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Shara Nova has released five albums under the moniker My Brightest Diamond and has composed works for The Crossing, Conspirare, Cantus Domus, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Roomful of Teeth, many community choirs, as well as yMusic, Brooklyn Rider, violist Nadia Sirota, Aarhus Symfoni, North Carolina Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, American Composers Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, among others.
In 2019, she composed for over 600 community musicians and the Cincinnati Symphony in celebration of their 125th season, a piece entitled "Look Around," with director Mark DeChiazza. Her baroque chamber p’opera “You Us We All” premiered in the US in October 2015 at BAM Next Wave Festival. With co-composer and performer Helga Davis, Nova created a four-screen film entitled “Ocean Body,” along with director Mark DeChiazza, which premiered at The Momentary in August 2021, shortly followed by the premiere of “Infinite Movement,” her baroque masque for 100 musicians, set to text by artist Matthew Ritchie, which premiered at The University of North Texas in November 2021.
Ms. Nova is the featured singer on “The Blue Hour” with the string orchestra A Far Cry and co-composers Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Caroline Shaw on Nonesuch Records (Sept ‘22). A collection of songs by Nico Muhly with Detroit’s acclaimed wind ensemble Akropolis Quintet also features Ms. Nova’s voice entitled Hymns for Private Use (Oct ‘22). A number of music composers, including Sarah Kirkland Snider, Bryce and Aaron Dessner, Steve Mackey and David Lang have created works specifically for her voice. She has collaborated with Matthew Barney, The Decemberists, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Sufjan Stevens, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, and many others.
Shara has a couple different branches to her life:
Singer and Composer Branch: https://shara-nova.com/
Pop Music Branch: https://www.mybrightestdiamond.com/
Instagram: @mybrightestdiamond
Twitter: @MyBrightestDmnd
Writing on Substack: https://substack.com/profile/91251132-shara-nova
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Vellante, editor and producer, Peter Bauer. This is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast, and I am very pleased to have Sharon Nova, singer and also within the musical ensemble.
00:00:32
Speaker
My brightest diamond. Shara, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Ken.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't told you this yet, but you're one of the guests. I've done the show for a little over three years. You're one of the guests that I've always wanted on when I, you know, first started my first episode in this head of mine. So I just want to really thank you for coming on and spending some spending some time on the show and talking some philosophy and art. So amazing. Yeah, it's exciting.
Shara's Artistic Journey and Performances
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure when you're walking around, you're recently in Chicago and you're walking around with people walking up to you and saying, Hey, Sharon, I was wondering what is art and all these type of things. But I shared my love of Chicago to you recently there performing. And I thought it'd be a nice thing to talk about just Chicago and your recent experience there and what you're up to artistically now.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yes, it's a shift coming out of pandemic and being so isolated for so long. So I was invited to play a concert in Detroit.
00:01:42
Speaker
on December 3rd for a citywide event called Noel Night, and then that was quickly followed by seven shows opening for Andrew Bird in the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago. And both of those concerts were in these really big churches, and
00:02:07
Speaker
Each of those environments were really different acoustically, so I had to plan and accommodate for the situations which were quite different.
Songwriting Process and Inspirations
00:02:19
Speaker
And to be honest, Ken, I have really been in the composer's seat writing for choir, and I made a film with my friend Helga Davis during the pandemic.
00:02:31
Speaker
I wrote an opera, I wrote a choral song cycle for the choir, the crossing, and I had written only one song for myself in three years because that's how life had me. And so what I did was I wrote 14 new songs in a month.
00:02:54
Speaker
really thinking about these church spaces and what these concerts were. So I just got home two days ago.
00:03:05
Speaker
in the rest and recovery. It's like, Ken, hey, let's reflect in 2023. It's a little raw. Well, I want to jump on that point of saying 14 in a month. I don't know. You were just chatting right now, but I look at the work that you do, the intensity, the thinking. I know you must put into it in composing 14 songs in a month, Cheryl. What was that concentrated experience like?
