For The Sake of Havin’ You Near

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron nurtures, then shoves, Recovering Creatives out of the nest. The fledgling Creative is torn between expression and safety. Let’s see which way she flies, to the tune of a great Frank Sinatra standard. The whole trip takes about three and a half minutes.

The song’s opening beat is the recovering Creative trudging through life. The Creative sighs:

I’ve got you under my skin

And to whom is she singing? It’s the Muse, reviving artistic desire that the Creative deserted years ago. Perhaps she has dipped back into the gift: a few words scrawled on the back of a napkin; a doodle in the margin of a legal pad; the music cranked when no one else is home. The Creative is safe in the nest, but restless now. She’s indulged the Muse enough times to know she’d:

Sacrifice anything come what might for the sake of having you near

But there’s that warning voice, the Inner Critic, the tapes of parents, teachers, and employers and others playing a soundtrack of discouragement. The dream is not realistic, they say, not worth pursuing. Her aspirations are smothered with one stroke of the pen, or a side-eye glance:

Don’t you know little fool, you never can win – wake up to reality

But the Muse protests:

Each time I do just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin

As the Creative concedes:

I’ve got you deep in the heart of me
So deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me
I’ve got you under my skin

Flashback to the recording studio, January 1956, captured by biographer James Kaplan’s Sinatra: The Chairman. Sinatra swaggered into this session knowing exactly what he wanted from the orchestra, the best in the business assembled for The Voice. