The songs we write when life doesn't come with answers

Episode 43: Divina, James Spaite, Shua Transcript

Divina: Love songs are great. I love them. But also for me and my music, I think that it's just, I'm trying to speak to these places that nobody, people are scared to speak about.

James Spaite: We try and stay away from uncomfortability like it's the plague, you know, like in any form instead of the embrace of the thing.

Shua: I'm singing to it and asking questions of it. I'm like asking for a response. It's like a call and response between the things I can see and the things I understand and the things that I don't.

Julia Dixon Evans: Divina, James Spaite and Shua are all San Diego musicians grasping at deep mysteries and how to live with uncertainty. We brought them together for a recent taping of the new KPBS Sun Drenched Sounds music series. They each performed short, magical sets at the iconic Spreckels Organ Pavilion stage in Balboa Park. It was a picture perfect San Diego day, and as their music wafted across the park, visitors drifted in and out of the Organ Pavilion to check out the sounds.

[Divina performs]

Evans: Each artist performed solo — no backing band, nothing but the singular talent of the individual creative. But listening to each performance and talking to the artists off-stage between sets, we noticed they were circling around similar themes.

Divina pairs her vocals and guitar playing with intricate loops she controls live, from a spread of electronic production tools laid out before her.

[Divina performs]

[James Spaite performs]

Evans: James Spaite is a kind of acoustic guitar savant — tapping propulsive rhythms up and down the neck of the instrument alongside complex melodies and thoughtful, almost philosophical lyrics.

[James Spaite performs]

[Shua performs]

Evans: And Shua has a powerful, soulful voice. And his own blend of gospel and folk. His writing is as raw and vulnerable as it is universal.

[Shua performs]

Evans: Today, we bring you three artists reaching towards big answers:   Answers to questions about childhood, faith, meaning and acceptance.

[James Spaite performs]

Evans: From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest, a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.

[Theme Music]

Divina: Hi, friends. My name is Divina and I'm gonna share my original music that I've been working on for some time with y'all.

Evans: Divina set up a table on stage, layered with multicolored textiles and a laptop, keyboard and a sampler pad. On the sampler, basically a grid of buttons, she can quickly trigger drum, synth and vocal loops all while also singing and playing guitar. With this tabletop setup, she controls everything, and makes a whole band's worth of music by herself. This mastery of solo production and live-looping is something Divina has focused a lot of effort on lately.

I want to talk about your evolution kind of as an artist with production and the live-looping, all of that. Can you talk about how you have transformed a bit in recent years?

Divina: I think I got into music production when I was about 19, 20. I was trying to work with producers for my music and my sound, and they didn't quite capture what it is that I wanted. And one of them actually told me, you should just get Ableton and, you know, try it out. And then I finally did, and then I was just like, oh my, I was hooked. Being able to make something out of nothing. And it's, it is, it's heaven. It really is. It was just like a looping thing. I would arrange the things and then I get into looping and then, you know, you're just free to play all kinds of different instruments, which is great. And then when I finally figured out how to make a set and all that, then I was just like OK here's my portable studio set up. Let's make a beat!

Evans: Can you talk about your relationship with music growing up, like what was it like for you in your house?

Divina: Oh man. Well, I had my father was a musician, so genetically just passed it down. My mom, she was a poet and a dancer. She was on Soul Train back in the day. She loved Madonna. And my dad grew up on Prince, Michael Jackson. You know, I definitely resonated more with like the soul music and it was just art all around and I'm so grateful that I got passionate parents, so I think it just really rubbed off on me and it's, that's like the best way I can describe it, like my relationship with music is I just feel like I can't do anything else and it makes me feel like nothing else in the world.

Evans: Can you even trace it back to a moment where you think that you started to realize music was gonna be something more serious for you?

Divina: Oh yes, definitely. I remember, I think I was like six or seven and I heard this one song. And I just started crying.

Evans: And what was that song?

Divina: It's actually by Cirque de Soleil. And the song is called "Let Me Fall." And the message in it is so powerful. And I think it's crazy that I cried at such a young age, not even understanding, but the frequencies that were emitting really called to me. And that's, I think, when I realized that this is something that means a lot to me. And there was never really a plan B. It was always just, I'm gonna do it. I don't know how, I don't know when, but it's gonna happen. And I'm just putting trust and faith and putting in the action.

Evans: Divina's childhood plays a big role in her work today. It's the focus of one of the songs she performed for us on stage.

Divina: This next tune I made for a very, very special someone. And that special someone is the inner child.

