Mark A. Durstewitz
President
mark@rocktheatreproductions.org
When I started writing
the children of children in 1991 I really had no idea where it would
end up. I simply wanted to tell a story. A story about a family tearing
itself apart in a divorce. I had recently been through one myself and
perhaps because of that, I was seeing it all around me. Intimate partners
suddenly enemies, parents who could no longer speak even in the interests
of their children, children who either felt they had to choose or were
forced to choose between parents, children who were used as weapons
by their parents. It was gut wrenching to watch and I was compelled
to try to do something. It occurred to me that this might be one of
the great, untold stories of our time.
So I began to write. Words
first, because in those days I worked from the lyrics up. Words that
described how I had felt, how those around me had felt. Words that described
the animosity and pain of people I didn't know, but watched as they
picked at each other in malls, restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores.
Words that told the stories of conversations I overheard, or even some
that I had myself.
Words. Pages of them.
Then the music started to
come. It began very, very dark and I supposed that couldn't be helped.
What I was witnessing seemed to me like the wholesale slaughter of the
very underpinnings of our culture. I had tasted it, felt it, witnessed
it and taken part in it. I was no better than anyone else, and no worse.
Who better to comment on it than someone who had been in the thick of
it? The music poured out of me, dark and engorged with pain and rage.
Most of it never made it to the concept album. The little that did was
extensively reworked.
Much of the material that
ended up on The Children of Children actually came out of other experiences,
other problems that became part of my existence later in my life. As
I look back on them now, I can see the echo of that divorce and hear
its distant thunder there.
The rest was written to
make the story work. When you do the kind of work we do, the story is
the thing that drives you. You kind of become its slave. At times, it
even tells you where it's going to go, dictating the music and arranging
and even orchestration. It just sweeps you up inside of it and you have
to let it have its way.
I lived in the music while
it was being written and recorded. It surrounded me like a bubble--a
sonic womb--that I could see through and through which I could interact
with the world, but protected me, suspended me, embraced me at the same
time. It ebbed and flowed as circumstances required . . . usually .
. .
While I was working on Daddy
Can We Talk?--the finale of the show--I was out for a lunch time walk
around the industrial park where my day job was. It was a gorgeous spring
day. The orchestration in the bridge filled my head and I was playing
air-piano as I went, completely oblivious to my surroundings. The strings
whirled and rose up into a tremendous crescendo. I hammered feverishly
at my air-piano, tying to keep pace with the driving torrent in my head.
I wasn't alone. A group
of walkers coming the other way had seen my frantic composing and were
now staring at the madman approaching them. Fear pulled at their faces
and I see that they wanted to be able to look away, to ignore me, but
were too apprehensive to do so.
I gathered myself up as if what I had been doing was the most normal
thing in the world and nodded as I drew abreast of them. If I'd had
a hat, I could have tipped it the way Carey Grant would have.
"Glorious day, isn't
it?"
"Yes . . . " they
sounded and looked a little like a group of sheep.
As soon as they stepped
out of my field of view, I went back to work. That night I recorded
the entire string section in the bridge. It remains one of my favorite
parts of the show.
So, on to the point.
This is, after all, supposed to be a bio, right? Who is this guy, that
speaks to you? It depends upon who you ask, I guess. I have been called
driven, a workaholic, writer, composer, husband, father, ex-husband,
stubborn S.O.B., geek, juggernaut, madman, dreamer. At one time or another,
I have probably been guilty of all of them.
(It's an interesting exercise
to list the labels we (or others) apply to ourselves. It's even more
interesting to consider who we would really be without them.)
I grew up in a middle class
home in New Jersey where my brother got a refurbished upright piano
for his Confirmation (Protestant for First Communion). He was 12. I
was 8. I don't exactly recall how he knew how to play. He seemed to
be able to play anything. I used to watch him play this old piano, making
him take the cover off so I could watch the hammers hit the strings.
He taught me my first few songs and some of the basics.
He was in and out a lot
when I was a kid. There was a lot of friction in the house. I used to
go down and plink on the piano when I couldn't stand it any more. Slowly,
by trying to play the music of artists I loved (and still do), I began
to learn. I would go as far as I could by ear and then hop on my bike
and pedal to the library to take out fake books that had the songs in
them. I couldn't read the notation, but I could read the guitar tab
(the chords printed above the staff). Armed with that, I could usually
figure out the rest of the song. Sometimes I got a chord wrong if it
was an oddball I'd never heard of and it would sound funny and I couldn't
quite figure out why. When I eventually bought an encyclopedia of chords,
I looked some of them up and said . . . duh. Looking back on it now,
it's pretty funny.
