Rodney Crowell · @RodneyJCrowell
31st Jul 2014 from TwitLonger
July
The first day of July 2014, Emmylou Harris and I picked up where we left off writing songs for a new duet album. A few days later, Billy Payne and Joe Henry joined Emmylou, myself and Glory Band in a Nashville recording studio. Steuart Smith dropped in for a few days, as did Larry Franklin. And in a week’s time, the album was close to finished. With Joe at the helm and Justin Niebank manning the recording desk, Jerry Roe, Byron House, Jedd Hughes, Steve Fishell, Chris Tuttle and the abovementioned guest musicians made Emmy’s job and mine---singing in tune and with honest conviction---a relatively simple task. The plan is to reconvene for a couple of days in October and complete the record.
With the recording done for the time being, I found myself at home for the first extended period of time since early March. Free to lie around the house, tend the vegetable garden, read and exercise, the remainder of the month passed rather quietly. Notwithstanding the freakishly cool weather patterns (some nights the temperature dropped into the mid-fifties), tornado warnings just two counties over, and the latest wave of published information I kept stumbling across confirming what I’ve suspected for a number of years: the negative effects of climate change, man made or not, is accelerating more rapidly than the scientific communities darkest predictions, I’m labeling the month idyllic.
Why, you might ask, bring up the subject of climate change in such a one-sided chronicle as this? Well, banal as it sounds, I love my wife and family, friends, dog, garden, trees, deer, wild turkey, coyote and bobcat roaming our neck of the Tennessee countryside. I also love music (obviously), books, art, ghost stories, baseball, hummus, oat bran, yellow squash, Havarti cheese and baloney sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, almond butter, dried cherries, Beluga caviar, The Wire, Breaking Bad, vintage Gibson guitars, Big Poppa's Smokers, ex-president Jimmy Carter and an invisible force I’m convinced is responsible for the whole beautiful mess.
Let’s say, for arguments sake, there is a fifty-fifty chance the scientists are wrong about climate change. When it comes to the things I love, and quite a few things I don’t particularly care for, even an eighty-twenty chance seems too dire a forecast. And yet, I’m damned if I don’t mindlessly consume more of the very stuff I’m told is causing the world’s glaciers to melt, the seas to rise and the western United States to burn. How strange, this disconnect between the human heart and mind?
enigmatically yours,
Rodney C