Song of the Bricoleur: Rags Rosenberg

"We are all taking everything that we've learned from the past, and we're reformulating what we want to do with that and how we want to live. And so, one of the ideas that's embedded in that, for me, is that when you're in this period of history, like we are now, with AI and with the digitization of everything and with the resurgence of a fascist movement, everything is up for grabs. 

You know, anything can happen, and that's the whole point really, that we have agency in this moment to affect what direction things are going to go in, as bricoleurs." --- Rags Rosenberg

A special interview episode with poet and performing songwriter Rags Rosenberg. Rags writes what he calls mythopoetic folk rock in the tradition of songwriter poets he admires: Leonard Cohen, Bob, Dylan, and Tom Waits. 

His latest album Song of the Bricoleur speaks about myth and our ongoing myth-making. We talk about artistic identity and guiding images, the role of the artist in dark times, and "making it up as we go."

In times of profound cultural change, we're all bricoleurs. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.

I have a special guest for you today, poet and performing songwriter Rags Rosenberg. Rags writes what he calls mythopoetic folk rock in the tradition of songwriter poets he admires, specifically, Leonard Cohen, Bob, Dylan, and Tom Waits. Rags and I have collaborated a number of times over the years. I wanted to bring him on to Myth Matters today because he's released a new album called Song of the Bricoleur that speaks to myth and our ongoing myth-making.

These songs are rooted in folk and Americana traditions. They draw on the uncertainty of modern life, the unraveling of old traditions and institutions, and the notion that maybe we can imagine a different, more humane future into existence. If you've been listening to Myth Matters, I think you can hear the resonance between my mission and perspective as a mythologist and the kind of art that Rags is creating. So, I'm excited to share him and his work with you. 

Catherine: Rags, thank you for being here.

Rags: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Catherine: There's so much we could talk about with Song of the Bricoleur but before we get to that, I'd like to talk a little bit about your identity as an artist as part of the context, because I think there is a relationship between what you make and your perspective and process and how you see yourself as an artist in this time that might lend some depth to our conversation about your album, Song of the Bricoleur. 

So, Rags. "Rags"  is not the name you were born with, right? 

Rags: No, it's not. that was a name that that is a name that I adopted a number of years ago in. And it comes from a poem by William Butler Yates called "Circus Animals Desertion," which is quite a long poem. However, well, let me, let me back up a second here and give you just a little bit of background on this, because Yeats wrote this poem, really towards the end of his life, and it was in his last collection of poems, and it was at a point where he was reflecting on what he'd done in his career and in his life, and what that had been, had been, usually using all of those Celtic mythologies and images as source material for his poetry. 

And so, the whole poem is just one after the other, these stanzas of all the different images that he had used over the over the course of his life. And in the end, he it's like, he makes this decision that he no longer wants to do that at this point. He's like 82, 83 years old, and he goes, I want to go somewhere else. I want to go somewhere down more something more personal, something down within myself. And so, he refers to all of these old images and mythologies that he had used in the past as "circus animals." And hence the title of the poem, "Circus Animals Desertion."

And so in the last stanza, he says: "those masterful images because complete grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, old kettles, old bottles and a broken can, old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut who keeps the till now my ladder is gone. I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." 

So, "Rag and Bones" is what I called my musical act for a long for a long time but, you know, there's a clothing store in New York, Rag and Bone shop or something like that. And there's an artist, a British artist, an English guy who is very good, a singer songwriter who calls himself the "Rag and Bone man." And so, if you went to went and googled" rags and bones", you know, you'd have to go through a trillion pages before you ever got to me. And I thought, well, if I want to popularize my music, I'm just going to call myself Rags Rosenberg.

There's not going to be a whole lot of Rags Rosenbergs around. So that's what I that's how that all came about,

Catherine: Right. Well, I definitely understand the internet strategy, but there's something there in your fascination with that poem?

Rags: Well, of course. That's exactly right, because that's what I'm trying to do. You know? I'm trying to go down. I'm trying to examine and express some of the things that are going on for me in my life. And what I love about this stanza is how broken everything is and how unpretty. That he's willing to face in that, in that down, down where all the ladders start in the basement, you know, down way down in the beginning of things. And in the place where, where you really are honest with yourself, and that was, that's the whole point for me, and that's where the "rags" comes in. You know, they're not, they're not finally crafted fabrics. They're rags, and you look at them honestly, and you make out of them what you will.

