BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition February 2019

MUSIC
DANIEL ROMANO
A COSMIC COLLAPSE BETWEEN ART AND AUDIENCE
SEBASTIAN BUZZALINO
photo by Sebastian Buzzalino
Finally free — Daniel Romano knows that there is no truth in rock ‘n roll, but his postmodern approach to songwriting makes him one of the most enigmatic and exciting songwriters in Canada.
Daniel Romano is wildly prolific and
bound to no one but himself — an
artist equally comfortable kicking out
the jams before 300 mad girls in Madrid
with his free-wheelin’ rock ‘n’ roll group,
The Outfit, as he is nestled in a cabin
deep, far-off in the solitude of a waning
Swedish summer. In pursuit of music,
poetry and painting aimed towards
discovering a sort of truth in art, he
ends up confronting the notion that
perhaps truth isn’t the right question
to ask.
“I don’t think the truth of a song
matters at all,” says Romano. “I never
listen to music and think, ‘Is that
true?’ I get uncomfortable with very
literal language in song, it makes me
feel uneasy. Outside of the personal
relationship of trust, I think the truth
doesn’t matter so much.”
For Romano, the profound, there
is no truth in rock ‘n’ roll, no fixed
horizon, no centre from where we can
get our bearings. Our heroes are dead,
the gods are long gone and the only
thing that’s left is an exploration of the
human condition as it unfolds alongside
us. His lyrics, penned somewhere
between Dylan and Rimbaud, exist
in a paradise populated by Greek
mythology and take on the mantle of a
soft resistance, a call for freedom.
On his recent album, Finally Free, this
is particularly true. The songs slip in and
out of feverish dreamscapes littered
with translucent bodies and weeping
angels, characters trying to get out
from under the machinations of their
own thumbs. It’s an apolitical warning
where freedom from corruption
moves towards freedom in love and
expression. There’s honesty in his lyrics,
but not necessarily truth — at least
none that you or I could access. Not
that it would matter anyway, we make
our own truths as much as he has his.
“The song changes as soon as it’s
written,” claims Romano. “You write a
song with a purpose, with somewhat
of a meaning in mind, or, more
interestingly to me, a mood. But then
you can’t replicate that mood once it’s
done. I mean, you’re singing the words
in so many different circumstances and
playing the song in so many different
places for people, and people are always
going to feel differently, that I wouldn’t
want to try and replicate that original
mood. That would be so exhausting.”
He adds, “A show is, ‘Take these [songs],
I made them and maybe they’ll do
something for you as they did for me.”
This postmodern approach to
songwriting makes Romano one
of the most enigmatic and exciting
songwriters in Canada. He understands
he is dead as an author but alive as
the artist, and that the intersection
between him and us is where we create
instant meaning in the moments we
share.
“You can find anything in anything, if
you want to. I used to worry that things
were too in the moment and not exact
and concise, as far as whatever the
process is for getting thought into word
in my songs. But it’s really more to do
with the mood than anything.”
On the track “Between the Blades
of Grass,” Romano sings about the
“liberating in the language of love.”
It’s a common thread throughout his
work that clarifies what, if anything,
can fill the void — a deep, empathetic,
spiritual sort of love that binds us
together, a nucleic bond between artist
and audience. To illustrate his point,
he mentions a new poetic project he’s
wrapping up with long-time friend and
artist, Ian Daniel Kehoe.
“We started a poetic correspondence.
We send each other poems in
dedication to each other. Interestingly,
2019 is the year of eros, the origin of
erotic nature. We had decided, previous
to knowing that, that it was going to
be sort of erotic, in the early Greek
meaning of the word, exchange. As our
correspondence continued, the poems
became tributes to each other, more
so than how we think of it as modern
eroticism… you can sense this kind of
symbiotic and drastic metamorphosis
of almost two people becoming one.
There’s a unification of thought and
feeling.”
This unification, this becoming of
one, can be read as a blooming process
that, again, resists the easy packaging
and distribution of a singular sense of
being. Romano and Kehoe’s bodies
move towards each other into one and,
in the cosmic collapse, an impassioned
universe of love emanates, entire
constellations tracing out nostalgic
histories and emergent presents.
The same applies to Romano’s art,
musical or visual: it’s a tense, symbiotic
relationship between art and audience,
between creation and consumption, a
crucial link in the survival of both.
Thus here we stand, at our own brink
of collapse together — Romano and his
audience, Romano and Kehoe — the
ground already crumbling at our feet
in anticipation of emancipation. Will
2019 be the year of eros, a complex
metamorphosis? What becomes the
meaning of love? Are our spirits truth?
And are our bodies free?
Daniel Romano performs February 25 at
the Biltmore Cabaret (Vancouver) and
February 26 at Lucky Bar (Victoria).
February 2019 25