What I love about Eef Barzalay (aka Clem Snide) is that he has this way of drawing out absolutes — compressed with even-tempered emotional subtext sans all the dripping manipulative hooks or barbs or expectations most artists all-to-often need or even require from the listener or the friend.
In his podcast “a life in song” he is as pure in his intent to give away parts of himself to actual people — no matter how difficult or deserving or undeserving or broken or destroyed they are. To me, this is Eef. To me, this is his music. I can’t speak for his own secrets, but they offer such a rich surface that no one can doubt he’s seen God and has seen himself truthfully.
I’ve known Eef 15 years, but recently I was invited in — to be a part of Eef’s life on a handful of morning walks. And just as he invites us in with his music, I was invited to travel with him down the narrow path of kind allowances. We walked in and through woods and glens and trails and ponds and fence rows and hedges and steams and flowers and fields and talked long in the contrast about unnatural things but always settled in kindly confessions of simplicity and art and nature and creation and gratitude and provision. Therein was no judgement and was born a profound place to begin telling a story — my story.
I’ve come to see since this podcast, that Eef seems to be allowing the subject to self-debase in the kindest way; to look into a different kind of truth-telling mirror, to tell hard but absolute truths about it all and all over again and to reflect and find new morsels of meaning — again without hooks or barbs or expectations. The story, these stories, simply get to be more of THE story; another level of discovery without judgment; a mystery confessional of sorts along a path to new understanding until at last, Eef writes the storyteller a song; a gift for the exposé. And that song — wow — the song he gives away to his storytellers can echo in them a brand new life and perspective into what had sometimes become cerebral, stale, forgotten, unheard. And in the light of inspiration; of being heard, the storyteller is allowed to cope with his doubt, and one’s past miraculously changes filter and lens.
Eef somehow downloads all that has been said and transforms it into what is unknown; and now known, into song, and that song into colorful truths and threads so unimaginable the cerebral mind could never think it or invent it; something so otherworldly, but so so spot on, and done merely by inviting and offering an ear to bend — many ears to bend in the opportunity for fresh and exciting new light upon the story. And just when those close by had seemingly stopped listening, caring, understanding, reacting, assimilating action, there was a new audience apart from the seemingly tired nature of the home crowd.
The word “garble” before Webster was a pure word that meant to sift and sort through to find what is the best. I’ve often used this word under scrutiny even among scholars, but when I point out that Webster has manipulated the language to suit itself and then when I quote the Latin verbatim, people look at me with astonishment. How dare I reinvigorate what is real into the matrix? Has Eef not done this?
What we’ve been given, oftentimes we simply accept; our stories for example; the stories of others; the way we see them or have been made to feel about them from those close by; Judged like the friends of Job, we often judge just like them; no truth to be had except for shoulda-coulda-woulda and the story fades into the valley of shame.
When David said “ … the valley of the shadow of death …” he was talking about the valley of shame. “I will fear no shame.” Shame literally means “the bad place”but further it means the exposure of a man’s penis or private parts. God said to Adam, “Who told you you were naked?” And then the curse when all along the purity there was from God.
Yes, the world as an overreaction to the prudence and privacy has made a man’s privates quite a terrible and awful and even reprehensible thing apart from it’s created and original context. But David, stripping off naked before the Lord upon his return to Israel and dancing like a newly delivered babe was surely a curse-breaker pure as the driven snow! His wife Michal and those close to David rebuked him for this act, so much so, his wife was struck barren for manipulating and twisting David’s pure heart. And thus the curse.
Yes I go a long way here, but to be heard and to be seen; for one’s darkness to be made into song; celebrated by the loving heart of a minstrel, a psalmist, surely this is the heart of a king; a breaker of curses and the “garbler” the sifter and sorter of the vile to find precious truths.
The meanings of words have origin; deep-hearted origins; the Latin or the Greek or Aramaic; we build language profile from there. If a man has never questioned even the words out of his mouth, everything he says is steeped in slight versions of truth until in not very many years the words are so wrong, so destructive that others begin to base their lives on absolute lies.
Consider now how far gone the word “garble” is from the potency of its true meaning. If one wants to read the Bible, they must get below Gregory to even start finding truth. And thus a man’s story; the true meaning and meanings and considerations and consternations and struggle to find absolute truth — the story he tells himself and to others — what it’s become versus what it actually is — A song.
Eef restoratively declares, “Everybody has a story and everyone deserves a song.”
Truth-seekers are rare. Further, willing guides toward that truth, rarer.
For this man to put himself out there, and to listen to stories from otherwise commoners, and reinvigorate both they and story with perspective and color and unimaginable truths about themselves; truths not traditionalized but interpreted from a source and origin beyond himself; surely this is the highest calling of man, and the most exalted labor of love I personally have ever experienced. To have been lovingly garbled and to have been seen, the same is my new life’s purpose; the work of saints, and like Eef, the work of willing prophets.
jP2022
#ClemSnide
#eefbarzalay
#alifeinsong
#podcast