"Inner Child" is definitely… It's about that, you know, it's like, why are you walking away from all the things that we've done? I see you look to the outside, but when it's in, you wanna run. You know, like we're always looking for the outside world to give us whatever we feel like we're needing, but it just, it never works that way and that song is definitely just like, you know, they're there and they're with you everywhere you go. And they're gonna keep poking you until you give them some attention.

[Divina performs "Inner Child"]

Evans: The idea of the inner child is also something that James Spaite touched on in his set. And how all throughout our lives, even as we emerge into adulthood, we look to the outside world to fill the void inside us.

 He takes us to a childhood rite of passage.  

James Spaite: There's this thing that happens when you're, like, maybe around four years old where you start experiencing ghosts. Or it's a common thing, right? Monsters under the bed. For me, it was Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings," was gonna grab my ankles if I got out of bed again. Alright.

Evans: James studied psychology in college, and is fascinated by psychoanalysis, theology and philosophy. And that fascination naturally seeps into his music.

[James Spaite performs "Separated"]

Spaite: The song is called "Separated," and it's about something that is from a philosopher named Ajak. Essentially, there is nothing that is whole and complete. No person is not lacking or without some kind of like missing-ness in their life. And it's not a missing-ness that can be filled, so it's really hard to engage with that. When you're like four years old, right? You start saying that there's like a monster outside of you. Because it is crazy hard to, to experience the, your own contradiction with inside yourself. Like, I'm mad at mom and you're like, I've never experienced this before. I don't know what to do with that feeling. Yeah, we're just trying to find our tension in a different place outside of just within ourself. And so, the second verse is about the way that this isn't something that like stops happening when you're a little kid. We just, I think, get better at kind of covering it up for ourselves.

[James Spaite performs "Separated"]

Evans: James had his own epiphany about taking music and songwriting seriously, but his dive into this world as a career was more of a gradual on-ramp. But like Divina, it all started with the music he heard at home. And from the start, he was surrounded by music about big ideas.

Spaite: My dad played music a lot in the house. My dad's a pastor or he was a pastor. He since retired. And I grew up a lot with my dad playing, you know, "Stairway to Heaven" or et cetera. And I'd be like, dad, please play "Stairway to Heaven," I want to go to bed. Other than that a lot of music at church maybe — two, three times a week.

Evans: Growing up in the church, James has been grappling with God and the mysteries of the universe his whole life. And as he's grown older, his relationship with faith and doubt has shifted, dramatically. He wrote about this in his song "Everytime God Dies."

Spaite: Not as like the death of God is like angry middle fingers to the big man, but like, as like, wow, I, this is my best friend, like we were best buds for so long and then like grieving that and figuring out what to do with that. And it's hard.

Evans: That song in particular, there's also a grief that you're dealing with. Can you talk about that?

Spaite: Yeah. When I say God, I'm talking not so much about like each individual preconceived like ideas are of a God. But more so like the structure of the way that that thing functions in our life. And so when that world that you've built or that you've known your whole life doesn't just like start to kind of take on it slightly different shape, but the whole thing is like, oh my gosh, this is like, it's kind of not shattered, but it just is like completely, completely different.

[James Spaite performs "Everytime God Dies"]

Spaite: The road manager for ACDC describes — his name is Barry Taylor — it's a statement about God, that God is the name of the blanket that we put over the mystery. The blanket itself, but not necessarily that actually is the mystery.

[James Spaite performs "Everytime God Dies"]

Evans: James can talk about the ideas behind his songs all day, citing countless philosophers along the way. But ultimately, his medium is the music and somehow he manages to translate these complex thoughts into songs.

Spaite: People don't necessarily like lacanian psychoanalysis or just like talking about it for forever. For me, in a sense, like a lot of these songs are putting some of that into language. I mean, isn't that, I guess that's like all of art, right, is you share your own story. You be as vulnerable, as truthful as possible as long as you don't feel safe and yeah, hopefully somebody else is able to then see themself in your story.

Evans: Coming up, we check in with one of The Finest's earliest stars, Shua, about how he challenges preconceptions about gospel music as a genre and the paralysis that can come with thinking too much. Stay with us.

[James Spaite performs "Everytime God Dies"]

[Theme Music]

Evans: In Season 1 of The Finest, we talked to Shua about his childhood. Like James, he grew up in a very religious household. Today, he's still in the church. In addition to being a working musician, he's also a pastor. Since we talked with Shua last year, he embarked on a national tour with the popular folk-pop duo Johnnyswim. And he's currently working on two new records he plans to release soon — one of which is a gospel album. Beyond what people traditionally think of as gospel music, Shua's songs blur the line between spiritual searching and everyday life.

Do you approach writing something that you're calling gospel differently than a song that you're writing that taps into your feelings about faith?

