campaign is really quite awesome. It’s hard for people to know that they have access to them and that those people are there for them and that’s where we have to do our work. We have to reassure people that they have access. I met someone the other day who said, “I’m a constitutional conservative. I just want my Constitution back.” And I just thought, “What part of the Constitution are you being kept from exercising?” I think he just purely meant taxes. But I benefit from the taxes I pay because I know how to access the benefits of the taxes. I wish we could get that wheel moving forward for more people. I do understand how people can feel completely left out of the process. There’s a lot of smugness and silence that, in my lifetime, I want to be a part of reversing.

MR: With all the rhetoric that heats up with a presidential race, one of the funniest things I’ve heard so far was Stephen Colbert saying something like, “I can’t wait to see what country Obama was born in this time.” I think that really sums up the usual garbage thrown about.

DW: Humor is good, but making this album and also traveling a lot, I’m really feeling this country right now. I’m loving these towns that I visit. I’m actually working on this project that I call the Positive Proximity Project. Positive Proximity is sort of this state of being in a town or a city where there’s enough communication and collective resources that you can move forward with turning a gross, unused parking lot into a community garden, where you have enough momentum to create a concert series. A friend of mine, his wife wanted chickens in Buffalo, and there was a law against it. She got a decibel meter and she got testimonials and she reversed the law so that she could have chickens. That’s sort of positive proximity in the neighborhood so that people can say, “We want this. It’s hygienic. Everything’s cool.” There’s this moment that happens in communities where you can kind of move forward instead of getting stymied in your differences. I’m seeing a lot of towns getting over this stumbling block. Red states, blue states, mixes. Our town is a very big mix of people, and we are moving forward with all sorts of things that we agree on about bike paths and parks and school lunches and everything. It’s extremely bipartisan because we already know each other. We would embarrass ourselves to create conflicts because the jig’s up. We have a common ground and we know it. We know that we like each other. I’m seeing that all over the country. Where it involves taxes, it gets kind of heated, but where you have this positive proximity, a lot of this happens outside of your checkbook. It’s called social capital. I love what I’m seeing. Every single place that I’m playing is doing something that’s even more and more interesting and more connected than the year before.

MR: Dar, I was a California delegate for about five minutes. What about you? Might politics might be in your future, feel like maybe running for office?

DW: Never. I love that you’re interested, but never, ever, ever for me. I can’t do it! I love to be supportive. I’m your wingman, but I’ll never run for office. I have a sordid past. There’s still that nomadic piece of me that is now in my blood, and I think my kids would say, “If you have extra attention to give, give it to us!”

MR: (laughs) Dar, I ask you this every time, let’s do it again. What advice do you have for new artists?

DW: Well, it’s very linked to this positive proximity thing. Find yourself a place where people are making music together. If you believe that you are someone who can go off in a room by yourself and kind of morph the world into a whole new kind of music or you just need to be in a room by yourself and practice and practice and practice and kind of arrive in the world fully hatched, there is precedent for that. But for me, I was part of a scene, and it was great. We dated each other, we fought with each other, we bickered, we talked behind each other’s backs, we were petty! (laughs) It was great because we were also slowly imparting that this works or this doesn’t work in songwriting. And because performance is an element of things, I was told in certain terms to get rid of my yard sale guitar and that I needed to work on my diction, and then it got really specific, and feelings were hurt, and then I grew. It was a wonderful thing, and it was less lonely, and I got to go to a lot of open mics and find myself.

MR: You realize that your yard sale guitar is probably worth a decent penny right now?

DW: Oh, that’s so sweet! If only we knew where it was! (laughs) My mom bought it for $30, and she gave it to me as a gift, and then I sold it, and all these people sneered at it. This wonderful guy named Sandy of Sandy’s Music in Cambridge sold it for $200. He said, “Fine guitar!” He sold it to an eleven-year-old or something. It was very sweet. He found a home for it.

MR: Nice. All right, well I guess we should wrap things up. Dar, thanks as usual, and all the best with the new album In The Time of Gods.

DW: Thank you so much, Mike!

Transcribed by Kyle Pongan