A Child's Garden of Verses
OSGF
Commission by Oak Spring Garden Foundation
To Alison Cunningham
Autumn Fires
The Gardener
To Any Reader
The Land of Storybooks
Q&A With Lance Horne
Photo by Christian Campbell. From www.lancehorne.com.
Where have you been the past few months?
There is a wonderful performer named Amanda Palmer, and she and I have performed together and toured together a lot. And I was in Australia doing a tour at the end of February, and she was as well. So we met up in Darwin and she ended up inviting me to go with my partner and stay at her and Neil Gaiman’s (Amanda’s patterns) place in upstate New York.
So that was already planned on Thursday, March 12th. The day before we left, on that Wednesday, we saw a beautiful Broadway play called “The Inheritance,” which is about the HIV epidemic onset in the 1980s and how people didn’t know what was going on. And the play has informed everything since then. The two main characters go to upstate New York to recover from the illness and sickness, and to find solace and history and it just tipped everything. At every intermission more information about Coronavirus would come on people’s smart phones. It fused art and experience together right from the get-go, and it created a lens to see history and what is repeating.
The next day we were in a friend's car driving to upstate New York for our getaway. When we got to upstate New York by the second or third day there my work was cancelled indefinitely, then by the Monday or Tuesday, Curt, my partners work was cancelled indefinitely. And then all of these other artists Amanda knew started coming up and this group of artists upstate formed into this family unit for 2-months. And it was a group of people you could never get together – since everyone has such crazy schedules. There were musicians, a lighting designer, children - and people of different sexual orientations and gender. It was people from every walk of life just trying to figure out how to be together and what everyone needs. We had to figure out how to cooperate and be in residence together. And also, the grounds were a mess!
It wasn’t in disrepair but it was in a state of needing repair and care. I suddenly found myself in the role of caretaker to gardens, forests, wildlife, and children. Bears destroyed the recycling bins beneath my bedroom window. A pair of migrating Canadian geese nested on the pond behind the garden. A wasp attacked the piano during a live webcast of my weekly East Village music concert. We had to learn to turn the compost system, and we reclaim the courtyard for growing kale and medicinal herbs, leaning heavily on lemon balm tea to nurse our respiratory systems from the dry cough, rosemary to boost immune systems, and cinnamon, garlic, ginger, and turmeric to reduce inflammation. We rebuilt, filled, planned and planted 12 garden beds by hand, and relocated a family of chipmunks burrowed in one of the former beds. Our days cycled in tandem with nature rather than industry. 8:00pm shows were replaced by hand-made dinners at 7:00pm on plates made on-site by a potter in the group. We make a fire from wood from the forest each night, as the stone room in which I live has no electricity. We make candles, bake bread, gather eggs from the chickens, and have shifted our behaviors and productivity vastly in relation to the weather: a notion of weekdays and weekends has given way to sunny days and rainy days.
But now, I am back in New York. Now it’s “The New York Chapter.”
I tested positive for antibodies this week, and my partner tested negative for antibodies so that is mind-boggling. One of our friends who are beautiful artists and live nearby tested positive for COVID-19 and no antibodies and our other friend had no COVID-19, and no antibodies. The tests aren’t accurate, and everyone is just trying to figure out what to do with all this information and how to be natural and be artists, and afford food and all the stuff.
Historically, what ideas, issues, and subject matter(s) have inspired your work?
Issues of displacement, identity, and the relationship between community and origin, the history of a space and its relationship to the work created there. I was raised by wonderful parents who disowned me after I came out due to religious beliefs. Ostracization and solace, and the human voice are major themes in my work. I spent most of my childhood summers in Wyoming with my head wrapped and I couldn’t go outside or play or get my ear sweaty so they took cartilage from my rib to fill out this ear. I was in isolation. It took 3 – 4 surgeries to get hearing in my right ear. That process, from only being able to hear from my one ear to stereo when I was 16, and then a year later I was at Julliard. I had amazing teachers at Julliard, such as Maryann Hawks who taught me ear training from the ground up.
And during that time, while I was a teaching assistant for Maryann, it was the morning of 9/11. Watching what she did –she had been through world war II in Europe - and her leadership with the class – her tenderness, but also her strictness and her ability to get everyone to safety at Lincoln Center greatly affected me. She took us to this house then, and I live in that same house now, and it is a commune for artists. Whenever we were allowed out of Lincoln Center people couldn’t go to their homes so we all came here and I’ve been here since 2001. Currently it is home to a playwright, a choreographer, and an astrophysicist for the Natural History Museum.
Mentorship like that has been essential to my work. In addition to my grandmother, a lot of wonderful, creative artists in the late 1990s to now took me under their wing. (Editor's note: producer Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Schwartz and Mary Geletz, were all cited by Lance as important mentors when he first arrived in New York). So, feeling like people before my generation had made things was really important when I first got to New York. The generation that was in New York before me was decimated by HIV and AIDS so the generation that should have been mentoring my generation in New York City was gone. So, this second generation, my grandmother’s generation, took it on themselves to raise my generation. And that notion and what they did really inspires my work.
Lastly, I have a wonderful grandmother. She would read "A Child's Garden of Verses" to me each summer as I recovered at her home in Denver from ear surgery, and I have always felt the parallel to the poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson to the nurse who had cared for him throughout his many illnesses as a child. I have always wanted to compose a piece based on the poems for my grandmother, now 95. Now finding myself again in isolation, recovering from illness along with the world at large, and feeling the resonance with my youth much like Stevenson addresses his in the final stanza:
"He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book...
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there."
What creative projects are you currently working on?
