Tina Davidson on Composing a Life in Full (Measure)

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. We spend our lives trying to anchor our transience in some illusion of permanence and stability. We lay plans, make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us in the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in the pool of the unknown, the the heart breaks open and allows life, life itself, not the simulacrum of life that comes from control to rush in. Those are the words of Maria Popova on how to live with that generative brokenness and is what composer Tina Davidson explores in her memoir, Let yout Heart Be Life and Music from a classical Composer, which Maria describes as a lyrical reckoning with what it takes to compose a life of cohesion and beauty out of shattered bits and broken stories. Tina Davidson was three and a half years old when she was adopted from her foster home in Sweden by a visiting American professor. Soon after that, she was the eldest of five children. Living with her mother and stepfather in Turkey, Germany and Israel, she studied music and became a prolific pianist and composer, but something about her birth remained unnamed and hidden. When she returned to Sweden, she contacted the Swedish adoption agency and voice on the phone said, come, I have information for you. In Let yout Heart Be Broken, Tina juxtaposes memories, journal entries and insight into the life of an artist and a mother at work. Along the way she meets Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandberg, survives an attack by nomads in Turkey and learns her birth father is a world famous scientist and throughout there is a thread of music and an ebb and a crescendo of a journey out of the past and into the present, through darkness and into the light. Tina is a writer and a classical composer now for 45 years whose works have been performed by ensembles and orchestras across the country including the Philadelphia Orchestra, American Composers orchestra, Kronos Quartet, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Cassatt Quartet, as well as recordings with Albany Music and Andorche Gramophone performed by Grammy winning violinist Hilary Hahn, all while being a single parent. Her life is filled with experiences that are as amazing as they are touching, heart wrenching as they are instructive as she shares her dealing with depression and dissociation and her work to reclaim herself through therapy and spiritual practice. Tina, it's great to have you on.

Wow. Thank you so much for having me.

You know we started before we hit record. I wanted to discuss your background in your life as well as the book. But as we said, you know, as it's a memoir, they really aren't separate discussions. So I'm thinking we might just kind of do a combo and see if we can do that.

If that sounds good, that sounds great.

Awesome. Before we dive in, I want to share maybe what some others have said about your book. Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize winning music writer said, tina Davidson writes with precision and poetry. Maria Popova said, let your HEART be Broken is a consummate read in its entirety, exploring with uncommon sensitivity and poetic insight the fundamentals of love, forgiveness, creativity and what it takes to emerge from the inner darkness into a vast vista of light rain rooted in life tested truth that we are in the end, a measure of the love we leave behind. John Sobel of Blog Critic said, with this memoir, Tina Davidson accomplishes something much more difficult because it goes deeper into the soul, conveying what goes on inside when an artist, one particular artist, is creating the work. The work that both reveals herself escapes to become the world's taking on a different Meaning for every listener. And Hilary Hahn, Grammy winning violinist, said, rarely does a composer tie together life events and inner creative propulsion in a narrative that speaks directly to their audience. Ms. Davidson's music is lyrical and vulnerable, as is her voice in words. And Tina, I have to agree, it's a wonderful work. And maybe to start off, do you feel like there's a paradox in that? Typically, the artist's dilemma is to be heard and not found. But in writing a memoir versus a composition of music, isn't that the cause? Doesn't that cause you to be found as well?

Oh, yes, that quote from Mumford, the artist's dilemma is to be heard but not found, was definitely where I was when I started writing music. And it was certainly the attractiveness of composing because I could tell my story and because I really didn't know it at that point, I hadn't really found out some of the truths about my birth story. It was a way of me writing in anonymity, and that was amazing. However, when I started to undercover about myself, I realized that I could only move forward as a composer and as a person if I was going to be more visible in expressing what was going on for me. That my initial attraction to that quote was where I was when I started my career in my 20s. And by the time I got to be 30, it became an impediment because I couldn't actually be authentic because I was keeping it from myself as well as from the audiences.

Wow. Yeah. And I feel like we'll probably go back and forth between writing, life experience, composition and music. I also have to say, a big, big fan after reading your book, and I will nerd out periodically on some excerpts and things. But you begin the book with your author's note and you recount a talk that you attended by Stephen Levine, who, for folks that don't know, is a poet and author and perhaps best known for his work on death and dying. And he answered someone that was in the audience in a Q and A. They questioned him like the proverbial, you know, what's the meaning of life? And you wrote in your book that he responded, I think the meaning of life is to let your heart be broken. And then you went on to write, let your heart be broken. Allow, expect, look forward to the life that you have so carefully protected and cared for. Broken, cracked, rent in two. Heartbreakingly, your heart breaks. And in the two halves rocking on the table is revealed rich earth, moist, dark soil, ready for new life to begin. That's just beautiful. I felt like I was reading poetry almost more so than a memoir, you know, quite through it. Tina. So in the book, and maybe this is like one of the outside questions, I didn't really get a feel for like your ability with crafting words as well as notes. Where did that come from, your ability to be an author of written material, not just music?

