Van Dyke Parks Quotes

The older I get, the better I was.

Unkar Delta at Mile 73 The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke’s description of “raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet.” Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified.

I quote Van Dyke Parks’s statement that the writing of a song is a triumph of the human spirit all the time because it is so true.

I also received with awe this understanding that while being carried down the river of life, with time and everyday chaos infiltrating every moment, one could create something immaculately conceived and ordered. Something that would exist outside of time and be durable so as to never “fall apart on the street like a cheap watch,” to quote Van Dyke Parks. That was the goal. Not to create good songs. But great ones. As Patti Smith explains in her interview in this volume, the whole difference between poetry and songwriting to her was that a songwriter writes a song not for an elite group of song enthusiasts but for the world. The entire world! That’s a big target audience. And designed to work not just for now or next season but for the ages. To write a song people want to hear and to play and to sing across generations. It’s a lofty goal, to put it lightly, and it says a lot about songwriters—all songwriters—that one would even attempt something so bold. It takes a certain kind of chutzpah—Yiddish for crazy courage. That is where songwriters live, after all, on the edge of courage and crazy. It’s creative chutzpah, the audacity of making art.