Peter Himmelman

The Songwriter is Just Reporting on the Spirituality

Drawing by Peter Himmelman

Interview by: Burt Rashbaum

This article appears here courtesy of Colorado's Soundboard Magazine, where it appeared in June 2001, Issue 15.

Peter Himmelman has graced Colorado stages for years, both with his band and as a solo artist. A prolific songwriter, he has recorded nine studio albums, his most recent Love Thinketh No Evil on Six Degrees Records. Himmelman now also composes music for the hit TV show Judging Amy. Most who have attended a Himmelman performance know that it is an experience unlike any other, a true musical adventure that stretches the boundaries of what can happen between an audience and a performer. The resulting conversation touched on the many aspects of what is important both musically and spiritually to Himmelman, who was able to articulate his views with a depth and honesty that was refreshing to behold.

SB: I first saw you at a very small club in Denver in the eighties when you took everyone up on the roof. That was quite incredible. So I was interested to know: have you always avoided repeating the same kind of show, thus giving your audiences and yourself unexpected surprises?

PH: I'm going to try being as forthcoming as possible, and not to paint myself in a negative light when I say that my primary interest is entertaining myself. I've been on stages before, in years past, many years ago, where I've tried to be "professional," and I found myself very bored and uninspired onstage. I had my mind flooded with ideas of things I'd really like do to, but since there was no precedent for doing them, it took a certain amount of bravado to go ahead and follow my creative muse onstage. At some point, I guess it was around the time I started playing solo shows, as opposed to playing with my band at the time which was called Sussman Lawrence, I started to develop the freedom to follow my natural impulses.

SB: So you feel like if you're having fun, then it all goes from there?

PH: Yeah. I have to try. One of the things about performers in general, though I can't speak for everybody, but I'm sure that people that get out onstage have some sort of psychological deficiency, similar to an oyster. The pearl is formed from a grain of sand, it's a problem that ultimately develops into something beautiful. One of my needs, I suppose, on a psychological level, is the need to connect, to know that I'm not alone in the world. And I reach out, and when I form a connection, I feel comfortable. Now, this sounds very serious. Usually the way that I make a connection happens to be funny, but I imagine, as I examine it now in talking to you, that there's probably a very deep component to it.

SB: That's true, what you say initially sounds serious. But my experience has always been that you achieve this by being quite hilarious on stage.

PH: If you really want to examine in, in real life actually I'm not very funny.

SB: Really?

PH: I'm only funny when I'm on stage. But humor itself is a very serious thing in a way. It's the juxtaposition of unexpected elements. It's sort of the science of doing that. I don't do it from any studied point of view, it's just a natural gift. But when you look at it, the collision of unlikely events, it's the same with Phyllis Diller and even offensive comics. It's always something that you don't expect, the thing that makes it funny. A pompous guy who seems invulnerable to attack is felled by a lowly banana peel. That's the classic one. It's the unexpected juxtaposition of events. And from a spiritual point of view, there's a prayer that Jewish people say before they have a blessing after they eat food. In that blessing, it's a psalm that some people might be familiar with, it says that in this time our mouths will be filled with laughter. "We will wake as though dreamers from the floor and our mouths will be filled with laughter." And that's something that really resonates with me. What that means is that at some point in the future, and all people look towards this, a spirit of brotherhood will somehow come down to earth and people get this idea that is truly miraculous. And it'll happen instantaneously, the same way a joke happens instantaneously. It's that precise collision of unlikely events. And what we take as mundane and normal, the sun coming up, babies being born, the fact that we can breathe and converse with one another, those things that we accept as mundane will instantaneously be revealed for the miraculous events that they really are. And the response that we'll all have, and it's very easy for me to see, is that it will be hilarious. The assumption that we're so blinded and now we've woken up to this new reality, that juxtaposition will be the cause for the greatest belly laugh that has ever existed.

SB: There's also the commonality of the response.

PH: Right, right. The community. That's a good thing that you seized on. That's one of the things that seems to happen in the show. I've heard it said by other people, and I feel it myself, that sense of community where we model and we mimic and we imitate this universal event. It's a metaphor for that larger event. We undergo it as a small community, even though we're only bonded together for an hour and a half.

SB: So your humor touches on various profound aspects of being a human being. You break down the boundary another way, at times, by taking the audience out of the theater, the confines of that environment. When did that start happening and how did that come about?

PH: Sometimes there's a point that I want to reach, a place I need to be at. And if there's something that I find confining about the venue, I won't let the venue hold me back. Or let's say the PA system is bad. So what? Then take the microphone off and go into the middle of the crowd. There's always a different way to frame the experience. I only do it when I feel compelled to do it. A lot of stuff, when you ask me the question, I'm as unaware of it, of why, as you are. The person that's up on stage is somebody that I know, but don't know well, in a way. In other words, there's a big difference between this guy you're talking to, today, on a Thursday morning, even though there's an aspect of performance that I have even now, because you're interviewing me, but still the guy that comes up on stage, is so totally "other." For example, whenever I'm about to go on stage, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do. I'm not terrified, but I don't know the lyrics to any of my songs, I don't know what I'm going to do. But as soon as I walk out I go through some kind of door and something comes into me that wasn't in me before. And when I leave the stage, then, it takes about an hour and a half for it to go away again.

SB: So you put a real trust in the unknown?