Well, my mother and stepfather were literature professors, so there was an awful lot of literature around the household. And I read a huge amount. But also as part of my composing practice, I would journal and I would journal maybe an hour a day. I first had to read, I always had to read because I felt like I needed to nurture my brain and my understanding of life. And it's sort of like reading in terms of composing was like sitting down and eating a really good meal that had nutrition in it and really fortified me and then the writing. And I had a composing journal, I had a personal journal, and then I actually had a spiritual journal at one point. And it was very dedicated to exploring what was going on for me. I know some artists feel that they don't really write about themselves. They write about the universal experience. I happen to be a composer that really finds my self explorations the root of my understanding of the world. So I see through the lens of my eyes. So it's very important to me to understand that at one point one of my therapists said, oh, you're just so intellectual, I want you to start drawing. So I got out, you know, my colored pencils. And so now part of journaling for me is drawing. And that has become a wonderful self expression because there is the way that my heart feels when I write music. When I write about my music, it's more of a brain to page thing. And then when you draw, it's like your hand is just going on its own. It has this sort of wonderful external quality to it. And I. And drawing has been also very, very helpful in the composing process. So I've always written. I always thought in the beginning of choosing a career that I might be a poet. I always loved writing poetry. And one of my sisters, Eva Davidson, is a wonderful poet. The other one, Lolli Davidson, is a wonderful writer and has published three books or is in the process of publishing her third book. So I think it is part of our sort of family heritage. But it's also this decades of writing and being interested in how you turn a phrase. In my book there are these alternate chapters. So there's one chapter that is a story about my life at a certain time period. And Then the next chapter is in my 30s, my journal, my music and composing journal, and my personal journal. And it is not only looking at what I'm doing right then, but also many times looking back at some of the information that I'm learning about my childhood. So you get this sort of double perspective of what is going on, the past and the present, that is reflecting on the past and also thinking about the future. So my publisher said to me, I love the journal. It's very rare to have a book that includes journal. How much of your journal did you use? And I said, oh. I said, maybe 5%.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So I wrote copious. And many times I would write about something that I was thinking about over several days or even weeks. And in the book, I put those together because it would be ridiculous to read about them in that sort of scattered fashion.

Sure. I felt like we'll also periodically bounce around about construction of the book because there's some really clever things that I thought you did. But since we're talking about the. The journaling and things, it really were those sort of things that you leaned into in terms of, like, reflecting back of where you were at those moments in time. And for folks that haven't seen your book yet, they're sort of like excerpts of, you know, like the dates and then, I presume, pretty close to a verbatim, you know, rendering of what you had written back then and then gets contextualized with kind of other life events. So did you think back and then kind of compare it to what the journal said, or did you go through your journals and that triggered memories to then write more fully about those experiences? Or was it all the above kind

of thing when I was starting to write this book? You're asking?

Yes.

Well, it's interesting. I started to write the book 10 years ago. I was at the end of a second marriage and leaving that marriage and basically being homeless for three or four years until I found a house to buy and settled in. And that was partly by design because I really wanted to make sure that I knew where I was going to live. I decided I would just take it slow. So I rented and did whatever I needed to. But I think there is no question the timing of my starting to write this book is a time when you start to reflect on your past life. And I had really wanted to do two things. I wanted to pull my past life together for myself and some of the traumas. But I also wanted to really try to articulate my composing process. And so I did go back and read my journals and, you know, have little stickies here and there. And I was amazed at some of them. I mean, for years I would write down my dreams and then I would analyze them. And honestly, for a reader, that would be just like, oh, I don't want to do that. There were many years of journals that I just, I, you know, Maybe I used 3% of those, but there were enough little snatches and also that I would be writing more about my music and my composing journal that I was able to collate those together and sort of create a framework. And it was a discovery for me because I knew that at that time in my adult life, I was looking back and processing and understanding things at a deeper level. I hadn't quite realized the connection that I was also composing music about it. And I mean, I knew it, but I didn't know it with that kind of certainty. So I have a cello quartet that's called Dark Child Sings. And it's really about my allowing that dark child in me that had sort of been left in Sweden to have a voice and to speak out. And again, it's not that intellectual. It's sort of like I hold that idea in my head as I'm writing music. I'm not thinking, oh, now he's going to scream. Or you know, it's just that it's that I keep that in my thoughts while I'm composing and sort of like my hand when it's drawing, there is a connection between those two.

I see. So was it a therapeutic process to do this when you started during that 10 year time from beginning to end

of writing the music, of writing my memoir? I think so, yes. I think writing the memoir, I think it's my experience is that it's about claiming my space. You know, I'm actually starting to write a new piece right now called Above Ground. And when I wrote those words and I started to laugh like you, I said, oh yeah, that's where you are, you're above ground. And it's this declaration and exploration of it as well. So, I mean, I wrote the book for about two years pretty solidly, then put it away for about five. Then it came out, then it went back in. And then about two years ago I started working with this publisher and they had a brilliant, brilliant editor that I worked with that helped me. I was having trouble with the beginning and the end. So a lot of the beginning material was at the end. I just couldn't figure out how to format it. And she just asked great questions. I Think people who are really helpful are ones that help you with critical thinking rather than criticism. So critical thinking is like, what am I doing well, what could I do better? They're really about asking good questions.

I would think, too, in the context of a memoir, I've had a lot of authors on the show, and it's typically been around nonfiction kinds of matters or historical things or what have you. And I would think that there's kind of a difference. I think it would be. Personally, I think it would be quite difficult to kind of sort those things out. So I think it's very fortunate that you had an editor to kind of, you know, suss out the critical thinking aspects of it, because I would get lost in terms of. If I. Even if I was, like, making up a novel, which I could never do. You know, there's sort of the arc of the story, but I think when it's yourself and there's, you know, flashback and there's current things and there's history and there's, you know, different types of journals and all these things, it would be a, you know, quite the challenge to. To, you know, in your head, it makes sense, but to an. A person that's, you know, has no familiarity with your background or your store stories, you know, you know, to try and kind of figure those things out. So it's. It was it, you know, the proverbial. Do you know the story of the white shoe and the writer?

No, there's.

It's. I don't know where it's a. It's kind of a joke, cliche, ish kind of thing, but sort of like when a person's sitting there, you know, needing to be creative and, you know, trying to channel your muse and, you know, forcing something that maybe today's just not the day for it, that they look across the room. They're sitting at their desk, their journal or their computer, their typewriter. They look across the room and they see their white shoes, and they notice this little teeny spot, and they go, oh, I got to clean that spot, man. I can't be riding today. I got to go, you know, get that little, you know, fly speck off the side of my white shoe. So, you know, you talk about it being the. The arc of your project of being, you know, 10 years time. So what were the things. Did you get to certain points where you go, oh, man, I just need a breather and a break from this. And then, you know, the certain kinds of things started percolating and got you motivated back into it? Or can you maybe share with us what the process of your ebb and flow of involvement and putting away and getting it done? And you've mentioned the editor, which sounds like that was helpful to, you know, get it to the finish line. But what about the process in between?

