City of Glass
“Look what we made from melted sand...”
Fragile, Beautiful
Imagine a city made entirely out of glass. Windows, siding, flooring, roofing — every surface on every building — glass. It would be pretty wouldn't it? Maybe there would be different hues of glass, or even stained glass. Light would hit each structure at different angles, creating a parade of prisms throughout the city.
Think of how difficult it would be to build a city like that. Think of how many sheets of glass might have been accidentally shattered in the making of such a city. Think of how easy it would be to destroy a city made of glass. It would just take one errant baseball, brick, or hammer to start a catastrophic cascade of events.
But where did the idea of such a city even come from?
“Expert drawings, expert plans. Let the reader understand: it’s a delicate triumph.”
Sara Groves’ Prompting
In February, I went to a songwriting retreat hosted by Sara Groves and Art House North in St Paul, MN. Sara tasked us with writing a song specifically for the retreat, and she provided three songwriting prompts:
1) Look up the best-sellers list from the year you were born, and choose a title for the basis of your song.
2) Include multiple contrasts in your song.
3) Write to a beat of an existing song.
From the Art House North Songwriting Retreat. Just before this photo was taken, I got to share "City of Glass" with this group of people (including Sara Groves and her mom) in Sara's home. Photo credit: Julie Marie (selfie-style).
In the year I was born (…ahem, it was in the 1900s…), there was a bestseller by a man named Paul Auster, called “City of Glass”. (I just realized as I looked him up that he passed away in April of 2024 — which happened to fall between the time when I wrote the song and when I released it.) I loved the title of the book, and all that it conjured up in my mind. Of course, my brain was deep into “Henny Penny” mode at the time, so I had a secret fourth songwriting prompt for myself: to incorporate a theme from the folktale into the song. Struggling to flesh out an obvious connection, I figured it would be helpful for me to read the book for inspiration.
“Things aren’t always as they seem, interpreting reality. Are these lies or prophecies? Time will tell.”
Detective Work
My local library did not have a copy of Paul Auster’s “City of Glass”, but it did have a graphic novel adaptation of the book — which I read, and thoroughly enjoyed. In the novel, the main character assumes the false identity of a private detective, cleverly named Paul Auster, and attempts to solve a crime for a client under that guise. Auster (the author) lets the story unfold kind of like a lucid dream, which makes the reader question whether or not the story should be read as though it is reality, or a figment of the main character’s imagination. This is a play off of the concept of a city of glass: the glass obscures reality — is this piece of glass acting like a mirror and reflecting me, or is it transparent, allowing me to see inside?
And lo, I found my connection to Henny Penny.
The character, Henny Penny, is confused. She spreads what proves to be misinformation, which carelessly leads to the death of her friends. She wasn’t ill-intended as she propagated her message, but it cost her friends their lives. Their beautiful, yet fragile, lives. Questions of how to correctly interpret reality arise in Auster’s main character, who is impersonating the author, and also in Henny Penny, who misinterpreted an acorn falling on her head and caused chaos by claiming the sky was falling.
Just like Paul Auster wrote himself into his story in a surreal type of way, could it be that this cute yet macabre folktale is not only a fable about farm animals, but also a story (or a parable) about us? Do we, like Henny Penny, fall prey to confusion, and inadvertently propogate misinformation? What proverbial cities of glass do we put at risk when we do so?
“Please don’t be so cavalier, we can’t be throwing stones in here. The bull in the china shop is fear.”
All Is Take Is Just One Crack
Physical objects can feel like cities of glass. For example, when my dad died, I inherited his SUV. To me, it’s more than just a vehicle; it’s a connection to him. Crumbs embedded into the backseat of this SUV hit me differently than they do in our minivan. I was in tears the other day when I was explaining this to my kids as I was asking them to pick up their mess back there. This vehicle means so much to me, please don’t be so cavalier with how you treat it.
But I didn’t write this song about a car.
Relationships are like cities of glass. The take time to build, they come at a cost, and they require fragile materials — like trust and vulnerability. They can fall prey to any number of things (i.e. gossip, carelessness, rivalry), and come tumbling to the ground.
Zoom out a step to see how relationships between groups of people are also like cities of glass. Social trust is something that is built up over time through the concerted effort of individuals working together as a group. And social trust is beautiful yet fragile, too. When stories of extreme greed, selfishness, prejudice, favoritism, or many other social ills circulate, it can chip away at social trust.
“We’re interconnected. Let’s fix the fractures we’ve detected.”
Institutions are cities of glass at another level. They are built over generations. They require the fragile material of social trust to stay standing. But stories of abuses of power or corrupt leaders and systemic cover-ups come in like a wrecking ball to the fragile trust that individuals hold in the institution. As institutional trust shatters, social trust shatters with it. Or maybe it’s a chicken and egg scenario — whichever is first to go between social trust and institutional trust, it’s clear that these things are interconnected. We are interconnected.
I am no sociologist, and I am no political commentator. I am an artist. And I desire to be honest about the art I make. While “City of Glass” can apply to inherited SUVs, Henny Penny’s friends’ lives, or any host of fragile yet beautiful thing, I had a specific thing in mind when I wrote this song: American democracy.
We Built This Thing Together
Take a listen to “City of Glass” and see what conjures up in your mind. Would you have thought about American democracy if I hadn’t mentioned it? What is something that is beautiful yet fragile that you want to protect — something you feel others treat carelessly? What are some ways that we can protect the cities of glass in our lives — our relationships, our social trust, our institutional trust, our inherited SUVs — how can we protect them from the errant hammers of careless words, prejudiced ambitions, or selfish, short-term interests?
I am truly asking, actually. Because I don’t know how to protect beautiful yet fragile things, even though I desperately want to keep them from tumbling down. The best I can do is write a song about it. And you can listen to that song right now.
Listen Now
Miscellany
Miscellaneous things about “City of Glass”:
Remember the third songwriting prompt (write to the beat of an existing song)? I took the beat from “Say So” by Sara Watkins for the earliest iterations of “City of Glass”. It is hard to hear the connection now.
I really did enjoy the graphic novel adaptation of “City of Glass”. I should warn you, though — it’s not for children. ;-)
I feel oddly connected to Paul Auster now, knowing that he died while I was producing this song. My condolences to his friends and family.