I Was Here

“We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life. As human beings we come and go quickly, and we get to make works that stand as monuments to our time here. Enduring affirmations of existence. Michelangelo's David, the first cave paintings, a child's finger paint landscapes. They all echo the same human cry, like graffiti scrolled in a bathroom stall. I WAS HERE.“ - Rick Rubin [The Creative Act: A Way of Being]

In January of 2022, a subtle shift occurred in my life. It was so unnoticeable that by the time I felt the strong purpose of making a record I could hardly recall where the notion came from. My wife and I had decided it would be nice to spend some time each evening doing some type of creative work after the kids went to sleep. With two small kids to care for, it had become next to impossible to do any large or small task for ourselves, and we were keen to carve back some of ourselves. Something all too familiar to most parents these days. So each night we would sit at the kitchen table together. Her with watercolors, pens, pencils, and sketchpads. Me with my acoustic guitar and mobile phone opened to GarageBand, in case I needed to capture an idea in the very moment.

Almost immediately the song sketches, the harmonies, the ideas just poured out of me like I had never experienced before. I had always been a songwriter. But with no purpose or place to put the ideas flowing through me, they most often led to no where. And it wasn’t like I would sit down with the intention to create very often at all. Now, I was giving the songs attention. I was nurturing them, and I was doing it in that same purposeless and pressure-free environment. Still, there really was no end-game in my mind for any of the songs, at least not initially.

Allow me to take a step back and give some background about myself on a personal level that will inform the primary point of this writing. For my entire life, I have been keenly aware and deeply fascinated with existence. All of it: the good, the bad, and especially the unknown. Within that obsessive focus is a passionate, bittersweet lump in my throat about the fleeting nature of existence. If you’re looking for it, you can feel all the hopes, dreams, cares, efforts, love, and hate from so many lives that are no longer here with us. Each life is conjured out of nothing and introduced screaming with pure and unfiltered emotion to the world. And just as quickly as we ignited from nothing, our hearts and voices are silenced in an instant at death. How so many others are able to spend most of their lives ignoring this overarching fact is something I’ve never been able to mimic.

As a musician and voracious musical consumer, I’m always enraptured by music created by those who are no longer with us. Miles Davis, George Harrison, Nina Simone, Levon Helm, Bill Evans, David Bowie, Muddy Waters, Ahmad Jamal, Tom Petty, Otis Redding, Tupac Shakur, Elliot Smith, John Lennon……so many moments captured in time, so much heart and soul available at a moment’s notice. To me, this is immortality.

I once heard a podcast with Sean Lennon speaking, and he was talking about the song “Beautiful Boy” by his father John Lennon. It touched me in such a way that there was always a part of his father with him, however fleeting that it was. To be sure, this discussion need not be limited to music. How many of us hold on to a letter written by a deceased loved one, or view a Rembrandt up close so as to see the individual brush strokes and imagining Rembrandt himself placing each one all those centuries ago?

Which brings me to the central question of this writing: why did I make The Down Valley? To be sure I don’t believe many people will ever even hear it, and it was a huge effort that took me nearly 2 years to complete start to finish. Within those two years I built a studio in my basement, learned how to track and mix with some level of competence (I at least hope!), composed each song in detail, learned new instruments, performed the majority of musical parts, and built out the frameworks such as this very webpage, where the end result is that the music could be accessed by whoever wanted to hear it. That is to say that I needed a big ‘why’ to go through all of that with the little time I had to do so. And there is no bigger ‘why’ than love, family, and children. I made this record for my family. I made this record so that my children could always hear me sing, no matter how long it is after I’ve departed this existence. I made it so they could hear it now, while I’m still here and with them. I made it to show them my vulnerabilities, my struggles, my pain, my joy, and most of all my love, and to teach them it is ok to express all of those things in any artistic or constructive manner that their heart desires. I made it to say I WAS HERE to anyone who may venture past this record, with the hope that perhaps something in it reverberates within someone who I’ve never met, and it helps them feel something new, or something that brings healing. I’ve already heard from so many people who I’ve shared parts or all of the record with the ways in which it spoke to them, and that touches my heart deeper than I could ever hope to express with words here. I already feel beyond fulfilled by the effort and grateful I could even be a part of it.

To me, this is why we make art, and that is why I don’t intend to stop. I was here.

-Johnathan Maske, Littleton, CO, 12/10/2023