Hi all, I’m Matthew Joel Vanderkwaak. This year, I’ve been recording a new folk song every month on my 4-track tape machine and sharing it exclusively with subscribers to this newsletter. This is the song for the month of October.
(Don’t forget that all songs in the series can be downloaded for free by clicking the three dots to the right of the play button!)
I’ve been trying to find a meaningful way forward with music that I could imagine practising for the rest of my life.
The slow-cooker approach, the long game—whatever that looks like for music is what I want.
As some of you probably know well, sharing music online can be a fraught experience. Someone compared it recently to gambling—like dropping a song into the slot machine of the internet and pulling the lever, hoping against hope that this will be THE ONE that goes the distance. Then, all of a sudden, the song is “out,” and all the expectations, hopes, and dreams collapse into real life, which hasn’t, in the end, gone anywhere.
Artists will sometimes talk about the post release crash, this depressive hangover period of accepting that in the end the only thing to do is keep taking small steps forward.
I am, of course, not immune to any of that.
Hitting send on one of these posts has been a totally different experience. Maybe it’s the knowledge that it’s going to the actual inboxes of real life people? Maybe it’s the feeling of building a body of work that grows in meaning with each new song? Maybe it’s the shift a newsletter encourages from accumulating anonymous streams to gathering a group of like-minded friends?
A Soulful Song
This month’s 4-track tune is a love song. I’m not great at writing love songs. I’ve written only a few in my life so far.
When I write songs, this often looks like reaching out to a younger part of myself who is feeling lost and tripping over his own feet. If you’ve been following these 4-track tunes for the past few months, then you know that this spirit has occupied ever since July. The songs have been about love, but about a love that is twisted the wrong way around.
They’ve also, though, been about this trust that even in misplaced love there is a deeper Love that draws the lover back to itself.
“Soulful Song” is about that experience—the experience of falling in love and living a life.
It’s dedicated to my lovely wife (of 11 years and counting!), Amy Bird.
This life with you, my Dear, is the only one I need.
When I was a young man,
I tried to write a soulful song,
but it came out all wrong.
I fought and I struggled,
cried and wrestled against
every thought I side my head.But now I know the only soul I need
is one that’s knit with yours.We fell in love in the spring time,
the prairie grass was all still brown,
snow unmelted on the ground,
hand in hand on the grid roads,
looking up for northern lights,
stepping out into the night.And now I know the only road I need
Is one that’s next to yours.As the days were getting longer,
we kissed on the porch of your house,
whispering of what we’re scared about,
making plans for a “some day,”
saving up all our best hopes,
trusting there’s the place that they go.And now I know the only life I need
is one that lives with yours.And now I know the only home I need
is one that’s hid with yours.And now I know the only heart I need
is one that’s fit with yours.
Updates
This month was, without a doubt, one of the busiest and most creatively rich of my entire life. There are two things I want to share about:
1. The Lost Books of Augustine’s Confessions: The one-man musical
This month, I wrote and performed a one-man musical about the last-four (and weirdest) books of Augustine’s Confessions—the oldest autobiography in the Latin West.
In my day job, I get to teach in this wonderful humanities program for first year students at University of King’s College. It’s a dream job, really. We read books, talk about them, learn about writing, and spend an entire year immersed in the world of philosophy, literature, and ideas.
We spend the month of October in the medieval world, which usually means spending some obligatory time with Augustine’s Confessions. In our program, we read the first two-thirds of the books, what people call the “autobiographical” section. It’s a lot of fun.
However, I wanted to find a way to offer tribute to the last third of this book, which is very weird and (in my opinion) totally amazing. In the last four books, the scope of the work shifts away from Augustine the individual to meditate on the inner life of the soul, the nature of time and eternity, and the cosmic conversion of all things back to mystic source.
So, I wrote a song inspired by each of the last books, prepared some readings and visuals, got my lovely friend, Kate Lawson to join in, and performed the show for our students.
It was, without a doubt, one of the most delightful experiences sharing music of my life so far. A lot of the students at the concert are now here on the newsletter (hi!), and to celebrate that night and as a way of saying thank you, I wanted to share this unlisted video of the performance with every one:
2. “Where Love Goes”
This month’s 4-track tune is actually a companion to “Where Love Goes,” my new studio recording which came out earlier this month. The tune is available on streaming platforms everywhere, but on Bandcamp I also released it with a special piano ballad bonus track. You can listen to both versions here:
I put together a couple videos for these songs, a lyric video for the studio recording and a live video of us recording the piano ballad version live in Halifax’s oldest church.
This has turned out to be a long one! Thanks for being here. Getting to share my creative work with people like you in a place like this means the world to me.
It’s hard to believe it, but there are only two more songs left in the series. I’m so excited to share the conclusion of this journey with you all.
All my best,
—Matthew Joel