I think, you know, you have to remember also, since I'm not really an author and I am a composer, I was always, you know, writing this meant I had to stop composing for about a year, year and a half. Wow. Then I'd go back and I was writing a lot of music, and then I'd go back, and then I hired another editor who was also wonderful just to read it and see if she felt that I had written enough information, and then I'd go back to composing. Now, this last year and a half, two years, has been mostly. I've not written a lot of music because it's been really consumed in this other, you know, finishing my. My book. One of my big concerns, and I know this is not going to quite answer your question, but it was sort of is. There was a lot of information about my family and about things that had happened to me that I didn't want to write about. I really didn't want to throw anybody under the bus. And I wanted to be very careful about that because particularly about my mother. She was, you know, people are very complicated, and I've done really stupid and mean things, and I wouldn't want to be measured by those times necessarily. And I think when you publish something, it has a lot of. It's kind of like the final word. And it's not as if people in your life can say, wait a minute. Can I? Can I.

Opportunity for rebuttal. Yeah, wait a minute.

When I was writing this in particular, I sent it several times to my ex husband, the father of my daughter, because I wanted to make sure that he was okay with the way that I was portraying him. And I had read a wonderful set of memoirs, sort of, I think, or essays by Anne Truitt, who is a wonderful sculptor. And what I loved about it is that she talked a lot about her work. And then there were like, these characters that kind of floated in and out of her studio so that you knew she had a personal life and that was important, but she was not really talking about that. She made a distinction between that. So I did spend a lot of time thinking carefully about how I could allow the reader to have enough room to have their own opinions about the characters in my story.

Yeah, I had done. When I was doing some research on it. The fact that you did take the time to do that, I think again, it just kind of speaks to who you are as a person and trying to be fair handed about it. And it is a good point. I can imagine that when biographies, autobiographies and memoirs come out that the, the characters, so to speak, in them, the people that were actually, you know, part of that person's life are like, yikes, you know, what chapter am I in? And you know, is it going to be a highlight reel of, you know, everything that I did wrong? And I think, you know, you've. To me, I mean, obviously I don't know the these people or anything other than what I've read, but things seem very, you know, fair handed about things and you have a very gentle way and as well as a very beautiful way to frame a sentence in a page that I think is people would not be at all offended by it. So we've kind of talked around it and maybe for those of you that are listening that haven't seen the book yet, this is going to be a bit of a spoiler alert. So maybe fast forward a minute. But you describe growing up and thinking you were adopted, but that wasn't really the case. Can you maybe unpack that for us about when you found out that you were adopted and adopted by who?

So I was born in Sweden, in Stockholm, and then I was placed in a foster home probably, it's not really clear, but probably when I was about six months old. So I was born in December and I think it was like the beginning of summer or something like that. And I was placed with a family. Solveig was my foster mother, Torsten was my foster father. And I was then the youngest of four. I was the only girl and I had three older brothers, one of whom, the one that was the closest in age to me was only a couple months older. And we were sort of brought up as twins. And I lived there very happily until I was three and a half when this beautiful professor came. She lived in the town in Malmo for about a month and she adopted me and we left and she married when we got to America. And then I was the oldest of five. And so, you know, I always knew I was adopted. There wasn't a big deal made of it. My mother didn't treat me any differently. My stepfather, I think, had a lot of problems with me. I was five when he and my mother married. And I think I was always a little bit of an impediment for him. So he definitely warmed up to children when he had his four kids. But I was sort of. I always felt like I was sort of outside of the family somehow. And this was a very deep, private thought and probably not even articulated to me. I knew that I couldn't talk about being adopted to my mother. And every once in a while, one of my siblings would say to me, well, you. I don't have to obey you because you're adopted. You know, how kids, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what kids do.

Yeah.

So I was acutely aware of it. And I was acutely aware that when there was a lot of talk about families and about histories and your great great grandfather did this. That was not my great grandfather. I knew I was pretending it was my great great grandfather. So when I was in college, I was 21, I was back in Sweden. I was taking care of a daughter of a family friend. And I thought, well, I'll go to the adoption agency, you know. And I always sort of thought I was Swedish. You know, I had made up this whole romantic idea, you know, that I was saved from an orphanage or, you know, I had no idea.

Right.

Because, remember, I left Sweden, I only spoke Swedish, and I came to America. I had to learn English. And so when I finally called up and they said, oh, come down, she was sitting there with this piece of paper in her hand and she was reading. She said, oh, I have a letter from your birth mother. And she was asking me all these questions.

Wow.

And then she finally said, your adopted mother is your birth mother.

It sounds like a screenplay. So did you have to have her repeat that a couple of times to make sure that you understood?

I have to say, you know, I started doing intensive therapy, you know, 10 years later, and realized that I do a fabulous dissociation. I can dissociate. You know, I've had to really work hard not to do it. But at that point, it was like. It was like the world, you know, just vanished. And I couldn't comprehend the information at all.

Sure. Yeah.