Shua: I think when I'm writing a gospel song in certain ways, I'm singing directly to the divine. I guess there's a way in which you could say all my music is kind of like gospel music, but I also think there's a way in which my music is like folk music. It's music of the people. It's a music that tries to illuminate not just like the divine or something that's far out there, but us. What do we mean? And all of our mess, like, heartbreak and the longing and the pain and the love and like all of it.

[Shua performs "fix myself to death"]

Shua: I'm trying to find a way to get people to understand that we're not so different. All of us. And give people an opportunity not to demonize one another and actually see each other again. That's a kind of gospel too.

I've been thinking a lot about how interconnected we all are. I know we like to imagine that we kinda live in these worlds where we're the main character, and the lives we choose to live maybe only affect us, but I think we're far more intertwined than we'd all like to imagine. I think there's something beautiful to carrying the burden of being human. This song is called "Burden."

Evans: On stage, Shua played his song "Burden." It's a heart-wrenching meditation on love, doubt and responsibility — and the beauty of knowing you're not alone. If the songs we talked about with James speak to the individual and the interior, in "Burden," Shua looks to our connections with one another.

[Shua performs "Burden"]

Shua: The chorus of the song says, I'm your burden. You're my burden. And which is to say like, we carry one another and it's a little bit difficult, but we're gonna make it through.

[Shua performs "Burden"]

Shua: I wrote that a long time ago, and I think over the years what I'm find that I think about when I'm singing it now is actually a broader relationship. The relationship that humans have with one another. Every decision that we make has like this ripple effect across cultures, across people groups, across cities and towns. I want people to know, there's a kind of burden to being human, which is that you are not alone. But it's almost like being a parent, like when I became a dad, I recognized immediately that there was gonna be a burden to what I was doing. I have to learn how to carry a little bit of a heavier weight. But every single day, I think to myself like, whoa, this is insane that I get to do this. It's a burden that is somehow sweet and is actually enjoyable a lot of the time. I'm trying to figure out how to think about other people that way. Every little interconnected relationship, the way I interact with these people, the smile as someone walks by, it affects us in bigger and wider ways than we think.

[Shua performs "Burden"]

Evans: Shua, Divina and James all deeply explore ideas of spirituality, the universe and growing up, and the difficulties that come with that. But they also sang and spoke about acceptance, about embracing who you are right now, even if you haven't quite figured everything out.

Shua told me about his song "fix myself to death." It's about that universal responsibility to put yourself out there, take a stand and make a choice however daunting, however paralyzing.

[Shua performs "fix myself to death"]

Shua: I framed it around a love song because that's a very easy target, and I also dealt with it for a lot of my life, like you see a beautiful person and you're like, I dare not talk to them. Or, you know, I'm gonna, maybe I'll find a way to get their Instagram and then mess them later, or not at all. And there came a certain point in my life before I was, before I was married, where I said, I think I'm just gonna start talking to everyone that I think is like cool, or I'm just gonna just like try to make friends, specifically around romantic relationships. It's actually how I ended up eventually actually being with my wife 'cause I was like, you know what? I don't care. I'm just gonna talk. I'm just gonna, and then, and now we have two children.

But I think a lot of people are kind of waiting for the most optimized version of themselves. That person's never gonna come. You're always gonna be yourself. And you're always going to be like 12-years-old in your mind. A lot of those insecurities, they'll change and grow and hopefully you'll heal a lot of the wounds. But that sort of thing where you feel like you have to fix yourself before you do anything in this life. I think that it, it stunts us from creating beauty in the world. It stopped me from making art for a long time, and so it's kind of throwing off the shackles in the song. I don't throw off the shackles in the song. The song is just, I'm in the mode of the person that refuses to move. It's more funny that way.

[Shua performs "fix myself to death"]

Evans: For three artists writing about big questions of faith, the universe and the complicated web of human connection, their songs may seem like tiny offerings amid a world full of hardship and uncertainty. But  whether their music is transmitting through headphones to people listening alone or on stage at Balboa Park on a sunny day, Divina, Shua and James are living proof of the power of sharing art, of sharing something so vulnerable and honest, and letting it resonate.

[Shua performs "fix myself to death"]

Evans: Special thanks to Divina, James Spaite and Shua. A big thank you to the KPBS video production team for their help with this episode and to our audio engineer Ben Redlawsk for mixing the performances. Watch out for the full videos of each performance on YouTube or at KPBS.org/TheFinest. And thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a rating or comment. It makes a real difference and helps stories like these reach more people.

The Finest is a production of KPBS Public Media in San Diego. I'm your host, Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer is Anthony Wallace, who also composed the score. Ben Redlawsk is our engineer, and Chrissy Nguyen is our editor. This episode was written and researched by Anthony and me.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.