Catherine: I love your dedication to that poem and this image and that it's even led to your transformation, you know, your public presentation of yourself as an artist calling yourself "Rags." I think it's a model of something really important about the creative process and artistic identity that deserves more attention, which is the value of having a guiding image. And in some sense, I guess all of the emphasis these days on having a brand and having your own personal brand does that. 

And yet, there's something really derivative about that, and the notion of branding that, for me anyway, is kind of off putting when we're talking about making art that comes out of one's soul and is a unique expression. And how do you, how do you stay in touch with that? You know? How do you stay in in touch with that? And it, it seems to me that your devotion to this notion of rags and the rag and bone shop has done that for you, very fruitfully and effectively. 

Are there any other images that have come up in the course of your creative life that are similar guides for you in terms of understanding who you are as an artist and what is in your wheelhouse, so to speak?

Rags: Yeah, absolutely. Over  the course of the years, you and I have done quite a bit of work together on a consulting basis. And in one of our conversations, we were talking about a guiding image, and we did a lot of work around that, and at a certain point, you came up with this formulation of the poet King, and you gave me a whole list of poet kings in the world. Or Solomon. There was King David. There was, you know, there was al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad  from that area in Spain. And all of these poet kings had had several things in common, besides having a lot of concubines. They were wise. They were wise people, and their wisdom allowed them to rule in a very humane way. And they were all literally poets. All of them wrote poetry. 

So over the years, I've taken that idea of the poet King and internalized it in a way such that, I mean, as all your listeners know and have experienced, our minds are constantly chattering. And that chatter, that conversation that's going on inside of there is just a whole group of voices, different aspects of ourselves. But who's in charge? Who's in charge? 

Who's going to make the final decision about whether you cut the corner? Who's going to make the final decision about whether you do the right thing, and so forth and so on. So. for me, what's happened is the Poet King formulation, that Poet King is that been become that part of me that I can call upon to take charge and to help me make a decision that's, that I can feel good about.

So, I think that's, that's probably the most useful way that I have been able to incorporate that, that formulation of the poet king. But also, there's a certain aspect of elevation. You know, when I think of myself as a Poet King, I don't, I should also say, I don't share this around. I don't go announcing, "Hey, I'm the Poet King Rags Rosenberg." It's just like, it's just like Leonard Cohen says, you know, you don't call yourself a poet. That's something other people decide about you. So, it's something I kind of keep to myself, but it's a guiding principle.

Catherine: I like that. The Poet King and the image of the rag and bone shop. Now those are mythic images. And so I'm wondering, how has familiarizing yourself, as I know you have, with myth and mythic viewpoints influenced your creative process and what you create.

Rags: Well, I mean, it's huge, absolutely huge. All of the work that we did together and all of the reading I've done based on that, and study based on working with you, and on understanding myth has helped me to realize that really, all the stories that I tell and my songs, I mean, they're not all linear narratives, but they are all stories. That all those stories are in some way, retellings, because the stories are ancient and they show up in different cultural moments based on whatever that context is at that historical time, and we're in this time right now that we're all experiencing, which is we may get to a little bit later, is a rather dark time, but all the stories that I'm telling are retellings of old stories in one way or another. And that's one thing I came to understand by working by working with myth. 

And so, you'll hear in Song of the Bricoleur---"Song of Bricoleur" is a song but it's also the title of the album, it's a 12 track album--- let's just take an example. An example of one of the songs is "These Bones." For instance, the narrator says, "Last night I had a dream and you were in it. Or maybe it was your dream I was in. I was wrestling with your angel on the mountain, back when I thought I could win." And that's a reference to this poem by Rilke. You know, where he talks about the angels coming down from heaven to wrestle with people and in the end, he says, Those who were beaten by this, these angels came away stronger from that struggle. And it's like, okay, so we're all wrestling with angels, kind of all the time. And if we, if we allow ourselves to be beaten by the angel, instead of insisting on our idea, in our way, that there's something larger that can come from that. 

