SongWriter Season 6 Continues With Sarfraz Manzoor & SK & the Kings

SongWriter is a podcast that turns stories into songs, featuring David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Joyce Carol Oates, Steve Earle, David Sedaris, Susan Orlean, Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), and Questlove.

In order to make a film about his young life, author Sarfraz Manzoor needed Bruce Springsteen’s help. Sarfraz’s teenage years were deeply influenced by Springsteen’s music, and the only person who could approve the synch licenses for the movie was The Boss himself. As if this wasn’t challenge enough, Sarfraz also needed the songs at below-market prices. Even having one well-known song in a movie can cost a fortune, and Blinded by the Light needed a lot more than that.

“I had to write an email directly to Springsteen, explaining why I wanted to use his music,” Sarfraz says. “The thing about him is that he doesn’t allow his music to be used, at all. There are some films where he’s allowed, like, one song—we were looking for sixteen!”

Happily, Springsteen said yes. Blinded by the Light is about how Sarfraz used Springsteen’s music as a sort of emotional guide book to his teenage years. Sarfraz is older now, and for the new episode of SongWriter he decided to write a counterpoint. In it he explores how art has turned out to be an insufficient guide for some of the hardest moments in his life.

This was especially true when he lost his father. Sarfraz was still quite young at the time, and the two had not yet had time to reconcile over some hard moments in their relationship. Without a specifically relevant song about forgiveness without reconciliation, Sarfraz had to learn how to do this by himself. Though moments like this can often be painful, Sarfraz also experiences them as entry-points to his own work as a writer.

“Part of the reason I write is to try and add my image onto a canvas, or to add my verse to the story,” Sarfraz says. “Because I haven’t seen that verse or that story told.

Dr. Elizabeth Gulliford studies forgiveness at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. Dr. Dr. Gulliford notes that although there are lots of stories about forgiveness and reconciliation, until recently there were few step-by-step guides like those developed by Bob Enright and Everett Worthington. This kind of guidance can be helpful, because life requires a lot of forgiveness.

“Life is light and shade, and forgiveness presupposes quite a lot of shade,” Dr. Gulliford says. “But at the same time there can be light at the end of that, and release, and setting free.”

Sarah Kelly, of the band SK and the Kings, was struck by the way reconciliation exists in her own life. Sarah is newly sober, and she is painfully aware that in the past she had trouble listening to the advice and guidance offered by her parents.

“It made me sad, when I read Saf’s piece,” Sarah says, “because I am so lucky with the relationship I have with my parents. They’ve always been very supportive, and very loving, and very honest.”

Sarah’s song, “Lessons,” is a wry and heartfelt recollection of some of the things that, like Sarfraz, she had to learn for herself. Without the numbing effect of alcohol, these lessons, and her life, feel especially sharp and clear to her now.

“Sometimes that fogginess of a hangover puts a layer between you and other people, or you and real life,” Sarah says. “I’m really living my life now, and it would be such a waste not to feel the pain or the joy or the sadness, just to feel indifferent.”

Season six of SongWriter is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation.