Peter Himmelman has no shortage of things on his plate. He’s still writing and releasing new music. He’s crisscrossing the country to meet his newborn grandchildren. And he’s carving out time to regularly write a Substack newsletter several times per week – not to mention a new book.
“This book is pretty Jewish,” said Himmelman, the St. Louis Park native and author of Suspended by no String: A Songwriter’s Reflections on Faith, Aliveness, and Wonder. “It’s talking about those three things hopefully in a novel way, in a non-preachy, non-pedantic way. It’s little vignettes, things that have happened to me. Some are very sad. Some are wonderful in the truest sense of the word.”
Himmelman will be in Minneapolis on his book tour for “An Evening With Peter Himmelman” on Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. at ModernWell (2909 S. Wayzata Blvd.). Tickets are $25 ($20 for ModernWell members) and include a copy of the book. If you can’t make it, the event will be livestreamed on TC Jewfolk’s YouTube channel and will be released as a Who The Folk?! Podcast episode.
Himmelman said that when he starts to work on things, there isn’t always a lot of rhyme or reason – at least at the start.
“I don’t sit and sort of plan it in that way. I get an impetus to do something, and I got an impetus to do a book after the other book, Let Me Out,” he said. “My first impetus was to make a sequel and I struggled with that for two years. I basically wrote two full iterations of two separate books.”
Himmelman, working with editor Barbara Clark, said he couldn’t figure out why what he was writing wasn’t pleasing him.
“The first thing she said was ‘It’s not a book about creativity. This book you’re trying to write, it seems like it’s about spirituality,’ Himmelman recalled. “The second iteration was kind of a how-to book on spirituality, which started to feel very stupid to me towards the end.”
Before shopping the project to publishers, he sent her one more essay titled Suspended by no String.
“She got back to me and she said, ‘Look, I hate to tell you this. This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in years. If you have more like this, shitcan what you’ve been working on for two years and start again,’” he said. “It was liberating to hear that, because it was very fun, and somehow essential for me to not try to teach anyone anything, just as my songs don’t teach anyone. I just wrote what I felt.
“I didn’t write it to make a ton of money. I actually wrote it because I wanted to be involved in conversations of this nature about the book. And in some ways, many of my songs allude to the ideas in this book.”
Himmelman started a company in 2011 called Big Muse, which he uses as a vehicle to combine music with teambuilding and leadership. He wrote the first book, he said, because – at that time – “everyone good has a book.”
“Whereas that book delves into a particular facet of myself, what I do in this book really delves into, and reveals maybe, the most essential part of me,” he said. “I don’t think that it’s a metamorphosis, you know, of any sort. It’s an extension.”
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