00:03:36
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like Olympic athletes are my greatest inspiration because of the amount of focus, the amount of discipline, and the rigor that's required. But I also think that there's something about creating these ridiculous goals for oneself and setting this
00:04:05
Speaker
high bar for yourself that no one told me I had to write 14 new songs, but it was really my own impulse of trying to get that channel to the ether open and using this as a provocation of kind of a certain kind to, in a sense, force me to have that kind of rigor and discipline.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's, uh, well, I mean, as a, as a fan, you know, this side of the ledger, uh, we, we get to, we get the benefit from that, but, uh, yeah, it was just really, I, I know, uh, I found it fascinating how you referred to, you know, like athletes or Olympic athletes, because I just thought of it in the terms of my head on this show. I've had athletes on, uh, and female athletes in first and, um, you know, kind of like, um,
00:05:03
Speaker
in advocacy, uh, African-American female pro hockey player and getting into sport and stuff like that. And there's an intensity that's been in the back of my head around that too. But I hadn't thought about that and the convergence until you said what you said. I was surprised when I heard it, but it made the instant sense of in Olympic training, the athlete pushing through peak performance. Now's the time. Let's do it. Um, wow.
00:05:31
Speaker
And creating that willpower for yourself. There's no one, there's kind of not an external motivator. You're really working with your own willpower. And that's.
00:05:46
Speaker
That's, I think, why I look to athletes so often. And you're also, you're working with your own body, you're working with your own limitations. And there's a certain isolation that I think athletes also experience that I certainly feel as a musician living a lifestyle that is quite irregular. And so having to, um,
00:06:17
Speaker
restrict oneself from what maybe the neighbors are doing or what your peers are doing in the community and to say, I can't do that, I'd really love to do that, but I have to do this other thing called music.
00:06:36
Speaker
Do you find that irregular piece where I talk to artists and I find my schedule is tough to explain to others and artists have that go on. Do you feel you've dealt with that better over time? The irregular, the, oh, it's coming in now and it's a strange time and that's the time of Japan or whatever, that's strange about artistry or related fields. Have you gotten more used to that or more comfortable with that?
Artistic Lifestyle and Challenges
00:07:07
Speaker
I never get used to losing friends. And unfortunately that has happened over time where I think I might be able to be present with someone for a period of time, but then
00:07:23
Speaker
the nature of writing an opera or the nature of writing a record and going on tour for months at a time means that I need friendships that can sustain over very long periods of time, more like
00:07:42
Speaker
seasonal friendships rather than the kind of more consistent ones. And so the people that have been able to endure are ones that have an understanding or have an expectation of me that I'm not constantly disappointing them.
00:08:03
Speaker
And that's, that's been tough. I ain't going to lie, but for those who have been able to stay, you know, or have been able to kind of manage their own expectations of what I can be as a friend, um, those friendships are incredible. And I am so grateful for, for those people in my life. Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh,
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's a challenge. It's a challenging idea that you put up front as far as what it brings to relationships. But that makes a lot of sense. I think ultimately, it's really tough to get used to.
00:08:43
Speaker
I can sometimes people experience on a just a direct level, you know, like working third shift. I remember when I worked third shift, it was like, Hey, two hour nap, and let me join the other world that seems to still exist. That's at a different time and wants me over a year. So definitely get that. Hey, um, I wanted to, uh, in here now I have to ask a conceptual question because I really want to, uh,
00:09:08
Speaker
Get into that, and I know we could probably talk for a long time, but I want to jump into it. Before the conceptual question, this might be strange to say, before the conceptual question, I want to make sure I ask one question of you. I've seen you live and when I've seen you live at times,
00:09:30
Speaker
Your voice impacts me and it's a physical reaction. The goosebumps to hearing songs. People are very sensitive to music and describe that experience and other folks would be like, I don't get goosebumps when I hear somebody sing. I've had that experience a lot with you. And here's the blunt and maybe unfair question.
00:09:52
Speaker
How does that happen? What do you think on an artistic level, and have you experienced that? Sometimes when I'm trying to describe that to others who love music but aren't physiologically impacted, they don't know what I'm talking about.
00:10:12
Speaker
I think there, I experienced that as well where I have really, really physical reactions to music and it's immediate. And if it's not happening for me, then it's not happening for me. It is such a mystery. And I also become very curious around
00:10:37
Speaker
songs that make those goosebumps happen at the same exact time, every time I listen to it. Because then I'm like, there's something in the physics that's happening right now that is causing this, like, what is the math here? Yeah. So there's both, like, I think a math component there is
00:11:01
Speaker
whatever's happening in the moment in a room, you might have the same exact performer doing the same thing, and if a side door opens and the light shines at the wrong time or the bartender smashes the glass, you might not get the chills. So there's something so elusive.
