Can broken be beautiful? In Episode Five of Day Is Night Diaries, Doug Carraway and Akhila Ramnarayan unpack “Kintsugi,” the sixth song on Starcracker’s first album, a song inspired in theme and form by an ancient Japanese art of ceramic repair.
As always, if you’d like to listen to the song “Kintsugi” before tuning into the episode, here it is:
The musicians referenced in Episode Five are Tchaikovsky, Billy Joel, Zayn (formerly of One Direction - yes, we kid you not), Billie Holiday, Billie Eilish/Finneas, Fiona Apple, and Jim Keltner (the link takes you to a fantastic Dead Wax interview by Jack Conte and Ryan Lerman, where Keltner talks about his drumming career playing with a pantheon of greats).
If you’re interested in a quick introduction to the practice and craft of kintsugi, here’s a BBC short:
And do have a look at this beautiful example of kintsugi at the Smithsonian website, with a handy little explanation:
And if you want to experience, or revisit, one of the greatest ekphrastic exercises of all time, watch actor Julian Sands explicate and read Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” at the Keats-Shelley house in Rome:
Do take a moment to enjoy this exquisitely whimsical illustration by visual artist and indie musician Saloni Sinha in response to and drawing from the music of our album Day Is Night:
The answer is yes. The two humans in the illustration are us - Akhila bathed in coffee and Doug besotted with cat!
If this is your first time listening to Day Is Night Diaries, and Episode Five has sufficiently piqued your curiosity, there’s four other episodes on creative process to explore. Episode Four is devoted to “Bismuth,” a song we wrote in honour of legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks (1933-2015). In Episode Three, we try our best not to sound like a “Stuck Record” while talking about our song of that name. In Episode Two, we reflect on “Hello Lenore,” inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s muse. Episode One is dedicated to "Question," the first track on our album Day Is Night.
Day Is Night Diaries is Starcracker’s attempt to document how we work as an indie rock duo across continents, as much for ourselves as anyone else. If you're a fellow creativity/process geek, performer/writer, or long-suffering friend/family member related to either of us, do subscribe, if willing, for free.
Happy listening!
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