After interviewing Tiffanie DeBartolo, author of the film, “Dream for an Insomniac,” and the books “God-Shaped Hole” and “How to Kill a Rock Star,” with two more on the way, I realized that our discussion was all about passion in music and how it helped each of us discover our personal truths. Passion is an emotion. Emotion is the language of the soul. What we feel passionate about brings us joy. Joy brings us to God. (And it doesn’t matter what one’s definition of God is because that word means different things to different people.) What we feel passionate about is the very thing that will bring us self-discovery, transformation, enlightenment—God.
My questions for Tiffanie were based primarily on her book “How to Kill a Rock Star,” which is a fictionalized love story, but almost made me fall out of my chair when I read it because I could so relate to many of the things she said. When I emailed her, I was intrigued even more after she replied, “Music has changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to explain in an email…”
Following is our interview. My comments are italicized and in parenthesis.
Ms. DeBartolo says that her biggest musical influence was the band U2. She says they changed her life.
T: The first time I saw them perform live, I was in 8th grade and I was in the fourth row. Bono came out onstage singing “Bad” (from the “Unforgettable Fire” album) with tears streaming down his face.
As an 8th grader, I remember watching the show and watching the emotions that he was going through and just thinking, “That is the way I wanna live my life. That is what I wanna be, I wanna be able to experience every moment.”
I remember leaving that arena that night thinking, “I’m leaving here a different person than I was when I came in.”
People can say all they want about U2, but they’ve always just sort of spoken to where I am in life and what I’m going through and what I feel and what I think and what I want to articulate but can’t always get out. I always joke that everything I know about life, love, and faith, I learned from that band.
P: But what if you weren’t in the fourth row that night? Do you think your life-changing experience would have happened to you if you’d been further back in the audience? You wouldn’t have been able to see his emotions then.
T: That particular show would have affected me no matter where I was sitting. The emotion being conveyed to the audience was in the music way more than it was in the expressions of the performers. It was their spirits I was feeling. I think there’s also a sense of unity that’s created by music, sort of like this collective soul that happens. It’s a beautiful thing.
(Ah, here it is— “their spirits I was feeling,” “unity created by music,” and “collective soul” —this is the thing that moves beyond emotion, inciting the kind of passion that has the power to change the world.)
P: When you said that about Bono’s tears, I got goosebumps all over me.
T: Yeah. Imagine being 13 and your whole body filling with goosebumps and being like, “Wow! This is it!” It’s like a religious experience. I’ve seen U2 something like 50 times in the last 25 years and it never fails to happen.
P: It’s amazing how music can do that to a person. I once had a boss who was this tough-as-nails woman on the outside, but when she talked about her favorite band, Heart, it brought tears to her eyes. She said when she met Ann and Nancy Wilson in person, she turned to mush and couldn’t even get any words out of her mouth. I gained a new respect for my boss that very day.
T: Yeah! I read an interview with Bono a couple years ago where somebody asked him, “How do you guys keep doing it at a hundred percent so passionately after all these years?” And he said, “One of the reasons is when we walk out onstage and the lights go on and we’re about to start performing, we get goosebumps and all of our hair stands on end.”
And that’s why everybody gets them too because they’re feeling it as much as everybody.
P: I have a quote here from HTKARS. One of your characters said: “I am of the theory that all of our transcendental connections, anything we’re drawn to, be it a person, a song, a painting on a wall—they’re magnetic. The art is the alloy, so to speak. And our souls are equipped with whatever properties are required to attract that alloy… we’re drawn to stuff we’ve already got a connection to. Part of the thing is already inside of us.”
Do you really believe that or was that just a character’s line?
T: I really do believe that. There’s a certain humanity to art that speaks to us. It’s one thing to be entertained by something; it’s another to feel a connection to it. We connect with things that are like us… maybe we’re not conscious of how we’re connected and what there is about us that we have in common, (but) I think that when we’re most moved by something—a piece of art, a piece of song, a poem, whatever—it makes us feel like we’re less alone in the world. What’s so magical about music is that music becomes your best friend; it becomes your sort of savior in times when nothing else feels like it’s there. I somehow made it through my entire teenage years and 20’s without ever doing drugs or drinking and I swear it was because I had music.