A great writer named John Cameron Mitchell – who was one of the co-creators of Head Big, he and another wonderful writer I went to high school with named our Lady J wrote a really wonderful song together. And it was the first time I was inspired by someone’s recent creations to say “I think I hear some string lines, could I arrange it for you all.” And they said “yes” and sent me all these tracks with the backup singer and piano and vocal and they allowed me to write a cello and violin part. Then it was figuring out how to record that and how to get the same passion when I wasn’t in the same room with these artists. And that took a lot of time. It took twice as long as it would’ve in November, before the pandemic. It took patience. It was like my muscles had atrophy. My artistic muscles were needing a core workout and this was part of it – a slow and steady return to creating things because everything is informed by the world right now. Because everything is informed by the world right now, as it should be.
Another project I worked on was for my old high school Interlaken in northern Michigan, they were having a student gathering, so they asked if I could contribute a song. And I thought “I can’t do that, what do I have to say? There’s nothing to say.” But then I remembered this photograph of me that had been taken and this time of the year there. In the photograph I was sitting in the lake, looking out at the moon. I went back to something that I could reference – the photograph - and that was an unlocking to create the song. I thought about my time at Interlaken and all of these artists who aren’t going to have their graduation and who have had their nostalgia interrupted. I wrote it and sent it to Interlocken and they distributed it to their students and once you’ve done it once, you can do another small thing.
The other thing is that I’ve been helping raise children. I’ve never spent 24 hours a day raising children! It’s amazing – I have such respect for it and for people who do it all the time, and for my parents and there is a lot of joy in it. I would surprise the kids by grabbing Amanda’s ukulele or accordion and we had this little courtyard where the kale, and medicinal herbs, and rosemary grew. We had weeded it and got it down to the brick and the kids would eat out there. So I would serenade them and one of the kids liked writing songs and singing them so they would sing the songs and I’d arrange the accordion. It just has more ease and joy to it. It was more communal and less professional. I think that’s something I’m taking with me already. Maybe it’s not music forever, but it’s music for now. Serenading the children as they have their mac and cheese and teaching them about music, and gardening, and reading them A Child’s Garden of Versus. It was really profound to read this book that I had read as a child to children. And also to have a child inquisitively sit next to you as you’re trying to compose and say “what’re you doing?” And being like, “I really don’t know right now, I’m doing some F major, then I’m going to do some C minor..”
How has your artistic practice changed during this time?
I am not virtual. I am a physical being and it took all of the stages of grief to figure out to accept that this is a virtual time and to accept that virtual is the best means of communication. It took several weeks and also, I just felt sick. I had a 102 temperature for 10 days and I didn’t know if I had COVID-19 or if I was sick or if I was tired. So, there was a wall. I couldn’t do what I have been doing for 20 years. I managed and I think the best way to manage is to be of service. I first started by organizing Neil’s library and Amanda Palmer’s musical instruments and dusting things off. Doing small tasks and reading small books. I also went back to Norse mythology which Neil has written and I looked at myths and sank into something more ancient, more profound, and not of this time. It was around this time that artists were starting to make things that I could help with.
And one of the greatest things that happened during my touring is that I’ve collected all of the original OZ books. I managed to search for them in all the old book stores in the world so my prized collection is all of the OZ books and now I’m going to read them start to finish. I read an hour a day which is something I started upstate, and I’m not going to stop now. And reading for an hour in New York City would’ve been impossible for me two months ago.
This city now rests every day at 7:00pm and applauds – it's beautiful. My days used to center around 8:00pm when there were performances and shows to go to. Now my day centers around 7:00pm when the city is applauding and I hope we do this for a long time. It's gratitude out every window everyday. I’m going to finish my day at 7:00pm and we will have this gratitude. It is gratitude and gratitude is the greatest combatant to fear.
Has COVID-19 shifted how you think about the natural world?
It shifted my respect for the natural world and my place in it. Most of the plants in my home are found – unless they were given for a reason. Jackie, named after Jackie Curtis, is this amazing walnut vine and was about to be thrown out from a lower east side flower store because it was way too big. My grandmother has a green thumb and that’s something she shared with me. Being able to have greenery inside is something she taught me and is something that really affects me, and just to have something natural in New York City. There is a part of Jackie that does whatever she wants. She grows and every spring just shoots out. It manages to just try every couple of months. It’s taught me as an artist to just try.
I’ve stepped back. I’ve never been in one place for two months since college. Not without traveling for performances or tours. And to be in the woods for two months with a pond and a garden, and not my things, but old things. The house was a hundred years old – it shifted my respect for the natural world and my place in it. I’ve always been an environmentalist, I’ve always loved connecting with nature, but it was part of a country that was modifying and commercializing and having all of that on the outside shutdown and having the only portal be this radio station and listening to what was going on in the outside world. And then watching spring happen and these two worlds didn’t seem equal. If all of this turmoil was happening why were all these crocuses up so early? And there wasn’t a snap frost so the stuff we transplanted was ok. And it just gave me faith in this bigger picture.
In New York City everyone is walking around in masks, it takes hours to get through a grocery store and we don’t know if we’ve flattened the curve or if it will come back in the fall and no one has means of employment. I went out to Central Park yesterday and we had a distance walk with old friends and we were able to look around. I’ve never seen so many turtles. Central Park usually has so many boats and people and running into each other and people screaming, crying, laughing, and it was placid and there were hundreds of turtles up against the rocks sunning. And they were so at ease with humans and humans were at ease with them. It opened up my lens to seeing a bigger picture. New Yorkers are used to laser-focusing and going where they are going and I was able to open up.
I think there's a profound stillness and inner stillness that has been missing in New York City since 9/11 and I think there is going to be a shift in who is here and why and I think that it will really inform peoples relationship to nature and outdoor spaces.