Near Divine or Merely Rhyme is the writing of a man with a lot on his mind. Having experienced stretches of racing thoughts and existential dread myself, I could easily spot that Nic Panken was going through it. “A fool such as I would strike a match against the corners of the night,” Panken sings on “Into Eternity.” That seems to be where his mind takes him. His “old infernal symphony,” as he describes it, takes him to places as beautiful as gratitude for love and as surreal as trying to grasp the nature of time itself. Alone with his thoughts, Panken finds himself “wanting to push beyond what is comfortable or what I already know, that’s something I’m pulled toward. Not necessarily because I want to or decide to, it’s just the way I feel propelled.” He has a complicated relationship with this reality.
“It can be compulsive for sure. It’s also a beautiful thing. It’s almost the essence of being a conscious human being with a capacity for critical thinking,” said Panken. “When I’m feeling balanced, it’s like slipping into some kind of harmony. I think at other times it can compulsive and it can be dissociative. I can be in a situation that I feel uncomfortable about and I can slip into this cognitive enclosure.”
His fate is to “serve this burden all but certainly,” he sings in a bit of assonance.
“The burden, which in the final chorus changes to burning, is this constant drive to search and explore and transform,” explained Panken, noting that Buddhists might say such striving, however involuntary, would lead to suffering.
Talking to Panken is a fairly unique experience. At the start of his answers, his speech is halting. He closes his eyes and searches for words, sometimes trying a few out before settling on the start of a sentence. When he gets going, he can be a bit intense. At the same time he’s extremely precise, using an impressive vocabulary and lots of qualifiers. Toward the end of our conversation, he said it takes him a while to get warmed up and it was only then that he felt ready for the interview. He appreciates duality, or at least seems to based on the number of times he settles on two equally valid answers with vastly different implications. Take, for example, his explanation of his album title.
“I wanted [it] to bring in a bit of levity. It’s this philosophical lens. Is this deeply meaningful or is this happenstance? Does it just sort of sound nice” asked. Panken. “It’s both. You can find meaning in anything, if you need to find meaning. Everything is also just random and circumstantial.”
All this is not to say that Panken can never settle on any firm position.
“I have a small regular meditation practice where the goal is just experiencing the present moment and not be in one of those cycles of enquiries,” said Panken, who clearly values stepping outside of his mind. “Also walking in nature, taking hikes, activities like [conversation], I can experience that as being really grounding. The internet always seems to be about watching some garbage on some screen.”
He also deeply values his relationships, however significant. “Delightful Dust,” a reunion with his old band Spirit Family Reunion, is a love song in so many ways. It’s also a meditation on the continued existence of our species: “Now is it safe to say we just fade away?/Like some discontinued flavour./Well even if you’re just some delightful dust/you bring essence that I savour.”
“What I’m charged with in the partnership that I’m in, but also all of my relationships, is to really appreciate the other person for the wonderful qualities that they embody and I have invited into my life and I want in my life,” said Panken in what seemed to be both an expression of his values and instructions to himself. “To not get caught up on the frustrations and difficulties that I might identify as a shortcoming. It feels like a reminder that all of this changes, all of it goes away or completely transforms into something that I have no idea what it is, and I have no idea when that happens. What’s really important is to remember that in this current form, in this current situation, that there are things about a relationship that I treasure. I need to remember that for myself and I also need to express that to people in my life.”
While Panken framed his new record as an opportunity to pursue music beyond the raw, old timey sound of Spirit Family Reunion, he also clearly misses his time with the band.
“There’s something so special about the alchemy of playing with these people. Having harmonies of Matt and Maggie surrounding my voice is so special and I love the way it feels,” said Panken. “When I was working on this song, I realised I also want to have that be one of the poles of this record. That’s also a sound that’s part of my voice. I want to make sure that it was there.”
In what has to be a first on this show, Panken took the time to speak directly to Spirit Family Reunion fans, thanking them for the connection and the opportunity to make music.
But the discussion of appreciating the now inevitably involved thinking about time, a topic that Panken seems particularly transfixed by. On a track called “Time,” he describes it as having “unnamable anatomy/not out of view but out of reach.” Uncertainty about the future and a mindset that’s willing to explore some extremely long-term scenarios led Panken to wonder if humanity itself was “sort of like Crystal Pepsi. It was here and it was great and now it’s gone.”
“Of course, as individuals we’re gone, but I was also thinking about humanity and the challenges that the world is going through and the challenges that we have amplified collectively as humans. I don’t know,” said Panken. “Maybe we don’t survive, or maybe we don’t survive in the way we’ve understood so long. Maybe we’re discontinued like something that was created and offered and included for a period of time and now that’s gone. But it’s not a total void. Things continue. There are other flavours.”
Time, in Panken’s view, doesn’t just come for us all. It can also be overcome, at least for a bit. He repurposed the scientific phrase “Deep Time” as a personal concept referring to a state he ever so rarely enters.
There’s this sort of moment in between sleeping and waking where it just feels like worlds are bridging and things are in harmony. An overwhelming feeling of peace and clarity and connection. That’s what that song feels like for me,” he said of “Deep Time. “It’s like time suspends. It’s this feeling I’m always trying to get back to. It feels very neutral. It’s not good or bad or right or wrong. It just is.”
Panken kept coming back to the concept of time, most interestingly when he discussed returning to songwriting.
Getting back into writing songs, what’s my voice, what’s my perspective now? What do I want to express in my songs? It brings up a lot of memories and recalling earlier songs I’ve written. I start feeling the passage of time,” Panken said. “Sometimes it feels like things move really fast. Other times it feels like this moment has been going on forever and I’m just burning for the moment to come.”
The creativity proved worthwhile for Panken, who processed the feeling through his unique lens and came up with one of the most beautiful descriptions of making art in all of time.
The vast, vast, vast majority of my life, it’s feeling lost. Writing songs, I remember being really in it and feeling belonging. I know that’s available so much more and I have all these compulsions and attachments that interfere with that, but creativity can be a portal for being present,” said Panken. “It’s not present at the exclusion of memory, but present at a moment that transcends time. Even beyond my own personal memories. I don’t want to say it’s divine, but maybe it’s what that [album] title was pointing toward.
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Nic Panken and the songs we discussed, starting with Into Eternity, which by Buddhist standards captures suffering. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://nicpanken.com/home for more. Photo credit Rakel Stammer.