And so when I got back to America, which I was flying out the next day, I waited a week before I could catch my mother alone. I said, oh, let's walk up to the park. And I told her, and she wept. But the truth was that she was very bound to this secret. This was something that was really now a fundamental part of her life structure, and she was not going to give it up. It had served us very, very well. It was such a smart thing to do, you know, in the 50s to have an illegitimate child. And to have gone to Penn and gotten a PhD and to be a full professor was astonishing for a woman of that time period. And it was a very smart thing to set up. Very, very smart. But, you know, the difference between privacy and secrets is huge. And my experience is that also those secrets. It's almost like the secret becomes this crazy, demented puppeteer, or in the book, I call him a Frankenstein. And he's your own personal Frankenstein. And he's wrecking things. He's, like, bumping into things and breaking things. You know, he's clumsy, he's large. He's not too smart. And, you know, and I think she had really created this whole story around the story and, you know, living the mythology. Yes. You know, she was this heroic woman who adopted a child, not a heartbroken woman who brought her own child back. You know, I. And I have a lot of compassion with that. I know that I was hugely angry for decades at her because of her refusal to allow me to have a say in my own story. And that when I did have. When I did have a say, she would fight against it. For instance. For instance, when I was marrying the father of my child, I wanted both my mother and my biological father's family to be there. And she said, no, no, no, no. You have to have two weddings. I'm not going to appear as the fallen woman.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. But on the other hand, she was this brilliant, very articulate, incredible intellectual. Loved her students, taught beautifully. She was such a great teacher. Really cared and nurtured. Her student was passionate about giving us educational experience. We all played instruments. She loved traveling. You know, we were constantly, you know, I was going off to. I lived in Germany for a year. I lived in Israel a year. I lived three years in Turkey. She was passionately interested in seeing the world and experiencing the world. But, you know, you've got this secret, and I think things kind of calcify around a secret, and it has made me. I think emotional honesty is kind of a crux of existence for me, because the price that we paid as an entire family was very high.

Yeah, Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, just, you know, this kind of a circumstance speaking to the complexity of, you know, of people and of situations and then amplifying that by virtue of circumstance and other, you know, people in the family. It's not just, you know, one or two people. I mean, it gets, you know, you know, more complicated as more people and players and their own issues that they bring to things. And one of the things. I mean, what you describe, you know, it's. You were very transparent in the book. And one of the things I thought was very clever. You pieced together various parts of your life that correspond to musical pieces. You kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier when we first started talking. Can you maybe unpack that a little bit more and talk about that relationship?

You know, again, my music is really a reflection of knowing myself. And it's the only one I can trust to speak right.

It's got truth speaking truth to power.

So I'll pick a piece like my string quartet, one of my first string quartet. CASSANDRA SINGS we named our daughter Cassandra. And I'd always had a love of the myth of Cassandra because she was priestess and she had the gift of prophecy. But then I think one of the gods wanted to, you know, have sex with her and she refused because priestess have a vow of chastity. And so this God got kind of angry at her and he cursed her prophecy so that she would tell the truth, but no one would believe her. And of course, this was during the Trojan War. And she's like saying, hey, dad, who was the king of Purim? And she said, this is not a good thing. And nobody believed her. And then she was captured by Agamemnon, who was one of the victors, and brought as a slave and as a concubine back to Greece, where he was then killed. Murdered. They both were murdered by the queen Clytemnestra. So, so. And here's my daughter being named Cassandra. And I was thinking, what is the voice of women of myself who speak the truth and aren't heard? How is that throughout history? And so when I read the play, Cassandra is one of the characters other than the chorus that is allowed to sing. She is actually the only character in all of her of Greek plays that is allowed to sing because the chorus speaks the truth and so does Cassandra. And I thought, what? You know, Cassandra's singing. And for us to come into a time where we actually. My daughter's time, hopefully where women can be heard. So that understanding of myself as a woman. My mother was like a hardcore feminist and seeing how she struggled by having five children and a full time job and to travel.

Yeah.

Yes. And so then that was what I was holding in my head as I was writing this idea of Cassandra singing. So that again. And that was at a place in my life where I was really looking at myself as a woman, particularly in music. If you think of music, classical music, not as high art, where these composers had somehow tapped into Something that was way above our understanding and was expressing that. But they really were composing about their lives. So Beethoven was really composing about his life. You know, he was a white guy, he was a Christian, he was educated. He, you know, hung around with people who had money. You know, so he had some social status and, you know, kind of grumpy, maybe single male. And if you look at the music from that lens, if you said, okay, let's look at it, then the climax of his symphonies, they kind of arrive. And don't you love that word climax?

Yeah.

Hello.

Yeah. Yeah.

So then. So then I think, okay, if I am female and I'm living in this time, what is the climax of my music? What is that like through my experience? So I was thinking a lot about that. And as I was defining myself versus my childhood, I was also defining myself as a woman and as a composer and wondering, how can I dig into that deep soil, if you will, to

write expressiveness and if my facts are straight, in doing history and background, you really didn't start composing until college, is that right? You just really start off as a pianist. And was that what spurred that in college? Was it a course or just a design?

Well, at Bennington College, they had this crazy idea, which is not an academic idea of the time at all. In academia, you do not compose until you've taken years of theory, harmony, orchestration. I mean, you've just had four or five years of kind of the grammar of music. You know, learning the grammar, learning how to make a perfect sentence, but not writing anything. And they had an alternate view. They had a lot of composers on board, and they said that every performer should be a composer and every composer should be a performer. So I was a very good pianist at that point, and they threw me into Music one for advanced performers, and the job was to write music. And I thought they were crazy. Well, I had never. First of all, the truth is, I had never played any music by a woman composer. It never occurred to me that it was a career progress profession. So I was kind of reluctant. And my first piece, and worse yet, they just handed out staff paper and they said, here's your instrument. You pick two instruments in the class. I picked oboe and French horn. Go out and write, you know, they told you how many bars, you know, write some music.

Here's the deep end. Hop in. Wow.

It was a horrible piece. I got a lot of criticism, and I vowed never to write for Hobo and French horn again, which was a good choice, not a great combination. And by the end of the semester, I was hooked. And again, it was this wanting to be creative in something to speak my story to. I mean, it was sort of. I looked into the forest, and you could see there were lots of paths into the forest of life, but only one was illuminated. And that's where I was going. And I was very serious about it, really. One tracked at that point.

How did you go from piano then to being so wonderful with strings? I mean, you know, I probably don't know your whole catalog, but the things that I am familiar with, you know, are very, you know, string quartets. And, you know, and I think I certainly, you know, I can hardly listen to anything with a cello in it without tearing up. So I get the emotion of that. But how did you go from piano to string quartets?