I held the various jobs
of a teenager before entering the corporate world more than 20 years
ago. I worked on complicated projects (software documentation) with
complicated schedules and people driving them. I got good at juggling
a lot of things at once.
I also got good at living
a double life. At night, after the kids went to sleep I would steal
into my study and write, eventually producing a ton of poetry, lyrics,
six novels (sold one) and a bunch of award-winning short stories (that
never sold!). I also continued to write music, worked in several bands,
did some studio work . . . and learned a lot of hard lessons about life.
I spent some time nearly
homeless due to the economy. I worked in defense and got nailed when
the industry began its death spiral on the late 80's. Remember I mentioned
how interesting it is to consider who you really are when all of your
labels are stripped away? I learned a lot about myself. About life.
About love. About what it really means to be a father and a husband.
All of it the hard way.
One of the few respites
I had was the company of my son and a certain man in a piano store that
used to let me into the back of the showroom to play when the store
was quiet. Those two things; my son and that piano, saved my life.
When I got back on my feet,
I began to really concentrate on my music and it was around this time
that I started writing The Children of Children. I bought a fairly high-end
keyboard that would let me record internally and I started putting the
material together. Mario and I ran a few tests on the material at his
home studio and that gave me some direction and things to think about.
I went off to write more, wondering how I was going to pull this off.
A close friend, a woman
I had worked with, then did me several huge favors all around this time.
She helped me flesh out the rough spots in the libretto of The Children
of Children, lent me some money for some more gear and introduced me
to Christine Hull (who has also been my wife for more than a decade
now).
Now, as this was
all beginning to take shape, the music software industry was busy dealing
crippling blows to recording studios all over the world. Cakewalk and
Pro Tools ruled the land. With this new software, you could now do what
was formerly only possible in an expensive studio. Having worked with
a lot of software, I took to the stuff like a duck to water and recording
commenced.
Because of this software
revolution, we were able to build a studio where we could work instead
of renting studio time. It grew piecemeal. Whenever we realized we'd
run into a wall, we figured out what we needed and got it. If it was
something we needed to learn, we got the information and worked the
solution out.
When it was finished, mixed
and mastered, and had returned from the duplication house, we suddenly
realized we had to market it . . . how were we going to do that? We
weren't even sure what genre we were in. It took a while, but we eventually
agreed that we were a progressive rock band . . . sort of. We were told
later Art Rock was more appropriate.
Now that we had
a genre . . . how to market it? Completely unsure, I figured I'd hit
google and search Progressive Rock web sites. We considered ourselves
a progressive rock band at the time so I started to read those sites.
I saw right away that they all had pages that said where you could submit
material for review.
Aha! This might be the place
to start. So I started making contacts and sending CDs.
When the reviews started
to come back we were blown away. The critics really liked it and they
really got it. One woman exclaimed that it was a story that should be
told to every generation. A web reviewer nominated us for Record of
the Year. We were stunned. It all went straight into our press kit.
Ok, so we were onto something.
Now we had to perform it live and see what the audience reaction was.
We started at a small theatre in New Jersey and it went pretty well.
The audience was really enthused and a lot of interesting conversations
broke out in the lobby afterwards.
We kept working at the live
show, performing it at various venues in and around New Jersey and New
York City, even making it into Merkin Concert Hall near Lincoln Center.
We always went into the audience after the show and listened to what
people thought. We were amazed how many people had been through the
same story we had just played. We were cried on by grown men who said:
"You just played my life!" We heard from mothers who said
that they're kids had just called them Mom again after 15 years. We
heard from kids who were going through it at that moment. There were
people from 8 to 75 years of age.
All of them said we were
doing an incredible thing and that we must keep going.
And, so here were are. Trying
to change the world, trying to change people, one show at a time. The
Children of Children is only the beginning. Remembrance is nearly finished
and scheduled for release sometime around the end of 2007 or the beginning
of 2008. After that, we start work on the next show and its particular
issue(s). We have twelve shows planned right now covering a wide variety
of topics.
This is my life's work. This is who I am. I will make a difference.