00:11:21
Speaker
about manufacturing that thing. I don't think that it can be manufactured. What I as a performer expect of myself is that I am never going through the motions, that I am committed even in soundcheck.
00:11:45
Speaker
So when I sing songs, I try to never practice unaliveness. I try to, not to say that I have to kind of always be wearing my heart on my sleeve, but that I don't even allow the body to learn how to physically play a note or to sing a note.
00:12:15
Speaker
in a way that isn't fully connected to the breath or, you know, of course you're tired on days and of course you've sung a song a hundred times, but
00:12:30
Speaker
I've always been inspired by improvisers and by instrumentalists, by violinists who never allow themselves to play the violin out of tune. They are always making sure that they're playing that pitch in tune. And again, it's not something you can always demand of yourself, but I think if you really try to be present
00:13:01
Speaker
and practice presence. Hopefully that translates to goosebumps for somebody. Yeah.
00:13:09
Speaker
And it's either in the magic, the math, or the physics, probably at the end of the day, or all three. I started thinking about the physics. Your mind ranges as like, can I get an answer in this direction, or can I get an answer in this direction? I get that. To the conceptual, the big question that I know you've thought about once or twice, you're an artist. You put all that effort of trying to do it that way each time. But what is art?
00:13:39
Speaker
What
Nature and Role of Art
00:13:39
Speaker
do you think, artist Shara? Pause. There always is. It's 100%. And there's a chuckle when I ask something rather than nothing and a little bit of a... No, there's a chuckle there. There's a pause. Yes.
00:14:05
Speaker
It is an infinite question and infinite questions are wonderful to sit with for a lifetime. And I think I started asking that question very young, particularly around what beauty was and whether or not the pursuit of beauty was worthy of one's life.
00:14:34
Speaker
And I remember asking that question at 20 years old to my voice teacher. And I asked her, what is the value in the tenor's high note? And she said, I don't think that's your question. I think what you really want to know is what is the value of your high note.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so when she spun that around to make it personal and to, and to demonstrate my own vulnerability that I feared that what I had to share or what I had to express was not worthy of being heard.
00:15:32
Speaker
I still am trying to affirm myself in that. Art to me is a way of processing my life. It's a way of coming to meaning making.
00:15:52
Speaker
the meaning making of my experiences, I translate into song. It's a way of marking the day, marking the sunset, marking the moon. It's a way of marking birth and death. It's a way of
00:16:19
Speaker
And I say away because I suppose for me, music is a process. It's not an object. So if we were speaking about art as objects, I probably would answer differently. But the role that I see myself in society as a musician is to
00:16:48
Speaker
is to be both an articulator of my own personal experience, but also to encourage people to try and bring, as you say, something from nothing, to bring my own fear and transform that into bravery, or to bring my own feelings of resentment and transform that into something
00:17:19
Speaker
that is a recognition that I am just like everybody else or so there's this transmutation or this desire for churning what is hard about life and trying to name significance of something or to make meaning or to
00:17:49
Speaker
I'm hesitant to say to be light, to encourage people because that's how you know that I'm a minister's daughter. And I think that art always has to have a purpose or the kind of edict that I grew up with that art needs to be smiley, keep a smile on, you know, make the people feel good.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, and and so i've wrestled with that Yeah, and you've talked about it in terms of a process and once you said that I was hearing like, you know the verbs of how you're talking about it and two very different
00:18:33
Speaker
ways. And I think, you know, having that that active piece in or like, what it is that you're trying to do with the art is, is that activity. I find in music, I don't know if there's a clumsy kind of way of describing, I find in music, it's like, you know, like the album or the recorded thing, when you're dealing with musicians is like that snapshot, it's the capturing at that moment at this time of what's going on. But
00:19:01
Speaker
When you're around musicians, it's like, when do you take the snapshot? How do you record the snapshot? Like, when you're just looking at somebody. And I think I really like the active verbs and how you describe it and seeing it as, you know. And I think it is a different thing with the object, right? Because I could say to you,
00:19:25
Speaker
The object is yes you're singing but once every few months I get goosebumps and I'm at a live performance or I'm at your performance and that's like the thing is right then. The object is I can convey to you
00:19:43
Speaker
eleven twelve years ago seeing you live and having that experience because i remember that one over the one million others where it didn't happen so um do you think the role of art has has has changed um you know uh... my backdrop for this is you know humans always expect cataclysm there's always some sort of thing that people reacting to with art but
00:20:07
Speaker
Nowadays, you know, recent times, the pandemic, political volatility in certain aspects, climate crisis. I asked the question if there's something qualitatively different about these times that the role of art or the importance of art has changed, that it's more important now, or do you think that you see it tied to arts just doing what it always does? What are your thoughts on that?