I was part of a group in Philadelphia called Relash, and their instrumentation was kind of crazy. They had a saxophone and a double bass and a clarinet and a piano, and it was just a crazy kind of combination. But when I got the commission from the Kronos Quartet, that was the first time I'd really seriously written for strings. And the truth is that my mother was a wonderful amateur violinist. She played all the time. My sister was a wonderful violinist, and everybody played a stringed instrument. I was the only one who was a pianist. And I think having that sound in my ear was really informative. And as an aside, I have to say one of the things that I love to hear about is when my siblings, I was seven years older than the oldest of them and 14 years older than the youngest. But their memories of their childhood is that it was filled with my playing the piano, that I was always playing the piano. And that musical sort of imprint on their memories is really interesting.

That is.

But I have always. I've just always loved. I play cello in college. I teach a little bit of cello. I have a blog that says my heart is a cello. And I think one of the interesting things, psychological things about a cello, it's the only instrument that you play where you open your legs and you place the cello between your knees, and you lean the top of the cello against your sternum. And I think it's very telling to be able to embrace an instrument like that. You wrap your arms around it. Now, double bass, you stand usually, or you sit to the side. Violin, you know, you have it resting on your shoulder. But I think that physical contact with the cello has always made me in love with it.

Yeah. Wow, that's really good juxtaposition and just the physicality of that. And like you were saying earlier, just even the vocabulary of, you know, of compositions and how, you know, music gets described. So you. You also write about. And I'd like you to speak to the impact of the childhood trauma in composition of music and, you know, maybe elaborate on, I'm guessing that informs the whole, you know, Cassandra kind of thing and having voice to it. But is there also, like, the emotional aspect? Not just the. Like, is it an issue of being believed as well as being heard? Or maybe unpack that a little bit more for us?

Well, I will answer it this way. I'm not exactly sure if it's what you're looking for, but of the 45 years that I've been writing music, I would say that the first 10 before I started to connect to my Swedish story. So my daughter was born when I was 30, 31. And that's when in the book I say, you know, I kind of look at her and I think, oh, I could take all my traumas and gift wrap them and hand them to her as her legacy, or I could really start doing the hard work. And I decided. So the 10 years that I was writing before that, I think I was kind of writing and not really understanding what I was writing about. There was a kind of a disconnect with some of those writing pieces. The second decade of composing, I was deep into therapy. I was deep into taking care of my daughter. I was a single parent at that point. I was sort of. I had really built a pretty good career in music. I was. I was composing full time. So that's. I made my living off of composing. And those works, I think, are very reflective of where I was in relationship to unity, understanding myself emotionally and some of the traumas I had been. By the time I get to my 40s, I think that had kind of shifted and settled down, and I suddenly started to really feel very connected to a larger space, if you were. And my music started really looking into how am I connected to the world, for a lack of a better word, spiritually, Things that are, you know, above me or beyond me or. And I'm writing suddenly titles. I have a string sextet called A Bright Flash of Wings. And that's the idea for that is, you know, sometimes you're walking outside and suddenly something catches your eye. It's up in the sky. And you look up, and it's not even important what you're seeing up there. It's that you suddenly look up. You suddenly are connected to a bigger sense of the world then I Wrote a piece called It Is My Heart Singing, another piece called Delight of Angels. So my interest started to shift to a broader screen and I think that I've sort of stayed in that for about 20 years. I think my interest is coming back down a little bit to what's happening on a local level. But so I have a piece that I wrote during COVID which is called Leap, which is about suddenly we've let to a place that we just have no clue where it is. I have a piece called Hum, which is about when I was a child, people hummed so much. You would walk outside and they were whistling and humming and it's this sort of intimate expression, self expression of music. And then another piece called Hush, which is about that sense of hushing your child. So I think, I don't know if I've answered your question quite.

Yeah, yeah. Well. And it actually, it begets a follow up, which is so like during the 20s, then do you feel like, or maybe during your 30s, was there ever a point where the writing and the playing was cathartic for you? Like was it a release and therapeutic in that way? Or did it just take to the point of having Cassie and life kind of changing in some different ways for you vis a vis your composing?

It's very hard for me to know. When I look back, I was so intense about writing music. It's almost like a person I don't know anymore. You know, it was. I was just this laser focused about music and I was kind of surprised when I went back and read my journals that I had this kind of, I don't want to say rigidity, but it was so focused. And now where I am in my life, that creativity is, I don't know, it just seems to be. I don't know, it's no longer one thing, it's many things. It's more of a holistic life thing where. So it's hard for me to tell. I'm sure it was cathartic, but I don't know if I would have been able to articulate that or understand that at that time.

Sure. Well, it seems like where you are today in, in through the course of the book that, you know, we haven't gotten to really talking about this yet, but like, you know, forgiveness and understanding and, you know, it seems like maybe those aspects in combination, like where you write, you know, that Cassie was your great opportunity to not have her inherit the, you know, the negativity kinds of things, but here's an opportunity to, you know, kind of for you to write a different course, not rewrite, but, you know, to be able to. To take this in a different kind of way, I feel, you know, has. I don't know what it's like having gone through that as a process and then going through a therapeutic, spiritual healing process, and then, you know, kind of being. If I can put words in your mouth, like, being at peace with it, you know, with having. Having, you know, the grace of forgiveness and then, you know, now being able to. To focus on other kinds of things because those things have been dealt with. Is that kind of the case? I mean, I know some things are never kind of always finished with a bow on top, but is that kind of where your growth has been since those times?

Well, certainly in this last 10 years, they've just been amazing, peaceful 10 years. I do think that as the book ends, what I didn't know at that point, so it's really the end of my 40s, going into my 50s, was how to set really good boundaries. And I did suffer a great deal in the next 15 years learning how to set boundaries and not be the kind of person who wants to fix things or be the, you know, the wonderful person that does everything. I do have a huge amount of energy, but it wasn't necessarily well placed at that point. And I really have to make myself accountable for that. So since the end of my second marriage, I have. I just can't even tell you, you know, I just wake up every morning smiling. I just imagine in such a good place. But it comes with setting some very firm boundaries. I always tell my daughter and my three stepchildren, my beloved three stepchildren, that I have this imaginary electric fence going around my property, and it's a drama fence. And so anybody who's coming with drama,

leave it at the gate.