P: Could you delve into that a bit further—why two people can hear the same music or look at the same piece of art, pottery or a painting and one person is moved while the other just doesn’t get it?
T: Something that is really crucial to that scenario is that we bring all of our experiences to what we’re perceiving and some people have had some sort of experience that connects them with that and the other person might not, so I think our history plays a very big part of what we’re connecting to.
(I agree; it makes perfect sense. And yet, it doesn’t explain what happened to me through Sammy when I had my mystical experience. I’ve wracked my brain for years—because I’d feel much more comfortable having a logical explanation—and still I cannot come up with any previous experience in my life that would have propagated what happened to me that day, other than otherworldly means which are not logical.)
P: Do you think reincarnation could play a role there? Or some sort of other spiritual means?
T: I don’t know. I really have a hard time with the idea of reincarnation. Not so much that I think it’s impossible or that I don’t think it’s a valid point of view, but I don’t think it’s helpful to go through life thinking about the past, let alone the past life. I think it’s really better to just concentrate on now. I was raised Catholic (and) one of the things that really bothered me about Catholicism is that everyone was living with this promise of heaven as opposed to really experiencing the right way that keeps them present and having experiences that are valuable even if they’re not quote unquote right. I think it’s better not to get caught up in what’s gonna happen after you die or what happened last time you were here and just live. Now. It doesn’t matter if I’ve lived 20 times, especially if I can’t remember them!
P: How else did Catholicism influence you?
T: Luckily, I had parents who were really supportive of me questioning my faith and not being strict about it, otherwise it would have been problematic but there was something nice about the rituals and the spiritual aspect of it. I just think there’s so much hypocrisy in Christianity. The supposedly really devout religious people I know are the biggest sinners I’ve ever seen. It’s so much pressure to put on somebody that you have to live a certain way and then I think they just crack. But I know a lot of people who are a lot less religious who are really kinder, gentler human beings than most of the religious people I know.
P: I’ve really struggled with that too, and how it relates to my spiritual growth. Sammy’s concert in Cabo in 2003 opened up everything in me and caused me to question who I am as a person. Catholicism and the hypocrisy in organized religion that you talk about, for one. That was really hard for me to deal with because my parents were strict Catholic. They were very loving people, but like you, I had questions. My religion wasn’t answering them for me, so I started looking in other directions for my answers. That’s what my book is about and how Sammy and his music and my connection to it, opened this up in me.
T: I had a sort of crazy experience similar to that that involves Jeff Buckley. He was an amazing songwriter that made this one, extraordinary record called “Grace.” It’s an incredible, incredible record. He died in a drowning accident in 1997, so my first book was a hundred percent inspired just by listening to that record, feeling the loss of him in the world and writing about it. Then all these crazy things started happening in relation to him and people from his life started coming into my life. It was magical. For example, I was obsessed with him for a few years while I was writing this book and I was so heartbroken that he’d been lost. It was like this light in the world went out so I wrote this book. And after I sold it and it was about six months from being published, I was in New York, reading the “Village Voice” or something and I read an article on this charity organization called “Road Recovery” that uses music programs to help kids in recovery and it just sounded like an amazing organization. So out of the blue, I called them up and said, “I believe so much in the power of music and I believe in what you’re doing. I’m a writer; I’d love to help out if you need any help.” So the guy on the phone said, “Well, we’re a grassroots organization; we just started and we need all the help we can get. Can you come down to the office tomorrow and we can talk about what you might be able to do for us?”
I went down the next day and I walked in their offices and there were pictures of Jeff all over the room! I must have had a funny look on my face and the guy was like, “Are you a Buckley fan?” I said, “Well, you could say that,” and proceeded to tell him about the book.