And then in the second verse it says, "The young man charts a course for the islands. The old man wonders where it all went wrong. Thanks for the wind and the sirens. I was captured by the rapture of their song." That is all myth. That's Odysseus. You know, that's the whole Campbell's hero's journey, right there, and the sirens and the wind blowing you off course in all the plans you make for your life, it's like. So, there's some examples of how myth has affected my songwriting.

Catherine: You know, in the angel I also hear Jacob and the biblical stories of wrestling with angels, you know, which was probably to your point of these retellings, very likely, what Rilke was drawing on. There's such a wealth of metaphor in the myths that then feed the art, that then amplify or shift a little bit in one way or another, expand the metaphors. I mean, we have this incredibly rich vocabulary now of images and metaphors and notions as well as the story lines. And personally, I do think one of the advantages of being aware of that is that those, those are ideas that have a resonance with us that's very deep, because they have a history, such a long history, in human history, or in human culture. 

So even if you don't really know the references, like "Oh, well, wrestling with an angel. I don't know Rilke's poem and I don't know about Jacob, and yet, there's some I understand that idea," and I think that's a really interesting thing about working with myth, and why I like to work with artists who are working with mythology, because it's a way to really bring power to your projects.

Rags: Right, and the one of the powerful things about the myth is that because they're so universal, that the listener in one of the to one of these songs really doesn't have to know the actual myth. Doesn't have to know that old story because it's sort of embedded already in our in our psyches. 

And you may not remember this, but during some of our early work together when I was consulting with you, where I was, you know, still living in Nashville, and I was trying to really shift my songwriting away from that more literal kind of writing that I was trying to do there. And you said, when you sit down to write a song, you have to ask yourself two questions, what is the image? What is the metaphor? 

Now, I've always remembered that obviously, and the fact of the matter is, I don't always do that exactly like that, but in retrospect, when I look at what I have written, at some point I go, "Oh, that's the image. Oh, that's the metaphor." And that helps me to complete the work. Once I understand what it is I'm really working with in terms of the image and the metaphor. So that was really valuable. And that's all, that's all myth based.

Catherine: This seems like a good time to turn specifically to your latest album, Song of the Bricoleur, which is being released today. Bricoleur, as some people might remember, was a topic of a podcast episode that I did a while back and I'll drop the link to that episode in with the transcript and the notes for this conversation.

That image of the bricoleur, of someone who is using what's at hand to invent, make something new, make repairs, feels so appropriate to this time that we're in, and the activity that in many ways, faces us, if we think we're in a time of collapse and culture building. I'm curious to hear the story about the genesis of that idea. I think you mentioned it started as a song before it became the name of the album. Where did that come from? Your fascination with bricoleur.

Rags: Well, I think it was originally 2011, I read a paper by Dr David Miller, who was someone that you introduced me to. And the paper was called "Bricoleur in the Tennis Court." 

So first he defines bricoleur in this paper, and " bricoleur" is someone who makes what they can with what they have on hand. Someone who creates something new from something that's no longer useful or no longer works. And he references a painting by Jacques Louis David during the French Revolution, where David captures this moment. And in the painting, you see all of these men- and of course, this is 18th century, so of course, it's all men-- but they've got their arms around each other and their fists in the air, and they've just been ejected by the king from the palace at Versailles. And these are the, these were the citizens of the nation that had what they call the National Assembly. So, they were an important part of the whole society, and they were trying to develop more of a of a civil society. 

Of course, this was in a period of time when there was the Enlightenment, there was, you know, was a really big time in human history, or at least in Western history. And so, they all gather in this tennis court down the, basically down the street from the palace and they're trying to decide what to do next. And this was the birth of the French Revolution. And what Dr. Miller says about this is okay, they were being bricoleurs. They were bricoleurs. They were taking something that was no longer useful, no longer working, this idea of government by divine right, and they were inventing something new.

Ever since then, Miller says, we've all been bricoleurs. We're and you think about it, you know, we we're in we're creating new families, types of family systems. We're inventing new kinds of spiritual practices. I mean, a lot they're not that, they're not based on some of the old things, but we are all bricoleurs. 