Well, they go like, oh, I'm trying to get in, but I can't get in. What's going on? You know, I am all ears for personal trials and tribulations, but drama and, you know, being at a place where I finally have some maturity in not giving advice, just listening, that's a hard one. Being available in that sense, not jumping up and allowing my anxiety to be amplified by their anxiety and then getting reactive, that takes a lot of discipline. But the rewards are kind of amazing.

I need to know where you get that fence, Tina. I'd like to. Is it on Amazon? I'd like to order one.

They always laugh. They go, you know, and every once in a while, you know, I'll stop one of them. They'll say, well, you know, this thing happened to me. And you know, they were really wrong. I said, is that drama? Wait a minute, wait a minute.

I wanna, you made mention of like how or not necessarily how, but like when the book ends. I want to circle back to that. But before, since we're kind of what we're talking about right now, how is it? Like, you know, you can't, you've, you've talked about all the activities and capabilities and capacities that your mother had and PhD from Penn, et cetera, et cetera, travel, kids, et cetera. What was it like for you, in a sense? I don't know. Finding your voice probably isn't the right way to say it, but in the work that you did as becoming a composer, getting to the point of being able to do that as a full time career at some point, also being a teacher, professor, and being a single mom. Can you maybe talk about what that was like for your, for you during those days and how you went about what was successful for you to be able to get through those times as a single parent and balancing motherhood, creativity, keeping afloat, that type of thing?

Sometimes I think being a working mother is just like dashing from one disaster to another. And the disasters can be really sad, simple, like it's a snow day or the babysitter didn't arrive or they had early dismissal, but you didn't know.

Oh, gosh.

And that kind of, I don't know, I think it makes parenting kind of anxious or tight or it's, it's not a very relaxed state when you, and that's, I mean, truly a parent is that for me is. I was always at my best when I was relaxed. And relaxed meant that I had done a certain amount of work that day that had fed me and I was able to put it aside and be one on one with my daughter. And if for some reason, you know, the babysitter hadn't come through or you know, she was home sick all day, I would have a kind of anxiety that was very, I think, difficult for my daughter and a preoccupied, I was preoccupied a lot of the time. And I know she felt that. I think kids do feel that perhaps. Anyway, you know, my parents not really present and that's part of life as a kid.

Yeah, it's the cliche of quality time. I think that's kind of what people started calling it, so.

And I always felt that I was such a much better parent if I had gotten four hours of work done during the day or, you know, been Lucky to have. And. But I know she felt that. And I think it was such. Composing was such an intense experience for me. It was hard for me to balance that. And I've had to do some repair work with my daughter and some honesty. You know, she'd say, you know, this was really hard for me. And I'd say, yes, that must have been really hard. And I can't. I can't change that.

Right.

But I can tell you that I'm working on that every day so that I don't continue doing that. And that has been very helpful for her.

Well, and I, you know, I mean, I would also speculate that there were also times that were just the opposite of that. That there were those, you know, plenty of times of shared times together, good memories together, shared moments that, you know, will stay with her forever. But, you know, it's like we said it earlier on, it's easy sometimes to focus on the highlight reel of the foibles as opposed to, you know, all the home runs, so to speak. So.

Well, I think absolutely. We always put play together. I've always been a type of parent that really wanted to get down on the floor and play with my kids. They're my step kids, or. I've always loved that. Yeah, we. Speaking of Barbie.

Yeah.

My mother would not allow me to have a Barbie because she was a feminist. I did get a Barbie gifted to me from my aunt, and she had a disaster. I would always prop her up by my night light while I was reading before I went to bed, and one day, her head touched the bulb.

Ooh.

Yes. But as a feminist, I always wanted my daughter to have the full range of experience. And so we made lots of Barbie clothes. We built dollhouses all the time. We always built furniture, and we played games at night. We did a lot of work. And in fact, just the other day, she was telling me how much she loved her 13th birthday, where her father is Jewish. So I gave her a Protestant bat mitzvah, which was 13 days out in Utah. And every day I gave her a small gift. It had to be something really personal. So I asked her father to write her a letter. So that was one of her gifts. My mother, who was at that point a Bible scholar, wrote her about her Torah portion, which was Jacob wrestling with the angel.

Wow.

And so that was one of her gifts. You know, a beautiful fountain pen was one of her gifts. I had copied all the poetry that I love into a little book, so it had to be small.

Wow. Oh, I love that.

We went out and we did a lot of backpacking and a lot. We did a dude ranch. And she was just telling me how what a celebration that was for her and how important it was to her. So, you know, I was present, but I was also absent.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that is the paradox of sometimes not even just single parents. My folks divorced before I was one. And, you know, that was kind of just this constant struggle that I know, you know, my mother felt. And, you know, there's good days and bad days for, you know, for the both of us and the both of us together. So, you know, and, you know, my wife and I have been married almost 38 years. We have two adult children, and we had good days and bad days as well, too. And work got in the way some days, and other days it was down on the floor, you know, playing with Legos or whatever. So, yeah, I think that's. That's the journey of parenting, that there is no perfect way to do it, and you just try and do a percentage of better than bad. All right, well, I have to get out of the sappy stuff here for a second, Tina. I gotta nerd out again. Back with book design. Like I said earlier on, I really like the approach of the dated journal excerpts that really kind of. I mean, I almost. I'm also kind of quite into film, and I also, you know, I could just sort of see, you know, if your memoir was made into a, you know, major motion picture, I could kind of see, you know, there'd be, like, the book, you know, this opening up or this going across the screen or whatever. And it was really helpful. You know, I felt like I was like an insider, and I was almost felt a little guilty that I'm reading your journal because I'm reading all these other things that are going on or whatever. But now, oh, you know, oh, I shouldn't have found this. But I can't help myself. I got to read that.