P: Was it your book “God-Shaped Hole?”
T: Yeah. I told him I was heartbroken and he said, “Well, I was Jeff’s manager. I knew him very well.” So I ended up working with them and becoming really close to them. Jeff’s mom read “God-Shaped Hole” and was really moved by it so she hired me to write the text for a graphic novel about Jeff’s life. I spent a month researching him and reading his journals and stuff and when I was sitting in his mom’s living room reading his journals, I thought how the fuck did I get here? What’s going on? It was surreal, incredible.
P: Wow! So you wrote the novel?
T: I did. It’s not out yet, actually. I imagine it won’t be out before 2012.
P: I’ll be looking forward to it. Where would you say you got your philosophies from that you put in your book, is that just from living life, from your personal experience?
T: Yeah. And just trying to articulate and answer my own questions. As a writer, it’s like you have all these questions that you set out to answer and you really just end up with more questions. I think there’s always an intention behind it too. When I was writing “God-Shaped Hole,” my first book, I was really devastated by Jeff Buckley’s death and part of the reason for writing that book was because I didn’t understand why he had to die. I needed to make sense of it. This talented, amazing man walks into a river and never comes out. It doesn’t make sense to me. The whole book was this process that I figured when I got to the end of the book, I was gonna have peace with it. Of course I didn’t. Which is why I wrote “How to Kill a Rock Star” because I couldn’t make peace with him dying. I was like, well, I’m just gonna play God then, and bring him back to life.
P: One of your characters in the book talked about having the guts to go out and find what one is looking for—wanting more—having hope—and how current popular music makes people dead inside. A recurring theme in your book is about making music that matters.
T: Yes. I feel even more strongly about that now that I’ve been working in the music industry for the last 3 ½ years. I’ve been running this record label and am faced with that on a daily basis, trying to sell records by artists I believe in and know really believe in what they’re doing. Not only that, but they deserve to be able to make a living feeding their families on their art. They shouldn’t have to dig ditches while they’re making music, but there are so many people that are so less-talented that get so many more opportunities just because they look a certain way or they have the right marketing team and it just seems so unbelievably unfair. If nothing else, I’m trying to change that a little bit. We always joke at the label that our job is to put a little bit of chlorine into the gene pool of music even though it’s hard.
P: What’s the record label called?
T: “Bright Antenna.” We’ve got some really amazing artists. Actually, one of our artists, Jimmy Gnecco, his voice was the inspiration for Paul Hudson. He’s really incredible too. (The label) started putting out singles and then we would put out EPs and this year we’ve got three full-length records out.
P: Congratulations! I can’t wait to check them out. You also said you had two more books coming out. Is one the book about Jeff Buckley?
T: Yeah. One’s the Buckley book and I’m working on another one.
P: I love, love, love how you described Eliza’s (the main character in HTKARS) first impression of Paul’s music. You wrote, “The music dug in so deep you didn’t hear it so much as feel it…” and “What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor. An ejaculation of truth.” Wow. What an amazing description— “an ejaculation of truth!”
T: That’s the way I felt the first time I heard Jimmy Gnecco sing. He has this voice that gets inside of you. It’s really incredible. And its melodies articulate feelings that you had a million times but don’t know how to put into words or music. It’s such a gift to be able to feel that way too.
P: That’s what it’s all about, right? Passion—in the performer and the listener. And while we’re on the subject of passion, besides the cliché “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” what role do you think sex plays in music? My experience that I wrote about, was very wrapped up in sex. And in “The Secret Power of Music,” author David Tame says that rock ‘n’ roll and the blues are evil because they elicit inappropriate sexual behavior. Oh! Oh! Oh! But the nastiness and raw emotion of rock ‘n’ roll and the blues make me feel so fucking fine! It’s primal, you know, gets you way down deep in those visceral reflexes—your core—fills your entire being from the bottom up.
