“Hot Pizza”
from my scratch pad
Here it is, as promised: the song I wrote for Valentine’s Day. Well, technically, I wrote the lyrics. Then I asked my son Jesse Cohen-Greenberg, a professional pianist and singer-songwriter, to help me turn it into a song. Until I talked to Ben Arthur about my quest, I might have considered this to be cheating, like somehow it’s not “scratch” if you don’t do it all yourself. Poppycock! Is your brain engaged? Did you lose track of time in the process of creation? Do you feel connected to the thing you made? Scratch! With — bonus! — human interaction.1
We met for an hour. I was a little nervous to share my lyrics with him. “Write something bad” is hard enough advice to follow alone in your room; it’s a huge leap to show your shitty song to an actual songwriter. On the other hand, he’s my kid, so I trust that he loves me, and also there’s no use trying to fool him into thinking I’ve somehow got hidden genius. He knows me pretty well.
Given Jesse’s immense talents, it was kind of like doing a rough sketch and then having an artist make a painting from that — and mat and frame it. It’s incredible but it’s also disorienting: Is that what I drew? In Jesse’s hands and voice, my song sounds more mournful than I expected, and when I texted him that, he replied, “i’m not the one who wrote the song about getting old and not having sex anymore.” Smartass. Honestly, though, I really didn’t mean for it to be about sex, per se — more the excitement of falling and being crazy in love — but I guess interpretations will vary.
In case you’re curious about process, here’s his first try, after I sort of tunelessly sang what I imagined the song might sound like — kind of a jazzy, snappy thing.2 He liked it the second way better (that’s what he recorded, above), and I agreed; I’m very quick to defer to all my kids’ taste. What do you think?
Final note: clearly this whole endeavor wasn’t for my husband; it was for me, for Scratch, for fun and exercise. But it was inspired by my husband — and no, Jesse, not in a sad, we-don’t-have-sex-anymore way.3 More in a long marriage, we-still-got-it-if-we-can-remember-where-we-put-it way.4 Happy Valentine’s Day to all the forever-together couples out there. Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.
And thanks, Jesse.
It occurs to me that the parent/child dynamic that Ben and I talked about in “Shitty Love Songs” pertains here too. If you make brownies from scratch with your child, does that mean your child didn’t make brownies from scratch? Of course not! Same here, except with me as the child and Jesse as the parent.
You’re just going to have to imagine this. The digital record has been scrubbed.
For a great example of this genre, I refer you to Greg Brown.
Love this so much! ? Does Jesse like Jeff Buckley's music... I feel he sounds a lot like him in this vocal.
Not one lump in that sweater, just in my throat.