Hudson, Hays, Birthdays
Neighbors & Heroes
I believe we each hold a craving for the spontaneous and serendipitous in this world of endless swiping and scrolling. I bemoan that hyper-curating an online dating profile has become normalized, while simply saying hello to – and, God forbid, developing a relationship with – a neighbor has turned into an Olympian feat of interpersonal gymnastics.
I’ve been watching a TV show from the late aughts and, besides the obvious absence of TikTok and smart phones, a striking aspect is that the young people in the show simply show up at the front door of each other’s houses often. “Hey, Mrs. Y, is X home?”
Can you imagine a friend simply showing up at your house without notice? Can you even imagine a friend calling you without notice? You would think a serious emergency occurred or that they had genuinely lost their mind.
Around this time last year, I was walking down Dean Street and came across a couple reading books on their stoop, a few doors down from my own. I asked them what they were reading and we got to speaking for a bit. Somewhere in the conversation I learned that one of them was a musician – Hudson Freeman. We exchanged contact information and have been playing ever since.
(This is one reason why physical books are so good: they provide an easy way to test the conversational waters with a stranger. Much can be determined about one’s eagerness to continue a conversation in the tone, timbre, and texture of their reply to the question of ‘what are you reading?’)
I love Hudson’s music for many reasons, but perhaps especially for its lyrical pithiness. In “I’m Most Me” – which I would file under my list of “perfect songs” – Hudson sings
“I’m most me when I lie
when I’m mad, I ugly cry
I’m most me when I’m impatient, I’ll admit
when I know I’m full of shit
when I’m running out of bits….
I’m most me when I’m discovering I’m wrong
when I’m singing all my songs….”
The endless carnival of neoliberal self-improvement projects would suggest that we’re “most ourselves” when we’re at our best, striving and actualizing, and that those more revolting parts of ourselves are to be muted and punted. But Hudson’s song offers a more expansive sense of interiority – one that recognizes those parts not as exiles to be shunned but as indispensable constituents, meaningfully contributing to our personalities and sensibilities. What’s more, it’s through the act of songwriting that we’re able to engage in processes of self-excavation and transformation – Hudson discovers he’s wrong precisely by “singing his songs,” but also meaningfully transfigures the pain into an affective and communicative piece of music in the process.
Acceptance of the different parts of ourselves is difficult, not least because it runs counter to the imperatives of capitalism – which suggest we can simply buy our bad feelings away with the next glittering object from #thesmirkingbrownbox – and western medicine, which often suggests that bad feelings are problems to be solved. I read “The Body Keeps the Score” last summer, and one its most salient messages was that American psychiatrists are often preoccupied with numbing and dampening the painful experiences of patients, as opposed to encouraging them to integrate those experiences into an comprehensive narrative of their life. Again, Hudson’s music provides a compelling alternative:
“I am all the ages I’ve ever been
I am all the years that I’ve ever lived"
I am all the grace that I’ll ever get
I am all the changes I ever missed”
To recognize the contingency of where we are at this very moment – as a summation of every past experience – does not necessitate that we identify with the various people we used to be. But engaging with, and getting curious about, those people can provide fertile creative terrain, and might even provide clues about how we ended up in the position we’re in now.
As my brother once asked me, “Why are you the way you are?” #WAYTWYA
As I turn 30 on March 7, I’ll be keeping Hudson’s words in mind, like a mantra – reminding me, to borrow from Joan Didion,
“that some things are in fact irrevocable, and that it had counted after all…every mistake, every word, all of it.”
After a few weeks of band leading, I’m excited for a month of gigs and recordings as a sideman, including four with Hudson. I want to make a special note for CT friends that I’ll be playing with the great pianist Kevin Hays at Jazz on the Post in Westport on Thursday, March 14. Kevin is someone I have admired ever since I was in high school. The dynamics of how this gig came about are completely different from those of the gig with Hudson. I simply emailed Kevin and told him I loved his music. He was kind enough to be interested in playing together, so I’ve been asking him to join anytime I get a gig that guarantees a modest sum. I think there were some nice moments from our first gig together, but the one that almost made me cry was when he spontaneously started singing "Feuilles-O" after the pastor’s sermon (34:19). I had heard Kevin sing on some recordings before, but this came completely out of nowhere, and his vulnerability and complete attainment to what the moment was asking for just gutted me….so much so that I had to laugh a few minutes later, when he gracefully shepherded us into “Elegia,” the song we had planned to play next together.
Sunday, March 3 – Jacob Aviner & Dan Montgomery at the Penrose
Sunday, March 10 – Hudson Freeman at Berlin
Monday, March 11 – Matei Predescu & Paul Pandit at Filthy Diamond
Thursday, March 14 – Kevin Hays & Paul Pandit at Jazz at the Post (Westport, CT)
Sunday, March 17 – Hudson Freeman at SoFar Sounds
Wednesday, March 20 – Recording with Naomi Nakanishi & Charlie Lincoln
Saturday, March 23 – Hudson Freeman at Elsewhere
Friday, March 29 – Hudson Freeman at SoFar Sounds
Saturday, March 30 – Isabelle Ashton at Studio 45
Ta-ta fn (
’s crucial addition to the email sign-off landscape),Chase