T: Again, it’s about connection. How much more do you love a band when you think the singer’s hot? I was just having a conversation with my friend last night because he was on my case because I never liked Michael Jackson. Everybody thinks Michael Jackson was a genius and he probably was. I was just never into his music, so he was like, “I don’t understand. How can someone who loves music so much, not get Michael Jackson?” and I said, “Because Michael Jackson was really popular when I was going through puberty and I didn’t find him attractive!” I just didn’t get him. So I think that again, there’s just something about music that’s sexy—rock ‘n’ roll is sexy—why not embrace that? There’s nothing wrong with it.
P: Along those lines too, in HTKARS, Eliza has a chance to have sex with this big star Doug Blackman—and she doesn’t! Why?
T: I guess this is probably the subconscious correlation for me: people always joke to me about Bono and how much I love Bono. But if given the choice to sit down and have coffee with Bono or have sex with Bono, I would take coffee over that without a question. I would much rather talk to him, so that’s where that came from.
P: I know exactly what you mean; I feel the same way about Sammy. So I take it you’ve never met Bono in person?
T: I have never met him officially, though I did follow him around San Francisco in 1992, all day, but I never said a word to him.
P: If you could ask him just one thing, what would it be?
T: Something a bit esoteric like, “How do you do it? How do you get out of bed every day, open your arms to the world and give so much of yourself?” I’d also ask him, if he were stranded on a desert island with only 3 records, which ones would he have?
P: Those are great questions. The records one would be hard to answer! So how else did your personal life influence HTKARS? Is there a small part of you in your characters?
T: Definitely. I don’t do that on purpose; I’m always trying to work out issues and situations with characters, but I don’t always realize it until afterwards.
P: Writing reveals things about ourselves that we maybe couldn’t see before.
T: And you learn a lot, not only about yourself but about what you believe, and what you think. One of the other things that I’m really grateful for with writing, is (that) it’s taught me how to be less judgmental about people because when your characters do things that you would never do, you have to let them do it; just like I’ve learned a lot about human nature by being inside of other people’s heads.
P: Why did you choose fiction over memoir for this?
T: Because it’s so much more interesting to make things up! I recommend fiction over non-fiction just because you have the freedom to sort of—I don’t want to say manipulate the story, but it almost is a way to discover something about what you’re trying to say by stepping outside of yourself and taking all of the boundaries off of that. When you’re so concerned with sticking to the facts, I think it’s hard to be as creative. One of the things I learned from a writing class that I took with one of my favorite authors, one of the things he said to me, after reading the first 60 pages of “God-Shaped Hole” was, “Is this book true?” and I said, “No, it’s fiction.” And he said, “Let me tell you something. Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it’s not true.” The point is the emotional truth and that’s what you really want to convey when you’re writing a story, so if making things up facilitates the emotional truth, which for me, it does, I think by all means, it’s something that should be at least explored.
END OF INTERVIEW
And that’s what my journey has revealed to me too—the discovery of truth—my truth. Tiffanie’s and my means of delivery are based on spiritual connections to music—hers appears to involve a more grounded perspective (which, she says, is due to her degree in philosophy, which taught her to look at things in a more logical sense) while mine is more the otherworldly sort. Nothing wrong with either approach. It is my goal with this blog to present many different perspectives so that my readers will be encouraged to never give up on their search for the means to make their own dreams reality. I believe that each person’s course is revealed in the precise manner it needs to be best understood by that person—like one’s own private language.
The path to self-discovery is as varied as there are beings in the universe and music is but one of the many ways. But, oh Lord, ain’t it grand?
Thank you so very much for the interview, Tiffanie!
Be sure to visit www.brightantenna.com and pick out some great new music. (And while you’re there, check out “Manifesto,” the label’s scrolling philosophies about music, such as “We believe that music is a necessity, not a pastime.” Yes!)
For more information on Tiffanie DeBartolo and her work, please visit her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=1012537665. Her stories are honest, raw and thought-provoking.