After We Get Through Dying

Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" — played on kalimba — with art by the surrealist painter Yves Tanguy.

Mr. Tanguy Man - a surrealist Bob Dylan cover

Love Is In The Kitchen - Open Song #58

Submerge

Russell Edson - The Little Lady

Here's a solo acoustic version of Joni Mitchell's classic song "Borderline." It's a tribute to the human drive to split the world into two camps: right and wrong, good and bad, us and them.

Released in 1994, just as America was entering a new era of polarization, the song is a bitter ode to the all-too-common urge to protect ourselves by building walls to keep the world out.

On Joni's 79th birthday, and on the eve of another divisive American election, it seems like a good moment to feel into the borderlines in our own hearts and minds. 

Voice, guitar and keyboards by Jascha Hoffman.
Video by Vanessa Gould.

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Everybody looks so ill at ease
So distrustful so displeased
Running down the table
I see a borderline
Like a barbed wire fence
Strung tight strung tense
Prickling with pretense
A borderline

Why are you smirking at your friend?
Is this to be the night when
All well-wishing ends?
All credibility revoked?
Thin skin thick jokes!
Can we blame it on the smoke,
This borderline?

Every bristling shaft of pride
Church or nation
Team or tribe
Every notion we subscribe to
Is just a borderline
Good or bad we think we know
As if thinking makes things so!
All convictions grow along a borderline

Smug in your jaded expertise
You scathe the wonder world
And you praise barbarity
In this illusionary place
This scared hard-edged rat race
All liberty is laced with
Borderlines

Every income every age
Every fashion-plated rage
Every measure every gauge
Creates a borderline
Every stone thrown through glass
Every mean-streets-kick ass
Every swan caught on the grass
Will draw a borderline

You snipe so steady
You snub so snide
So ripe and ready
To diminish and deride!
You're so quick to condescend
My opinionated friend
All you deface all you defend
Is just a borderline
Just a borderline
Another borderline
Just a borderline

—Joni Mitchell, "Borderline" (from Turbulent Indigo, 1994)

Borderline - Joni Mitchell Cover

A little song improvised live at Acme Hall Music Studios in Brooklyn in the summer of 2021.

Parking Lot - Open Song #65

When Leo Sidran had me on his podcast, The Third Story, he asked me to sing a verse of "The Cat Came Back." 

Well here it is, Leo, just for you. With a little Tom Waits swagger.

The Third Story, with Leo Sidran
http://www.third-story.com/episodes/

The Cat Came Back (as sung by Tom Waits)

Mouth Dreams

Neil Cicierega - Mouth Dreams (Intro)

Jascha Hoffman is a singer and songwriter living in Brooklyn. With a background in journalism, his concept-driven albums mine dark themes to produce subtle and bittersweet songs that span genres from indie folk to classic pop. Drawing comparisons to independent artists like Sufjan Stevens and Josh Ritter, as well as masters like Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, critic Paul Zollo has praised his "beautiful gift for the telling detail, the small use of language that lets us see humans at their most human.”

The Cat Came Back (as sung by Tom Waits)

Jascha Hoffman

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