Why I chose the title Riding a Mule Through the Winter Forest for my latest album

You might wonder why I chose this title for my latest album, Riding a Mule Through the Winter Forest

Well, it comes from the title of a 10th century Chinese painting by Li Cheng.

Also of course, it’s the name of one of the songs on the album.

So I was reading an article in a magazine, It was probably the New York Review of Books but could have been the New Yorker or Harper’s. I don’t remember what the article was mostly about, but it mentioned this painting, and for some reason I was struck by the title – Maybe I was living in ancient China and I knew about this painting, or maybe not – and I wrote the first verse of the song. This all happened on the toilet.

The lyrics to the song are absurd. They’re sung from the perspective of a teacher having a hard time keeping the attention of the students. The only thing that can keep their attention is riding a mule through the Winter forest. It doesn’t mention the painting or anything. It has something to do with the power of asserting something out of context with confidence, without logical links, and how the logical links get filled by existence. 

And for the album cover, I imitated the painting a bit.