Present to the majesty of every little moment
An Interview with Zachary Murdock
Zachary Murdock is a poet, singer-songwriter, and host of the Pink Hearse Podcast. Three of Zachary’s poems, including Shadow Kite, are featured in Volume 11.
I caught up with Zach after his soulful performance with Channel the Sun a couple of weeks ago at the Garden Market in Carpinteria.
Maryanne Knight: Tell us a little about your creative process.
Zachary Murdock: Since a child, creativity has been my way of processing and alchemizing how intense it is to be alive. Bridging the gap between my inner experience and the world around me felt limited and impossible when speaking in civilian tongue and therefore I was drawn to the lighthouses of technicolored dream pirates. While leaning in too close to the dream world, I was bit by the art snake and converted into a full blooded mad one. From Waldorf fairytales, Wu-Tang to Allen Ginsberg, the timeless representatives of the creative legions scooped me up and rode off with me into infinity. Thank god.
From the start, I have had a sort of poetic, musical, collaboration synesthesia, where one spark quickly evolves into another into the next. Songs into films, poetry into collaborative visual art, my muse has never been comfortable confined to any one medium or genre. It has been an incredible gift to watch this unfold and also quite painful, in regards to human resistance to anything new. Like a telepathic child told their gifts are not real and they must adapt to the clunky form of typing letter by letter, a lot of my work has been slowing my ideas down to translate them carefully and with extreme precision into this realm.
MK: There's a lot of overlap between poetry and songwriting. Tell us about how you work with that, deciding which pieces become poems vs. which become songs.
ZM: I consider myself to be a street baller in regards to my creative approach. Although I went to college for creative writing and studied poetry, I have never been able to grasp the rules of language or poetic formats and therefore I create solely from instinct and ear. I have created relentlessly for 25-years and so a lot of my skillset has evolved from the weathered results of showing up again and again to the blank page.
When creating music, that is always the intention. 99% of the time my friend will begin a song by playing instruments and as I listen to the music melodies and lyrics begin to form. When I am in a poetry headspace, that is a very different mode of creation, often alone in the morning with coffee and my dog Juju before my family is awake. Looking back, I notice how seasonal I am with my creative phases, and these days I do my best to trust these seasons and not force myself to create what does not feel natural to where I am in the moment.
MK: Who are your biggest influences as a poet? As a writer in general?
ZM: My poetry journey really began with “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg and after that lightning bolt it was off to the races.
e.e. cummings, Hermann Hesse, Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Rumi, Steinbeck, Murakami, Kendrick Lamar, Sly, Tracy Chapman, N.K. Jemisin, Marion Woodman, and many other Motown artists and fierce individuals who refused to conform to a herd.
MK: What are you working on now?
ZM: I am currently in a deep rhythm with our show, The Pink Hearse Podcast. We release an episode weekly and have guests from all over the world. This format of diving deep with people who inspire me, creating music for each episode and collaborating with my creative brother, Kevin, is a joy that lights up all sorts of areas in my brain.
We are also in the middle of rolling out a project we have been working on for 10 years called, “Êlectric Biblë,” a 36-song album that we are releasing as individual books of songs. As a father I have been laying low and focused on holding down our home and healing but recently we have begun playing shows and being more outward, which has been inspiring.
There is an album in the works with my new band, Little Mother, two books of poetry that I would love to publish and bring into the world, a new podcast in development with a good friend and I am in the process of applying to get my masters in Depth Psychology. All the while, my main job is being Roch’s dad, Molly’s husband and present to the majesty of every little moment. There are a lot of moving parts with my creative life but these days I am feeling a healthy detachment from the art and learning to enjoy just being here now.
Check out more of Zachary’s work on link tree.