We are all taking everything that we've learned from the past, and we're reformulating what we want to do with that and how we want to live. And so, one of the ideas that's embedded in that, I think, for me, is that when you're in this period of history, like we are now, where with AI and with the digitization of everything and with the resurgence of a fascist movement, everything is up for grabs. 

You know, anything can happen, and that's the whole point, really is that we have agency in this moment to affect what direction things are going to go in as bricoleurs.

Catherine: Right, right. Well, let's pause here and play folks the song.

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Catherine: In the lead up to the song, you mentioned some of the institutions that we depend on that are going through this process, this that we're where we're all bricoleurs re-magining. And I heard that as we moved through the song, for example, you know, you touched on government, and I think in the first verse, are touching at least a little bit on that image of the tennis court. And then you have a commentary on the church and on the family. I'm wondering at this point in your process with the song, now here it is, out in the world, is there an image or two in the song that to you feel especially important or potent.

Rags: Well, I think that the last verse really does for me, encapsulate what the song is about and why it's important to me. Where the narrator says, "Columbus, he sits in the corner, whispering to the clown, my maps are all dissolving, the compass spinning round. The clown says, not to worry, there's nothing we need to know. There's a new world on the horizon, Chris, we'll make it up as we go." That idea of we'll make it up as we go. That's it, right there. I mean, that's what we're all doing. We're doing that in our personal lives. We're doing that in our culture. None of this is predetermined. We're just taking what we got and we're working with it. 

So, I'd say that, and then, you know, it's all it's all narrative, until you get, you know, kind of third person narrative. I'm just describing what's going on in this party that's seems to be coming to an end in some way. Even though we're all continuing to dance, there's something coming to an end. There's this personal statement me. I'm under the table, feeding my appetites, making my way through the buffet, never satisfied. The chef appears in the doorway. Everyone turns to the sound, we're all out of meat and potatoes, folks, but it's creme brulee all around. 

This idea of the way we are stratified now between the rich and the poor has become so clarified and undeniable, in a way that something has to shift. So, for me, that's the center of it. That's what's, that's, that's what I find really important, and what I want to impart to people,

Catherine: I noticed too, that, like questionable nourishment. You know, where is the real where's the real substance? You know, the real nourishment for people, for our souls, for our culture and our bodies.

Rags: And the buffet. I mean, that's a great metaphor for Instagram or Facebook or any anything on your phone that you're scrolling that's our that's the that's the digital buffet right now, and it keeps us, it keeps us sort of drugged. It keeps it keeps us numb and distracted.

Catherine: Thinking about the issues that you're engaged with in your songs, things that you invite us to think about or feel into, and what you've said about your identity as an artist, reaching down into the rag and bone shop of the heart, listening to the being guided by the higher wisdom of the Poet King---

I'm wondering if you feel that there's a a conversation or a certain set of themes or issues that you come to feel are yours. You know, I've read a number of people who write about the creative process, who talk about the fact that at some point you realize that when you're making art, that it's it's more than a personal expression. And I don't mean to to say anything pejorative about personal expression. I think we need more of that from more people, but, but that really you start to realize that there's an arena of life or a set of concerns that you, in some sense. steward. You're the custodian of some certain set of topics. Does that resonate with you?

Rags: Oh, absolutely. Another thing Leonard Cohen said was I've staked out a certain territory and I'm going to defend that territory till I can't any longer. I mean, that's, I think, what you're talking about, and this idea of cultural collapse is certainly something that I feel I have a lot to say about. It hits me deeply, because the of the time that we live in right now is---it's transformational on every level.

And I would say that when you listen to the songs on Song of the Bricoleur all of them, you listen to the poem at the end "The Code," and you listen to "John Doe" about this nameless homeless veteran that dies. Faith and doubt are themes that run through this album and this man my work, exile and belonging run through the work. These are, these are all, all three of these themes, collapse, resilience, faith and doubt, exile and belonging, that are not things I ever set out to write about. 

