Song.Writer is a new podcast that explores the connections between written word and lyrical, shining light on how all art is a reaction to other art. Hosted by songwriter and novelist, Ben Arthur, the podcast features an author telling a story (both fiction and non-fiction involved) and then a musician creates a song inspired by the story and performs it.
The third episode features
Deborah Copaken, a bestselling author (Hell is Other Parents, Shutterbabe) and a
columnist for the Atlantic, and Tommy Siegel, who is a member of
Jukebox the Ghost, and a
cartoonist. Deborah tells a true story of a near-death experience after complications stemming from a hysterectomy, and Tommy - who is a friend of hers - writes the song, "Dear Science," in response. The story will be included in Deborah's upcoming memoir, "Ladyparts," which will be published by Penguin/Random House.
Listen to Episode 3
here.
Song.Writer features a dozen episodes with many of Arthur's literary crushes, including Roxane Gay, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Orlean, Patricia Lockwood, Missy Eaves, Gary Schteyngart,
Ted Leo and
Jonathan Lethem. "All art responds to other art," Arthur
wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed, concerning the fine line between stealing from, and being inspired by, the works of other artists. It's not news that artists take inspiration from numerous sources, even literature, and the serendipitous journey of any piece of artwork can seem profound after the fact. But Arthur takes an especially expansive view of literature as muse, and his wide-ranging forays into storytelling are - like his music - deeply resonant and heartfelt. Each art form has unique ways of captivating its audience, a "secret language to get inside people's chests," Arthur said. "My lifelong passion is to figure out how that works." Another of Arthur's projects,
SongCraft Presents, aired three half-hour episodes on PBS and garnered five Emmy Award nominations.
To hear the storytellers and artists in
Song.Writer is to wonder whether a perpetual-motion art machine isn't just possible, but to some extent inevitable, constituting its own universal law of creation. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, but draws energy from the things around it and, in turn, provides momentum for subsequent works of art.
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