00:20:35
Speaker
Oh, that's such a good question. When I get overwhelmed about the algorithm, I go back to the bard, the role of the bard, and
00:20:57
Speaker
A book that really helped me was Daniel Leviton's The World and Six Songs, where he talks about these kind of six themes of the way that music has functioned in society. So certainly the way that we listen to music has changed really significantly. And because I'm old enough to have been pre streaming,
00:21:25
Speaker
the difference between my first record coming out in 2005 and the way that people listen now is very, very different. Music is never going to lose its importance to human beings that I'm not in doubt of, but how it is that we see music's purpose
00:21:56
Speaker
in our world is shifting. My interest in being a Detroiter in particular is to continue to have a relationship to my local community. When someone asks me to sing at a wedding or a funeral or invites me to the hospital for a birth, I want to be able to be a musician in that moment too.
00:22:26
Speaker
So I take my role as a musician in community really pretty seriously. It's something I talk about cultural leadership, that this desire to become famous or this desire to have a hit or to have a viral video, whatever, that's great. That's like winning the lottery. If that happens to you, cool. But what does it mean to
00:22:56
Speaker
cultivate an environment that fosters creativity in your local community. That, to me, is a much more sustainable idea than everyone let's chase for our 15 seconds of fame in that Andy Warhol reference. To me, that is not what I'm going after. I'm going after something else.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The consumption of music is something I've been thinking about, too, because this is pretty cool. My son, who's 14, at least out here, there's a bit of resurgence with seeing this tangible media. It's still underground, but it's growing.
00:23:46
Speaker
that there's a market for CDs now, at least where I am, that there's a market for VHS and speculation around the tangible piece, the reaction versus the digital. I want the think. I want the hard plastic VHS cassette, or I want the disc. But even on listening, because
00:24:07
Speaker
I was surprised to have my son listen to CD, talk about the album, listen through the album by CD. I have a bunch of CDs. I'm like, where are they going to go five years ago in my head? I have them.
00:24:23
Speaker
YouTube and streaming. I want to listen to this now all around us. So the CDs are back out. And I think about things like vinyl and CDs of listening to the album because that's how you consume. And I just wonder if there's any shift back to the tangible physical media. People become more dedicated to the whole.
00:24:48
Speaker
then they have. It's about experiences. So if you want the experience of having to turn a vinyl record over halfway through. And get up and do it. There's something about the experience of that. And I think for me as a performer, what I
00:25:11
Speaker
console myself with, maybe. But also what I challenge myself with is how can I be offering people experiences of music rather than just here's something to listen to on Spotify. That's not a unique experience. Whereas if I can create, if I can think through an environment
00:25:37
Speaker
that is going to challenge you in some way or is going to comfort you in some way or is going to serve a purpose. For example,
00:25:52
Speaker
I've done things in outdoor parks. I wrote a piece called Look Around for 600 Musicians with the Cincinnati Symphony in 2019. There was 20 different community groups that were a part of that as well with marching bands and dancers.
00:26:14
Speaker
And then I've done things like four screen surround sound films where you're in an enclosed environment that's very private. It's all dark. It's very personal. It's not exposed. Of course done rock shows in those different things too.
00:26:33
Speaker
When I'm writing for choir, I've often thought about working in multiple dimensions so that you're surrounded more like these pop-ups. So those kinds of different environments are really fascinating to me because that's not something you can get in headphones. When you're in headphones or when you're driving in your car with a CD player,
00:26:57
Speaker
you are having a personal experience and you may be more inclined to cry then or to sing at the top of your lungs without caring who's going to hear you. So all of those different ways that we experience music really, really fascinate me and they motivate me to write different kinds of material for each of those different situations.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things I notice about what you do, and I become fascinated because I think sometimes in talking to artists, they experience themselves of varied interests or different ways of expressing themselves and just the inertia of society and industry and marketing, how that just exists.
00:27:53
Speaker
I really want to ask this because I think artists encounter this. When you're working in, they're not disparate areas but ways of expressing yourself in the environments or recording an album or you share a, it's my brightest diamond.