But when I reflect upon the work, I go, "Oh, this is what it is. This is what I'm working with," and then that can help me guide myself in the future in terms of where I might point my myself. But these are not themes that I set out to write about. They're just things that they were feelings, they were things I had concern about and I wrote, and then, in retrospect, it's like, Oh, if you just sum this up into what are the themes? There they are.

Catherine: Personally, I think that songs that are in one way or another speaking directly to problems that we face, are very are super helpful. For one thing, I feel less alone when I hear someone else eloquently handling situations and concerns that I'm engaged with. I'm curious to get your thoughts on what the role of the artist is in these times? Or maybe you know, what role do you assign yourself as an artist in these times?

Rags: Well, it's a big question, and it's one that I ask myself. I don't have a real pat answer to that in terms of my role and all of that, but I'm sort of making it up as I go, so to speak. So, you know, Bertolt Brecht's got this poem in which he says," in dark times, we will sing of the dark times." And I'm a big fan of Martin Heidegger's essay, "What are Poets For," where he says that, basically, when you get into dark times, you think about it as a night, as the night. And of course, he's talking about night as this period we're in now, where we've abandoned the gods because we no longer feed them, we no longer worship them, we no longer present sacrifices to them. We've become the gods. It's like that's a problem, and it's created this situation where we're not managing things very well, we're not doing such a great job. 

And so that, what's the role of the poet? Heidegger says the role of the poet in these dark times, in this night that we're in, is to try to point us toward the light, towards the dawn. Where are we in this? Are we at midnight? Are we at 3am? The poet is supposed to take an honest in-depth look at where we are and speak to that. And so, there are a few songs in in this album that attempt to do that.

Catherine: So Rags, I've Is there anything else that you would like to tell folks before we close?

Rags: I would say that if you have an any impulse to do, to do art, you should follow that. And whatever voice may be preventing you from doing that. I'm too busy to I don't have the talent. I'm not I don't have anything to say, you know, just please set all that aside and write something, paint something, sculpt something, go to your garden and create something in your garden. 

Because one of the things we can do right now, all of us, in a time when there's so much cruelty in the world and so much ugliness, is we all have the ability in our own lives to find small ways to create beauty. And that's I want to leave you with that. I think that whatever you can do to create beauty any day of the week, do it.

Catherine: Thank you for that. I agree. I so appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation Rags.

Rags: Well, it's really, it's really wonderful for me to, I mean, I wrote, you write these songs, you'd put out this album, and it's just you throw it out into the world. And in a way, it can be a little bit like a huge black hole. You don't know who's down there, who's going to listen, who's going to-- so having an opportunity to come on your show and talk a little bit about the project, and to encourage people to take a listen and see how it might affect them, really it completes the circle, you know, or the cycle for me, of having an idea, sitting down and writing, making a recording of it, throwing it out into the world, and then getting a response back from the world in some way. 

So doing this podcast with you is one way that. It helps me to complete that, that cycle of Song of the Bricoleur. So, thank you.

Catherine: So, I'm going to be posting a link to your website with this transcript, and I encourage people to go and check out the website and get on your email list if they'd l to keep track of what you're doing. I also want to mention that the album, Song of the Bricoleur, which has come out today, is available to stream on Spotify, Amazon music, all the places where you go and get your music online. 

But if you want to support Rags, go to his page on Bandcamp and pay for something for the album, and that's easy to download. If you haven't used Bandcamp before, it's really one of the better sites in terms of independent artists being able to get their music to the rest of us.

Rags: I want to say about that, that if you want to purchase an actual physical copy of the CD, you can do that at my website, ragsrosenberg.com and the artwork, by the way, for the cover of this album was created by yours truly, Catherine Svehla and it's become my image of the bricoleur that what you created there. So, you can see that and you can order the actual CD, physical CD with the image on it at my website.

Catherine: Oh, great. Thanks for the plug for the image.

Rags: It's great. Well, it's this guy. This guy's not just a bricoleur. He's the Poet King.

On that note, thanks again to Rags Rosenberg for sharing his work here on Myth Matters. You'll find links to Rags Rosenberg and Song of the Bricoleur posted with this transcript. Let's take his advice and bring some beauty into the world, my friend.  We are making it all up as we go. Together.

And that's it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.