Jane Siberry

Your lyrics are very poetic, and your melodies are very beautiful, but they’re also very simple and direct, is that a conscious thing?

I do try to keep things simple, because as simple as you keep it, I think the audience’s imagination can then extrapolate from my imagination. There’s always so much richness even in being simple.

So, you leave room for the audience to come into the songs.

I leave a lot of space just to feel. I don’t know what complex means, but I really resist feeling like I can’t reach the everyday person. That’s really important to me, because that’s what moves me. I hope that someone can just listen to my music and say, that’s a nice beat. Or, if that want to take it further, that’s good, but it just physically feels good.

When you say it’s physical, that’s interesting, because your music has a physical feeling in that it hits your whole person and surrounds you totally.

I don’t really know what’s happening in that way, but I hope that people feel that when they’re at my show there’s a space for them. That’s what I like, and I try to do that. I want to transport you somewhere.  Maybe that’s the role of the arts, to offer a place to go, or a journey that is peaceful. Someone was talking to me yesterday about a place in Shibuya station in Tokyo. She said there are thousands of people moving through the station, and you turn a corner and suddenly there’s a tearoom. You can’t imagine you’d relax in Shibuya station, but they provide a calm space.

So you feel your songs are like…… a tearoom in Shibuya station. (laughs)

Where do your songs come from? Do you work on them, or are they just there?

I suppose I think what if someone asked what I would like to write a song about, and then I think of that. There are lots of ideas in the air all the time. I recognize the symptoms. Something starts to magnetize, an idea that doesn’t just come and go, often it’s just the lyric idea, or sometimes it’s a musical shape. I remember that I was upset with the Beatles when I was old enough to understand. On one of their songs, their lyrics and the music didn’t seem like a good marriage. They were singing a happy song, but the message was really negative.

It was angry?

No, just negative, but the music was really happy. To me, it crystallized inside myself how important it is that everything be connected. In music, everything is exaggerating everything else in it, so it should be a good marriage, or else you get a betrayal within the song. Anything that is too happy, or too catchy, will resonate over and over again in your brain. So, there’s a responsibility there for a musician, or anyone who works with repetition. I feel that responsibility. There was a song stuck in my head, really pop-like, and it was going over in my head, and I suddenly realized that it was so negative. I was angry, because it was programming, and it was careless, I thought. So, I’m careful any time when I hit something that is catchy. Of course, it doesn’t have to be happy, but the marriage between lyrics and music has to be a good one. There’s a responsibility for a musician, especially with the problem of people already having a lot of tapes playing in their heads. So, music actually can be a value, and not a negative one.

Does that mean you don’t want to include emotions like anger?

I’m glad you asked. No, because in my music there is a lot of anger and frustration. I’m still a very angry person, but it’s more that when you’re going to sing about something angry, you want it to be effective. If you’re going to do it, then go to the heart of it. It doesn’t mean that sad things always need really sad music. It doesn’t work that way often. It’s just finding that perfect counterpoint.

So, it’s not disguising anger as something else?

Unless there’s value in that, and that’s the point of the song.

Do you often have lyrics that don’t find a melody or vice versa?

Definitely. I guess I only manifest about a twentieth of what I write and work on. And I am starting to put out collections of what I write, books of poetry and things. Sometimes it happens all in one shot, just with a tape recorder, it depends.

Some songs from some performers feel disjointed, pieces are put on pieces and it doesn’t come together.

There you have it. Listeners are so aware.  People can smell a rat. People have made the oddest comments, just on short sentences. People can tell when the energy changes. I have the greatest respect for that. People are so aware on such subtle levels. You have to write assuming people are so intelligent. Some people call me obscure, but I would call it respectful. People do understand. You don’t have to walk people through things like a baby. Sometimes I have been indulgent, of course, and that’s the rat I smell with myself. I didn’t care enough about being understood. It’s a gesture of respect not to just be indulgent. The audience knows when the performer has crossed the line and become too involved with them self.

When you said you were indulgent, what did you mean?

I feel it in my gut, so I try to be careful. It’s a feeling when my brain is involved, when I let a song go on too long because I thought it was interesting, rather than listening to my feeling, like I’m just a little bit tired, and stop here. Now, I’m always tightening up the hatches, and I’m always editing. I think there’s just way too much music out there, too much literature. It’s at a saturation point, so the hunger is not there to listen, to seek out what’s left. I’m happy to put out less and to not just throw on one more song because I need one more to finish this or that.

So, you want to make sure it’s really what you want to say before it goes out?