And.

And it's really okay with Tina because she shared it with me. I liked also, like, with the coda, you know, and what remains behind, again, I think just speaks to your inner poet that gets shared externally with your audience, which is lovely, and thank you for that. And it was so sweet to see the photos, you know, throughout. There's that one little black and white square picture view early on, you know, with, like the little teeny, you know, pigtails or whatever. It just, I thought was so sweet. And then at the end, you know, like, you're reading about these people, and I, you know, I Summoned back and forth all the time. Okay, here's. Okay, here's the brother and, oh, here's what he looks like, or, you know, here's, you know, whoever and whatever was just also just really, you know, kind of brought, you know, the words to life. And I mean, they were. The words were already brought to life just by your eloquence, but the, you know, being able to, you know, have a literal picture of, you know, who I'm reading about and understanding those. So I thought that was great. And then you have like, the, like, kind of very end pieces of the book. You have page references of music by you, and then you have a QR code that I did that takes a reader straight to Spotify, and then you can listen to it. And I just thought that was genius. You know, here I'm reading about a composer, and I'm reading about, you know, her works, and then, boom, you know, just grab my phone and then I can actually, you know, I mean, it's. I mean, I. Obviously, I could have done that anyway, but just the step saving aspect of that and the immediacy of being able to do it while still phone in one hand and book in the other, I thought was just genius. So were those things that you collaborated with editors with, was that just organic in terms of your ability to tell stories and apply technology and, you know, using your creative juices or. How did. How in the world did you do that? Because I want to do stuff like that in the future.

Well, you know, I had always wanted to include my music, and that was, you know, I had no idea about QR codes. And certainly these. The publisher is probably in her mid-30s, and the editor is in her 40s. And they're very smart, savvy, they really know their field. And I, you know, I just kept on saying, you're the experts. You have to lead me. And I have to say, as composers don't collaborate. You know, composers write music and they feel that it's the word of God and they put it in front of their. And the performer is trying to get it right. And I wrote an opera and was really introduced to music theater or opera, the way the theater is where it's all a collaborative process. You work with a director, you work with a music director. If you're fortunate, they're not trying to shape your work, they're trying to understand your work. And as they help you shape it, that is the fortunate. That is when you're very fortunate to have a good collaboration. It is about the both of you trying to understand the work and make it alive in the best way that that work can be. And that's what I had with the publisher and the editor. They were always. And because I've had collaborations before and I don't believe in the kind of the old fashioned music idea where, you know, the performer looks at the score and thinks they have to do everything exactly the way it is. What is a composer's intention? For me, as I write music, I almost collaborate with the music. Creating. Sometimes it has its mind of its own.

I like that.

Sometimes I can say, hey guys, come back here. Or that's just not working. And then sometimes, you know, for years I would write a piece of music and then write a little coda at the end. You know, I'd have this sort of glorious end to the music, but have this little sad coda at the end. And I'm thinking, oh, it's almost like a take back. Like, this is the way I want life to be. Yeah, that's not possible. And I would have fights with it. I'd say, I don't want this. And somehow it just felt like that that was the right proportion. You know, I think as a, an artist, you're always in the work and then you're outside of the work. To look at the balance of how do things, you know, what's the architecture of the piece? What's the balance? How does the beginning balance? And certainly when you're writing opera, if you're going to insert a song someplace in the beginning, you have to look to see how that balances out the energy flow for the entire piece. And so I forgot what I was talking about. So anyway, working, you know, I've always felt that I collaborate with the music and then when the performers do it, I feel like they're collaborating with me in creating the piece. Sometimes they say that's really hard to do. Or ultimately, at the end of a rehearsal period, you know, they're sort of struggling with all the notes. And I said, you know what? I want you to forget the notes. Who cares about the notes? I want you to feel the piece. I want you to create this piece. This is your piece now. This doesn't belong to me. And so I give them permission to live in the music and fill it out. And then I think when they perform it, it's kind of a collaboration with the audience because it doesn't really exist if people aren't listening to it.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Again, your poetry comes through. So go ahead. I don't Want to cut you off.

So I just want to say that that's the way I approached my editor and my publisher.

Got it. You're fortunate to have edited such good ones. So that's not always the case as well for writers.

Yes, that's true. I'm very fortunate. Although I think if I had bad ones, I would have been in a position to say, I'll just self publish this. So, you know, sometimes you have to make that choice.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we mentioned earlier too, that I wanted to circle back to this. You know, we talked about, like, the book ends like roughly 20ish years ago. Is that right? And why is that? Because. Part two's coming out sequel.

Maybe. Maybe.

Good.

I was at a point where I was sort of tired of living in Philadelphia in looking back at it, and I was entering a new phase. I had met a very wonderful artist and designer and had moved to the Lancaster area to help him raise his three little kids. And that was sort of like another stage of my life. And at that point, that's sort of its own story, if I decide to tell it. And I think what's interesting, as much as I was healed, It's sort of the end of my 40s. I also had some vulnerabilities that were. It's sort of like, you know, how you have an issue with something and then you solve that issue and then what do they say? It just changes clothes and gets back in line.

Yeah. Or whack a mole. Robust game. Yeah.

Yeah. So I had many more lessons to learn learn, and it was quite a full series of lessons. And I just felt that it was too complicated to write about.

Gotcha. Well, at least at that point in time. So I'm gonna leave that door open

so I may write about it and hopefully with the same kind of discretion.

Yeah, I'm sure.

And love of my just wonderful step kids,

I don't think you have any other ability to write other than in that way. So I know we're pushing on to an hour. I have a couple. Just a couple more questions if you're good for.

Certainly.

Okay. Awesome. Good. So what do you enjoy listening to? Do you have a primary influence vis a vis your work and inspiration? Do you Some. Like, what do you listen to when you just want to, you know, kick back and enjoy, you know, putting the headphones on and getting lost in something?