PH: Yeah. Obviously I have a precedent of many successes, and I have a lot of experience doing it, so it isn't as though I don't know what I'm doing. And it isn't as though I don't have some template to work with. But there is a lot of faith in hollowing myself out and just allowing whatever that is, to enter.

SB: As a member of the audience, I can always tell who's at your show for the first time, because when you do something like take the audience outdoors, some people look scared to death, like, "Can we do this?? Is this allowed??" And other people are like, "C'mon! Let's go!!"

PH: That kind of "Can we do this?' - I've made a whole life out of "can we do this?' Nothing illegal, hopefully, or immoral. Just can we do this? Is it going to work, or is it going to break? Is it going to all fall apart?

SB: By playing the Jewish Festival, you're obviously proud of your heritage and sharing it in this context with a specific audience. How important is your spirituality to you as a songwriter, and as a performer?

PH: You have to understand, in the context of my life, I have some sort of cognizance of myself as a spiritual being. I can't say that I have it at all times, but it's something that I strive to have more and more. An awareness. So that takes precedence over everything else. In other words, that's the umbrella under which everything else falls. Not the other way around, that I'm a songwriter and a performer who happens to have a spiritual side. The songwriting is a reflection of that. The songwriter is just reporting on the spirituality.

SB: From many of your songs, it seems that you feel spirituality, and compassion, are redeeming qualities of being human, like some nourishing brook anyone can drink from. You don't shy away from any issue in your songwriting. Is this exploration an outgrowth of your own spiritual life as a Jew?

PH: In general. Specifically I'd say yes. Generally, the songwriting and the performance, they're always an outgrowth of whatever experience you're undergoing in your life. So, I'd have to answer yes to that.

SB: To move onto Peter Himmelman the composer. You've been scoring films for years, and now you write the music for a hit TV show, Judging Amy. How did you get involved in that project?

PH: I had been doing a few other television shows before that, and a tape got into the hands of a producer and they really liked it, and we had a meeting and it went really well. It's something that I really enjoy doing.

SB: I would imagine writing for a television show, you can't choose the characters, or the moods. Is there more of a constraint on you as a writer?

PH: As a writer yourself, you know the adage that there's freedom in structure. That structure, the narrowness of that structure, opens up a real big avenue of freedom. One of the difficulties of writing a song is that you're not specific in your mind as to what you want to write about. Once I know exactly the feeling, and there's a specific compelling in me, it's very easy to manifest that into a song. And with a structure like this, where you're getting paid do it, there's three factors at play that make it easy. One: is that you're getting paid a tremendous amount of money to do it, and that shouldn't sound crass, that mercantile aspect of it. It's a huge inspiration to artists forever, from Michaelangelo to Piccaso, that idea of being supported to allow your muse to feel comfortable, to come out. The fact that you had an obligation to the people who were paying you is another way of manifesting a song. So it shouldn't sound so crass. It's a very strong motivator. And people say it as a joke, "Hey, they're paying you a fortune, I'm gonna write a great song!" That's a big one. The other really big one is a time constraint. I need that song NOW. I need it in four-and-a-half hours. It can't take two weeks, it can't take a year. It's gotta be done now, so the song can come out. And the third motivator is, you know exactly the emotion that needs to be [written about]. Those are the three elements that come to play at all times, to motivate a song. I was teaching a songwriting class at the Lyons Folks Festival, which I'm also going to be playing this summer, August 15th I think, and one of the things that I stressed to the people in the class, and they were all pretty good songwriters, is developing that motivation. One of the exercise that I'd given was, I would assign them a song. "Write a song for your grandma." A guy goes, "I hated my grandma." I said, "Write a song about how you love your grandma. And I need it in 45 minutes: it has to be totally finished." "What? I can't do that!" everyone said. And they all were really surprised. Yeah you can. And one of the keys is that [time is] a very strong motivator which brings it from the ephemeral to the actual.

SB: In concert you will often just make up a song off the top of your head, and I find that an incredible exercise in constraint of time, you know?

PH: Yeah, I'm good at it, one because I've had experience doing it, and number two, maybe even more, I'm not afraid to fail. And as a consequence, I rarely do. And even if I did, so what? The way the show is structured, if I crash and burn, it's hilarious.

SB: You've written songs from the point of view of a father, a son, a husband, a lover, a friend, and an observer of social injustice. With the release of My Best Friend is a Salamander you reached out to a new audience: kids.

PH: Yeah, also I have a new record, which is called My Fabulous Plum, for kids.

SB: Is that out?

PH: Yeah. You know, I don't want to plug it, but I have this new website that I want you to write about, as well as go on, for your own self, to check it out. There's no website in the world like it. I have these two geniuses, who really used me as a guinea pig, to do it. There's a site exclusively devoted to My Fabulous Plum - all you have to do is click on the little plum that spins around, and that record is available through that website. Right now I'm going to keep that record exclusively on that site.

SB: Did becoming a father give you more of an interest in writing for kids?

PH: I guess it did. I've always had an interest in it. It's very easy for me to write kids songs. In some ways it could potentially be my strongest suit. It's the idea of taking the musicality and the compositional skills that I've developed and marrying them with that weird improvisational sound. It's almost like creating a new genre. It's wild, it's like the Beatles. Sort of a Sgt. Pepper's for kids. And it's not really only for kids. It's for everybody, under the guise of a so-called "children's album."

SB: From listening to My Best Friend is a Salamander you write for the best in kids. You don't write down to them.

PH: Exactly. The bar is held way high, that's why it's successful.