00:28:18
Speaker
Are you comfortable in knowing what you're doing for yourself and having that bravery in saying, this is how I'm going to do my performance here and this is how I want to do it here? Is that something over time where you're like, this is what I want to do? I feel it and I go towards it. Is that how it works? Pause to think.
00:28:49
Speaker
You're the type of guest I'm not going to send all my questions to because I know I'm going to throw you the big ones and you're still going to take the twigs out, even with the paws, even with the paws. So those different situations
Career Development Through Experimentation
00:29:05
Speaker
I suppose I have had a bit of a unique musical life in that way that the concert hall or the club or the park or the festival, those are all different situations that have different physical acoustics. And so in each of those situations, I am really having to consider the space and the trajectory of my career has really been trial and error.
00:29:35
Speaker
In the beginning, the first two records were, let me take these classical instruments, put them together with my band, see what happens, try to see how far I can push pop songwriting in one direction or another. But then by the third album, having been so frustrated with
00:29:58
Speaker
playing in clubs and having the violins, feedback in the monitors, and the drummer being asked to play quieter, and my guitar tone having to get thin because I had to play quiet. Those kinds of frustrations then brought me to say, okay, third record only acoustic. Then the fourth record, I was like, I'm tired of playing quiet in these concert halls. I want to play loud and outside. So then I wrote for marching band because that was the loudest thing I could think
00:30:30
Speaker
After that, I was kind of frustrated. There's a lot of frustration is the theme going on.
00:30:41
Speaker
Then after the marching band kind of synthesized a record, then I thought, okay, let me just work with crowd vocals and what could I do that would be believable coming out of a computer. So the fourth record, there's really only four elements to any of the songs.
00:31:02
Speaker
I tried to keep it to four so that I could tour with tracks and me with a drummer. And now I find that I don't have songs that can work solo. So when you ask where do the songs come from, they come from these different situations where I don't have the right song
00:31:27
Speaker
Or I don't like the way I have to play that song solo because I envisioned it with drums. So maybe I want to write a new song. Yeah, and it's it kind of propels. I mean, yes, it propels you to the next solution. We're speaking with Sharon Nova and Sharon.
00:31:47
Speaker
We're gonna cut to a song, a little intermission of your song, Champagne, a couple words about this fantastic track. And I love your, I'll say right now, I love you dropping down in the way you've described, dropping down into the beats and into the sound. I grew up listening to a lot of the sounds you refer to Motown. My parents were always into some,
00:32:16
Speaker
some funk and um so uh champagne champagne tell us about champagne and we'll cut to it yeah champagne is a good reference for this kind of minimalism that i was just referring to where there's this crowd sing along and a synthesizer as the foundation and then the guitar makes an appearance and drums and it's really
00:32:45
Speaker
This was mixed by Andrew Shipps, and I think he did a killer job. Wonderful. Thanks so much, everybody. Champagne, my brightest diamond.
00:33:06
Speaker
Like bubbles in champagne, no one can stop what's coming up I cannot go halfway, no I will not stop going up Going up Going up
00:33:37
Speaker
Held my jealousy tight I never spoke it outright I've been blaming you For putting me down Pulling me down But I know how to float If ever you move In the end that blames on me I'll be lighter than ever If I let it be
00:34:42
Speaker
You said, I said, you said, I said, you said, alright Did you ever see me cry, hating nights try Yeah, I shook inside like a kid afraid But I won't, I won't, I will not, I won't, I will not, I won't, I will not, I won't, I will not cry You can say what you want, but like
00:36:16
Speaker
All right, Champagne, Shara, you like dance clubs? Sometimes. Sometimes, right? Matters, matters, matters, which matters, which one, Ken?
00:36:34
Speaker
It depends on what mood I'm in. I can very happily find the sunrise. Yeah. If the environment is right, I'll dance till dawn. Is it outside or is it inside usually? That's a good question. I've done both. Yeah.
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's been, it's been quite a few years now though, with this, uh, this last year, um, I did some being from Detroit. We have movement festival in May and they had some amazing DJs outside and that was, that was so fun and, and felt a lot safer. So still finding, finding my way. We're all finding our way with, uh,
00:37:28
Speaker
these infections. Society, how to do things again. Yeah, I'm thinking something rather than nothing festival someday. I try to organize and create art and generate art and inspire art with doing this. I never expected that'd be an outcropping or what I'm doing.