Yes, really authentic. It’s like don’t open your mouth unless you really have something important to say, as opposed to the way most people work. That makes for extra long pauses sometimes, which can upset people, but once you get used to it, it’s a good way to work.

I like what you said about not condescending to the audience. Why do you think so many performers do that?

I would speculate that maybe a lot of people don’t decide things for themselves, so they’re just following what was created a long time ago, a formula for a song, and now when it’s no longer appropriate, they’re still using that formula. I remember the first time I ever understood the value of chatting. I always hated when adults chatted and I’d try to ask them questions to find something real. The first time my heart was broken, I started chatting. It was a relief to chat, and I understood why so many older people liked to chat. Many of them are very much in pain, not acknowledged, and it’s just a way of dealing with a life that isn’t the way they want it to be. It wasn’t something to judge, it was something to understand. During the war, I only have a smidgen of understanding of what people went through, things like not knowing from day to day whether people they loved were still alive. So, when they heard simple songs, it was like, OK, I understand. And then record companies thought they could make money, and they copied that, and everyone tried to make a hit and make money.

Do you feel yourself free from that pressure of that system of making money?

I have had some songs come to the surface without them being overtly commercial. But I love great pop music, and I strive for it too sometimes. When I do something simple along that line, then I just try to make it that way, a simple song that people like. I too want a song like that. It’s just such a neat thing to have a simple song that people can hang onto. But that’s not enough for me. I also want more filmic things, so I don’t feel too stuck.

Trying to avoid a formula becomes a formula, too, an anti-formula.

Right, so you’ve just shot yourself in your foot. And I do want people to hear my music. Until a couple years ago, I didn’t really think of myself as a musician, even though my mother’s friends gave me coffee mugs with musical notes on them and things, but now I'm so proud to be a musician. I wear T-shirts with music on them.

What caused that change?

I don’t know. I see the role of a musician in society as being a wonderful ability. I’ve had to think about things like Napster. OK, so you don’t get paid for the music, but you didn’t get paid for the music years and years ago. It’s something about excess. You wrote a hit and suddenly you can buy three houses. Then, the hunger for honing your craft becomes the hunger for honing your home. And maybe since these are times of luxury, maybe it’s time to revert to not being paid. Then, only people who really love it will do it. That will separate a lot of the wheat from the chaff. When you travel, you get taken care of, and you’re treated with honor and respect, but maybe you don’t own a house. So, maybe I’ve had to think about being a musician as the system crumbles or changes.

It’s only a recent thing that people attached their name to songs. You might have had your own version of it, but it’s still not quite ownership.

That’s a good image. It’s always a little strange when people tell me, I really love your music, or, I really love you. But it’s just like that’s my music, and this is me. They are songs I wrote myself, but you move your ownership to a little bit of a distance.

So, you’re here in Japan for a month?

I’m here also to be with my friend Takafumi Sotoma. We’re collaborating on a work. The gods have made it available to travel. I have my own record company now. It’s six years old. I’ve moved out of my house, rented it to the company. I’ve gotten rid of many of my possessions. I shredded 25 bags of old stuff, letters, accounting, notes, and journals and just threw it out. I’ve sought to simplify. Maybe I’ll get rid of the house, too. Right now I’m living in a few boxes. Trying to see what the least is that I can live with. It includes how I speak, it includes my friends, just having less but higher quality. Like a lot of people, I just can’t get on top of having enough time for the things I want.

But you still must have routines or habits that you keep?

It’s a constant examination just to see, I can imagine just speeding to 80 years old and never catching my breath. I don’t want to do that. I keep daily meditations, yoga, meditation, and can feel my body getting stronger. I’d like to be a better musician, taking piano lessons, vocal lessons, trying to focus.

You must have been practicing guitar.

I almost never practice. It’s always by the seat of my pants. I’ve just been so busy. I haven’t had time to practice running my own record company. I’m a better person for it. I’m more efficient. But as I start to pass off the company’s responsibilities, I know everything, the marketing, the office work, the percentages, it’s a good change. I used to do all the order filling myself in the office. I was too involved. I like the labels being perfectly square, and attending to the details. Maybe that’s very Japanese. I read the other day, it was put so well, that the goal of Japanese art forms is to charge the artwork with life force. It’s not quite the way I want it, but someone else does the business managing. That was funniest thing. I was doing the orders, and I’d have to call people when their visa cards were declined. I’d call them up and say, do you have another card? It upset some people to think of me in any other mode than singer, but I just had to do that. But that drove me crazy with the company, and drove everyone else crazy, too. 

(Shorter version in The Japan Times March 2003)