The Philosophical Cabaret
I am the Philosophical Cabaret, because I love songs that have something provocative to say. Most of my songs are stories, told equally by the words and music.
I write songs that follow, if loosely, in the 19th century tradition of European cabaret, when “cabaret” (literally “small room”) meant a venue where performance artists of all sorts – poets, philosophers, musicians, political radicals, even feminists – got onstage not for public audiences but for each other. The purpose was to try out their new ideas and get feedback from other artists – the people whose opinions they most valued. In that sense, Substack is a 21st century cabaret, or can be. Be my artist cohort! Maybe you weren’t looking for me but will recognize me and connect.
When you’re a subscriber, you receive:
Stories, right in your email, with a recording of a song of mine. You’ll get the lyrics and some backstory on how the idea grew.
Posts on the art of songwriting
Thoughts on my relationship with creativity over 70 years, and why I’m still writing songs
About me
I’ve been a lawyer, a philosopher of science, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an author of three books about the modern scientific universe and how we humans may fit into it, but long before I did any of those things, I was a singer.
My mother says I could carry a tune at two and was forever singing “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie,” or “You are My Sunshine.” I have played the piano since I was seven.
At 21 I started busking with a guitar in Paris in Metro stations and on street corners on the Left Bank. In Italy I joined a cabaret troupe and traveled all over the country, writing and performing in several languages. It became clear to me that there were many things I could not say in songs, not because it can’t be done but because there is no audience for it. Or hasn’t been. But maybe it’s a question of inviting one… I’m a writer, and the only thing that changes for me over time is the medium.