00:37:49
Speaker
what I'm doing with this. But I enjoyed the idea of a festival and sharing arts. I haven't really been as a person, as an artist. I've identified as an artist just the last few years by putting time into it and seeing myself as one. So it's been a fun time for me to generate ideas. One thing I wanted to ask you, I'm forgetting the name of
00:38:13
Speaker
the small book you put together. But I know there were artistic affirmations. I love them. And I read one. I was like, oh my gosh. And I know you're selling those in a limited fashion. Can you just tell me a little bit about that project? Because that's where I've got a lot of my guidance in art from, kind of like process and inspiration. So tell us about that.
Creativity and Philosophical Exploration
00:38:36
Speaker
Yes, I created a little book called Provocations on Creativity that is not
00:38:44
Speaker
for just musicians, but I was thinking about creativity as a human right, and as part of the human experience, and that it should not be relegated to the professional, that we as human beings are creative constantly, and that creativity is like a muscle that's grown.
00:39:09
Speaker
I run so often into people that were told as children that they couldn't sing or that they couldn't this, they couldn't that, they couldn't this, they weren't good. I'm not good at drawing. Even I myself am really judgmental of my drawing.
00:39:25
Speaker
And I have to tell myself over and over again, like, it is okay to be a child. It is okay to develop a vocabulary with sentences, with learning your letters and with making words and making sentences that is your pencil on paper or is the growth of my watercolor or whatever the form is. And so,
00:39:52
Speaker
I have been writing on Substack and sharing some behind the scenes because I found that Instagram or these very short form media
00:40:06
Speaker
is not allowing me to share what I've learned from 30 years of songwriting. And I am getting to that place where I want to offer the things that I've learned to people. And Substack feels like a way for me to
00:40:24
Speaker
to write about my life, to share about these lessons that I've learned. And so the Provocations booklet was something that I made that was just kind of whimsical, but also really thinking about building these kind of foundational blocks to support people in their creative journey.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I've just had, and I appreciate that too. And I think it's so important that you do that because like I said, whenever I have not been trained in something that I do, I engage in teaching myself. But that has to do with resources of just basic fundamentals. When you wake up, what practice should you do to set yourself up for
00:41:20
Speaker
you know exercise in those muscles and i know on the big thing i deal with personally is the being pulled some because of the you know demands of work and other type of things where i'm pulled through this very tiny
00:41:34
Speaker
you know, machine, computing machine, phone into that, rather than the process where I've had people helping me of like a morning page in the morning, and why don't you just sketch for 20 minutes? Because I really think, and I'm trying to improve on this myself, I really truly believe it narrows the horizons of your day so much, at least for me, with what I enter into at the beginning of the day and how it
00:42:01
Speaker
Anticipates what's gonna happen further. I think I I think we limit ourselves and I think when you write what you've written and it's like affirmation or something to jar you or something to say hey, this is how you make art follow steps one two and three amen because That's the guide it's not
00:42:24
Speaker
It's not me checking my messages on my phone. Right. Yeah. I really appreciate that book. So, Sharra, two more things to do. One is the big question of the show and other is make sure everybody finds all the art and all the somethings that you do. But the question is to Sharra Nova is why is there something rather than nothing?
00:42:59
Speaker
It's a big question about the universe, whether or not we are reflecting itself back to itself, whether we are expanding. And these are unknowable questions, but for me, this idea of being an active participant in creation
00:43:26
Speaker
It is always something that fills me with awe that I can begin the day without a song, and in a few hours, something comes from nothing. So how is it that I'm able to sculpt vibration? And some of those songs are done by chisel, meticulous, painful,
00:43:55
Speaker
And others of them literally appear in minutes. Those are rarer. Yeah. When those come though, it is so thrilling because I don't feel that I wrote them.
00:44:14
Speaker
and all the other times that I'm chiseling and I'm working the craft and I'm gaining skills and I'm hammering away, trying to get a melody out or trying to get a chord progression or trying to get something. I don't love those songs less, but I do think that that craft building makes me more available
00:44:44
Speaker
I hope or I sense to be ready to receive that radio frequency, to get the something from the nothing. Do I feel like I'm getting help? I do. Can I say who it's from? No, I can't. I cannot explain the fact that
00:45:09
Speaker
When those songs come down like a direct download, it is just awe-inspiring to me. Then someone will say, oh, you wrote that song and I'm like, oh, I didn't write that one.
