CHAPTER I

Well, Repair With Gold, our song, that we’re in the studio here at Samurai Recording Studios in Queens, for two sessions, recording, started with Naomi Fein, Ethan’s sister, who told me quite a while ago –  I don’t know if it was five years ago, it could have been longer, I’m not sure, but I feel like it was around four to five or six years ago – that the work that I was creating inside the research part of Old Bones and the music that I was making with her brother Ethan, reminded her of Tikkun Olam.
And I never heard of Tikkun Olam, I got to be straight up, and didn’t have any idea. So, I went home to look it up, and the first definition that I stumbled upon was “world repair”. And I was really flattered, because actually, I do have the crazy kind of hidden – I don’t know how hidden it is anymore, goal – it’s kind of like out of a James Bond movie, whatever, Spector or something – or my secret mission, is to save humanity with this project. 
And so when she kind of came up with this ancient phrase and found it apt for what we were doing, I felt like, okay, at least I’m on the road if somebody else can identify it. 
So that’s it. Repair With Gold is Tikkun Olam, “world repair”. And then when I was researching Tikkun Olam, I stumbled onto the philosophy of Kintsugi. And so I blended these two philosophies into the lyrics of Repair With Gold.
Plus, I then had heard a wonderful interview on On Being and a wonderful author, and I’ll talk more about that later, The Birthday of the World, a children’s book that I found that had to and all of this resonates with Tikkun Olam. And then, other elements with Kintsugi. 
So, yes, repair the world. That’s what we’re trying to do. And this song is our anthem. 

When people are listening to this tune, I really hope that they’re going to feel hopeful.  I feel like there’s so many, the world is just in such a weird, weird place, and a lot of it’s not good. And I think that we can all feel paralyzed or excessively depressed or terribly sad or whatever the heck it is. The way you experience so many things happening simultaneously in a world where you actually get to hear about them all. I mean, there was a time when you only knew about the suffering of those immediately around you, and then you’d hear about world events maybe weeks later. Okay, that was a couple of hundred years ago, but still, I think we were more suited to that than we are to this kind of constant alarm, state of heightened vigilance. 
And  that kind of can make one feel that you have absolutely no efficacy. That even the smallest thing you do will have no effect and the largest thing you do will make no difference. 
And I’m hoping this song makes people feel like every single thing they do will matter. Not just in the end of things, but will matter in the moment that they do them and that we’re all engaged, most of us, I think most people are engaged in some form of world repair every day through the kindness towards those they love, towards strangers, in creating the work and the art that they do. 
We’re all involved, and this is kind of just a more focused sense of feeling powerful and a part of the change that needs to happen for us to get to a saner or more humane world.

You know, you should never tell a lyricist to talk about their favorite lyrics. Probably not a good idea because I actually like that. Of course I like them all. I mean, I love the image of seams of gold that comes from the Kintsugi philosophy of that when a bowl is broken instead of well, Kintsugi is much more complex than this, but the metaphor for it is instead of throwing it out, that you mend the cracks with gold. 
And that’s why the song is Repair With Gold. So I guess I start with the title. I love the idea of that. And I love the image of seams of gold. I like that it reoccurs throughout the song. And I love “Shine a light, Shine a light on the broken people, Shine a light, Shine a light on the broken world” 
So those are some of the lines I love the most. “Shine a light on what’s forgotten,” because I think part of America’s extraordinary amnesia, willful amnesia about the struggles of all the different people, but particularly African Americans and Native Americans, but honestly, pretty much every group that’s continuing to suffer in an out portioned way, including women and children. 
I think the idea that if we shine a light on their sorrows and troubles, that it doesn’t take anything away from us, it won’t hurt us to look closely at what’s wrong with our world. We’re strong enough, we’re not going to break because we look inside ourselves and say, maybe we need a course correction. Maybe in my own personal life I can improve. And then you can look at the country and say, maybe we need some major improvement and that we’re only a little bit down the road in our democratic experiment, which looks more fragile by the minute. Those are the different lyrics I like. But I guess my favorite of all would be “Take the broken pieces and change the world, be a mender of a broken world.” 
That’s a call to action. 
That every single person can be involved and engaged in the change.