Synchronicity

I’ve been driving to my gigs and appointments for the past few days listening to Debbie Andrew’s band, Gladshot. I love “Hotel Room,” “Early Light,” “Fun With Hydrangeas,” “Simulation,” and “Dog On A Skylight,” to name a few.  Listening to her tunes, I feel my spirits rising just thinking about her and the sense of peace she exudes. She seems to have found her musical mecca in songwriting, recording and singing the material that she and bandmate, Mike Blaxill are creating together.  

It’s weird, but I am someone who experiences synchronicity. It’s nearly impossible to describe it to another person without cheapening it.  Synchronicity, according to wikipedia “is a concept, first introduced by…Carl Jung, which holds that events are ‘meaningful coincidences’ if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.”  It often comes across as trite when discussed but the fact is, when I was on the phone with Debbie, there were several instances when she brought up things that felt eerily out of the playbook of my life, and I mean spooky things. When mentioned, these things had that predestined, meant to be quality.  

For instance, how many months have gone by in my life since I’ve heard the binary system even mentioned?  Maybe 60, even possibly 100.  But the day before our conversation one of my students gave me a card in which he had translated “have a great day, Ms. Amy” into the binary system, and one of Gladshot’s songs is about “1’s and 0’s,” something Debbie mentioned off-hand when talking about the song, “Simulation”. 

Because of the similarities between us, I feel like Debbie is a kindred spirit.  Before our call I was nervous that a phone conversation might not work as well as the in-person chats I’ve had with all the other keyboardists who have been featured on the podcast.  I needn’t have worried.  It’s almost like we could be The Prince and the Pauper or the twins from The Parent Trap!

These are some of the things I really love about Debbie.  She’s humble.  She never even mentioned that she appeared on Broadway in Hair in the role she once played in Detroit.  I found that detail online.  Also, she’s an artist who gets out of her own way and finds real satisfaction in making her own music these days.  She quoted Bono who said, “the song tells you how to play it.”  That’s some mystical stuff, people! This woman is tapping into some deep flow and I am so into that.  

There’s further evidence of her coolness in the setlist she shared from her Waldorf days. She can surf between jazz and rock and includes a wide range of standards in her repertoire, as well as some very meaningful material with the performing criteria of “do I love this song?”. Debbie avows that people pleasing just doesn’t work and perhaps my favorite quote from our conversation is “you don’t have to let your gig determine what you play.”  

In the Many Worlds Theory which the song “Simulation” happens to be about, there are different outcomes that exist in other dimensions.  Just think…in one of those spatial realms, my new “Call Recorder” app might not have worked correctly, and Debbie and I might not have spoken last Friday.  Because of that, I might not have listened to Gladshot in the car and might not have recommended it to a friend who then asked me to record some keys on some original material.  I don’t even want to imagine that!  

We artists need each other.  We make wonderful things happen in each other’s worlds.  Thank you Debbie, for being you and helping to light up the artist world.