00:45:29
Speaker
They gave that to me, whoever they is. But it had to come through me. It had to come through my life experience. So it's not that I'm not there when it happens either. It's coming through my life. It's coming through all the things that have made me up until that very moment. So it's not that I'm just like an empty hose or something.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the in thinking about that I think about experience of when I was painting and I made just an absolute mistake in my head, but it ended up being
00:46:16
Speaker
The painting that I was like after that, I said, I'm a painter because I'm floating into what this is. And it was a depiction in my head of a Western Wisconsin farm. It's not just an atmosphere.
00:46:32
Speaker
But once I made that mistake, and once that occurred, and once I stepped back, I had been transformed in being like, oh, that's what they're talking about. And you could probably talk about it in one of your provocations, it'd be like, that beautiful mistake that screw up is you with your masterpiece sort of thing you're most proud of. So that's some mystery in that as well, right? With our intention. I've had to get lectured. I have to say, I have some friends that have had to kind of
00:47:03
Speaker
I don't want to say sit me down, but there's a kind of over perfecting or over, uh, nitpicking in the work that can happen. And I have in essence, overly, uh, edited material and I'm referring to your pencil line or to the, to your mistake in the painting and a friend of mine.
00:47:34
Speaker
said to me, Shera, I got to see my favorite painting live. And I couldn't believe when I got up close to it, there were all of these, quote unquote, imperfections in the work. But when you see it from far away, it doesn't read in that way.
00:47:51
Speaker
So finding those relationships where someone can buffer your tendency to want to over tweak or, oh no, let me hide that pencil line or let me try to make this clean or, you know, I use relationships that I trust, like people that are in my life that can really say, hey, you've, you've lost perspective here. It's time to stop.
00:48:23
Speaker
And that's so important within the within the community to cultivate to to be able to receive that that feedback and yeah, yeah, mistake mistakes and overthink. I mean, in battling through those two because I know when I got caught in a rut said painting because I'm.
00:48:41
Speaker
I guess I would reasonably say I'm most neurotic in my relationship with how I paint, but just in the sense where you can get caught up in a rut and saying, you can already visualize the mistakes you're gonna make, because you've done that before, and then folks saying, hey, next day you're painting with your left hand if you're right dominant, and there you go. There you go. Your brain's gonna rewire something. I don't know what it's gonna rewire, but it's gonna trip something up, and that's what you need right now, friend.
00:49:12
Speaker
That's reminding me of is Agnes Martin. She's one of my very favorite painters, and I watched a documentary on her during the pandemic. For some reason, I was obsessed with learning about women painters. There was a Artemisia Gentilishi, I think is how you say her last name. She was an Italian, I think Italian,
00:49:39
Speaker
painter and they had an exhibition of her at the Detroit Institute of the Arts and then I had never really been a Georgia O'Keeffe fan but I stumbled upon her and went through her biography and just wanted to understand how did she think and also there's an Agnes Martin documentary online and I was so profoundly moved by Agnes
00:50:10
Speaker
drawing
Art, Spirituality, and Personal Reflections
00:50:10
Speaker
her very measured straight lines and saying that she wanted to be without belief, that her spirituality wasn't based on belief in something. And to me, that was a very profound statement because
00:50:31
Speaker
In the West, and certainly me growing up in a Pentecostal church family, belief is so foundational in Pentecostalism, in evangelicalism. Everything is about the belief, not around the practices of the faith. And I was always fascinated by liturgy or
00:51:00
Speaker
people that were in practices like yoga that were not based on what you believed, but on these actions or in the liturgy, the actions of communion or the actions of kneeling. Of course, that's a very gross generalization, but I think
00:51:27
Speaker
part of what has made me so hesitant to talk about spirituality in public and really in my work and only now am I very beginning, like I'm just beginning to start to talk about it because in the past what would happen was that I would write about my journey or about my muddlings of
00:51:58
Speaker
spirituality and the criticism and the vitriol that I received from people is so intense that I determined by the time I was about 22 years old, that I would never write any more about God.
00:52:22
Speaker
Or I didn't want to have anything to do with Christian festivals. I refused to play anything Christian, even though that's where I came from. Because the hate mail was so intense.
00:52:41
Speaker
I had a letter sent to my house from someone who said, if you had written a song about your mother, I wrote a song called Mother on this last record that was a metaphor. And she took it so literally, like metaphor just was completely non-existent in her understanding of poetry.
