Hostage to my musings

I was hesitant to create an art piece for this song at all because my son and my daughter Jillian, who is an excellent filmmaker, made their own art for "Cut and Dry" in the form of a music video. I have lots of memories from the filmmaking experience: The two of them had come home to New Jersey at the end of March 2020 to escape the early COVID NYC days. After two weeks of binge watching "Tiger King" and 'Breaking Bad" and eating too much, they were bored and decided to make a super low (zero) budget music video. It was a family effort. My husband drove slowly around the neighborhood with Jillian hanging out of the back of the car filming Calvin who rode his bike on the pandemic empty streets. The day we shot the blood dripping on Calvin's head was so cold and windy. The poor guy was laying practically naked on the icy pavers of our back patio, while Jillian insisted on grabbing one more take. I hopped on Facebook to ask for a recommendations for a playground in the area with one of those spinning merry-go-rounds for one of the scenes about half way through video. My post was met with aggressive scorn from the local COVID rulers who told me that I was selfish and I was NOT to leave my house under any circumstance.

The post was removed and we filmed anyway on the merry-go-round, and at a park, and the high school sports fields, and the train tracks, and the woods at the end of the street. The world was closed and we made a film which is ironically, largely about paranoia. You can watch it here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2glIUwmx3fE

Art-wise, this may be my most illustrative piece of the series. The focus is on the lyrics of Calvin seeing himself in the blood spot, "like a Rorschack', but indeed the whole song is about self-reflection and how our brains are hardwired to seek (and rely on) patterns to explain our behavior. For those who are not familiar, Anna Freud, who is featured in the chorus, is the daughter of the famous Sigmund, and a renowned psychiatrist in her own right. She did a lot of research on defense mechanisms such as denial, justification, paranoia, projection, etc. The song is really a tribute to her work and the difficulty of looking with clarity into a mirror.

The painting is simple, a colorful, dramatic blood splatter with a reflection of the singer. Head exploding, pensive expression. How quickly our eyes find the face even though it is cut off and somewhat obscured by the monochromatic splatter — a testament to how our brains work. We are meant to see patterns. And faces in particular. And it's not just any face... anyone who knows Calvin will recognize him immediately.

Like many of Calvin's songs, the lyrics read like poetry:

Cut and Dry

By Calvin Rezen

Cold sweat from a dead sleep

I woke up with a nose bleed,

and the blood stains on the bed sheets

And with each tick of a heart beat,

I could taste battery acid

I stumble to the bathroom and I wash clean like a Baptist

But my head feels like a vacuum

When I go back to the crime scene,

you'll tell me it's madness

Baby, I know what the signs read

It's an ink blot; it's a Rorschach

in the bloodstains on a mattress

Anna Freud had me paranoid that I can't avoid defenses

I'm sick of being pensive; My consciousness is fried

And daring youth is bulletproof, but I'm coming to my senses

We were born to live on fences

Nothing's cut and dry

Cold sweat from a dead sleep

I woke up with a nose bleed

On a cold night, I was nineteen

And I should be home in Jersey

But I came back after New Years

To my dorm room made of concrete

Cause of some sick resolution that there's honor in being lonely

Anna Freud had me paranoid that I kissed of adolescence

When I woke up to an ambulance the morning Bowie died

I spent that week at open mics to wrestle the depression

but ch, ch, ch, changes are incessant baby

Nothing's cut and dry

Cold sweat from a dead sleep

I woke up with a nose bleed

And the blood stains on the bed sheets

Had me scared to death the stain looks just like me

And I'm sick of who I am

I'm sick of who I'm meant to be

Holden-fucking-Caufield of the 21st Century

Anna Freud had me paranoid that I'm hostage to my musings

I keep on living chapters out of "Catcher and the Rye"

And solitude's an opiate, one I try to kick abusing

But I know I'll keep using

Oh, I know I'll keep on using

Nothing's cut and dry

©Calvin Rezen. All rights reserved.