The Lonely Palette

Dar Williams has been described by The New Yorker as “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters,” but to thirteen-year-old Tamar she was, quite simply, a personal hero: a songwriter whose poetry, poignancy, and humor could capture at once the authentic voices of an inner child, a searching young adult, and a wizened sage. We met in person in 2013 at Dar’s songwriting retreat, and our friendship has been evolving ever since, exploring together the rigors of writing and storytelling through sound and song, and what it means to dip in and out of a creative space as a way of simply getting through the day. Dar has recently published a book about songwriting that is chock full of philosophical wisdom and applicable nuggets, many of which borne from a decade of retreats. We sat down together to talk about songwriting, art museums, the art of writing songs about art, and specifically her evocative, ambivalent "Mark Rothko Song," which tackles it all head-on. [2:05] Dar’s relationship with museums and creating