00:53:09
Speaker
I just thought, I don't need this. This is not what conversation I'm interested in having. But at the same time, I have to reckon with where I come from and naming my lineage and naming the difficulty and the complexity of it has really
00:53:31
Speaker
gripped me right now. And I think embracing the fact that it is complicated and people are going to get up in arms about ideas or beliefs. And that is where we are in society, but it also is a vacuum of our time because where
00:53:56
Speaker
so many people had church in their cultural experience, that is no longer true. And so the yoga class doesn't fill that void that church used to fill. And I think what I see happening in so many ways is this spiritual vacuum where people are trying to find something and so then you get these
00:54:25
Speaker
wild internet quilts. People hodgepodgeing all of these beliefs together, but it's not based in communal expression.
00:54:38
Speaker
There's the I found that with some of the beliefs that develop because they developed an isolation that hasn't been the social the social contact or accused like like I don't know it's not to be so crass but a few years ago you say some of this this this crazy ass shit you'd be in the context of the people saying like look that doesn't make any sense whatsoever and I think people are just
00:55:04
Speaker
not getting the other, hey, are you okay type of thing? Yeah, we're not there to buffer each other or to have a beautifully dissenting view. Thank you. That's what it is right there. A beautifully dissenting view, engaged, interested in a conversation rather than a bullet or a punch, right? Yes. It's so important to have dialogue.
00:55:33
Speaker
you don't need to believe the same thing i believe i don't want you to i'm i don't want to know what what in the world do you think absolutely we should we we we share that um and uh
00:55:48
Speaker
Uh, like the engagement, you know, I'm for me and then doing the show and stuff like that. I mean, I'm trained for engagement in a certain sense. I mean, there's, there's this kind of, I want to say oppositional, but like I work as a union rep. I'm trained as a philosopher. If making people comfortable was my main goal, I made a lot of wrong choices. So, you know, I like knowing where people are, what they're thinking and how they stand, uh, on, you know, on their position. Um,
00:56:16
Speaker
Hey, Sarah, I want to, before we let you go, because I have to, we have to let you go, where do you want people to find you and find you art?
Where to Find Shara's Work
00:56:29
Speaker
You get a lot of different things that you do and you evolve. Where do you want people to look to get some more Sharonova, some more brightest diamond or whatever you see fit? Thank you.
00:56:47
Speaker
a couple of different branches to my life. One is the singer
00:56:53
Speaker
and the composer, and that part of the world lives on shara, s-h-a-r-a dash nova and o-v-a dot com. So all the things are over there. And then for my pop music, my brightest diamond dot com is the place for the pop stuff. Of course, Instagram, I'm there as well. But on Instagram, everything is under my brightest diamond.
00:57:23
Speaker
Twitter? Are we using Twitter anymore? I've never had any success or encouragement or aptitude or understand. I've tried and there's no reason to try anymore. I don't know, just me right now. And then I am writing and sharing more of my process and thoughts on Substack.
00:57:46
Speaker
Substack that's uh, that's it's a good place to go writing extended thought and engagement that sounds uh, that sounds really cool, but definitely check out Uh share his music if you haven't i've enjoyed it for quite some time And as I told you share, uh like in this bean of mine the neurons firing in my head i've Wanted to have you on this show, uh for for quite some time and uh been doing it for three years. It is
00:58:12
Speaker
A deep pleasure to engage with your art and your mind. And just want to thank you for coming on to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Thank you so much, Ken. Yeah, my pleasure. And look forward to 2023 because we haven't got into it, but I know how you're thinking about things and your creativity.
00:58:38
Speaker
is going to be a big year, Shara, and otherwise. So it's great to be in chat with you. Thank you so much. My pleasure. My pleasure. I have never learned someone the way I love you. I have never seen a smile like yours.
00:59:08
Speaker
And if you grow up to be king or clown or barber I will say you are my favorite one in town I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
00:59:34
Speaker
When I hear your laugh I know heaven's key And when I grow to be a puppy in the graveyard I will send you all my love upon the breeze
01:00:04
Speaker
Please won't blow your way I will be the sun And if the sun won't shine your way I will be the rain
01:00:37
Speaker
And if the rain won't wash away all your aches and pains I will find some other way to tell you
01:01:05
Speaker
You're okay
01:02:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:44
Speaker
you you
01:03:16
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.