Wow. First of all, oddly enough, I don't like to listen to music very much.

Oh, I am surprised.

I love going to concerts. However, I love, you know, I was just at a concert, a local concert. I think it was the American String Quartet. It just, you know, there's nothing like being bright with the musicians as they're playing. That is really wonderful. I am always interested in what composers are doing. Now I got music I love. I had been going to New York City. I have a sister who lives there and listening to a lot of music, going to a lot of concerts. I happen to love Bach. I happen to love Monteverdi. I love. Oh, boy. I love countertenors. I love just being sitting as close as I can, just being with the sound. But I also love theater and dance. I love. Always wanted to be a ballerina and always loved modern dance. So I do. I go to see a lot of dance. I love dance. And it's always. It's kind of an immersion that it feeds me, feeds my music in some way. But I guess my best sounds are sitting outside. I love the way I love ambient sounds. I even love traffic sounds, you know, So I would say that my ears are always open and I'm always listening, but I don't tend to listen to a lot of music.

Do you know, I'm sure you know of Brian Eno then, right? He has music for airports and he's very much into ambient. And I was sort of in a. In a very distant way reminded of. I've got his memoir from, gosh, 20ish years ago. I forget what. I forget the first part of it, like something with swollen appendices. And it's. It's kind of a strange little book. It's. It's. You know, I don't. Have you seen it or have you read it?

No, but I will definitely.

Yeah, it's really kind of a cute little read because, honestly, it's like if you were to look at the book, like, it's probably 2 inches thick and it's maybe 5 inches tall, like 5 by 5, like a little block. And he kind of talks about his life in maybe the first. Physically, like the first quarter of the book and then, hence the subtitle. Oh, like A Year in the Life or something like that was full in appendices, I think is the full title or pretty darn close to it. I'll get it right in the show notes. And the rest of it is like the appendices. And that's kind of his journal and diary and talking about going to the studio. And I think his son went with him at one point. And it was a very interesting way that he structured his work to be able to kind of do what you did with, you know, you insinuated things kind of throughout the book and, you know, it had a wonderful flow to it. And he kind of like, talked about his, like, what his year was like and then kind of unpacked it. He talked about it in a little bit in the front end and then unpacked it with great detail, you know, for the. The final three quarters of the book. So it was an interesting way to do that. But just when you're talking about, you know, sounds and how that influences you and, you know, the. How you get pleasure and enjoyment from that, I. It just triggered that thought too. So, yeah, I think you would like it. It's a fun, fun little read. And cute, cute design. So.

So definitely look that up.

So I. I believe you have a new CD to be released with the Jasper Quartet, and you've got piano and string music coming out and you've got a choral performance. So tell us all about all those things. My gosh, Tina.

Oh, my goodness. So I. I have a very large piece called Hymn of the Universe, and I'm really having a digital release of that, and that is based on the writings of Pierre de Teillard de Chardin, who was in the 50s. He was a Catholic priest, and he was almost excommunicated because he believed in Darwinism. So he loved this idea of sort of transforming closer to God. So that. That idea of. Of Darwin and his writings, I had read. Actually, a friend of mine who's a nun said you should read his books. So I read them all. And part of his is there is the Hymn to the Universe. His writing is just extraordinary and amazing. So that is going to be a digital release.

Wonderful.

It's about 35 minutes of music.

Wow.

Yeah. And then I have a recording with a group out in Chicago, and they are doing a piece for cello and piano there. I don't know when they will release that. And then in the fall, we go into the studios with the Jasper Quartet and Natalie Zhu, who's a wonderful pianist. And we will record a lot of my music that I've written in the last 10 years. I have a piece called Barefoot, which is about. It was winter, and I was just thinking, oh, I want to go out and be barefoot. And then I thought of this whole idea about, you know, the burning bush and how he has to take off his shoes to be in the presence of God.

Oh, my gosh.

And I love that idea of sort of taking off your shoes, sort of baring your sole in a Way S O L E. But that piece is barefoot. And then I have quite a few other pieces. I have a piece called Weepan, which is weeping in Old English. And it's really about the end of my second marriage. And so I'm very excited about that project a little bit. It's a little scary, you know, to go into the studio and it's very time consuming and you can get really kind of gnarly and wanting everything perfect. So I'm hoping I won't go there too far. So I'm very excited about those. Actually three recording projects.

Well, I'm excited to hear about them as well too. They sound wonderful. So if listeners would like to learn more about you and your work, get a copy of the book, your memoir, access your music. Are there lists that they can know when these other projects are coming out? What are some of the best ways to do so?

Well, if you know my name, Tina Davidson, it's super easy. So my website is tinadavidson.com youm can go on Amazon to buy my book. Spotify. Easy peasy. Just type in my name. Any of your digital platforms. You can listen to the recordings of music that is out there. And I think you can also go on SoundCloud. I don't know exactly, but if you go on SoundCloud and just type in my name, you'll see some works there that haven't been recorded.

Oh, wonderful.

Yeah. So you can sort of snoop around on that.

Behind the scenes.

Behind the scenes. And then of course, Facebook. Tina Davidson. I think it's author and composer. Composer and author is my official page. And then also on Instagram. I don't do Twitter. I'm just. I am embracing social media, but I'm doing it in limited quantities.

Sure. Well, you spend your time in much more productive and healthful kinds of ways as we've discussed. So. And I'll put. For people listening to this in their car or whatever, I'll put all this into the show notes so people can link them in and check them out. So. And you will also be on SoundCloud because this, our show is also carried on SoundCloud. So you'll be a public one and you'll be the behind the scenes one as well too. So that's very cool. So, Tina, I just have to say I really appreciate being able to barge into your life and your time and your brain and to talk about these kinds of things. It's been a joy to get to know you better and I've really just enjoyed our time together with this conversation. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.

Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website A lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information user only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile file. Thanks and until next time.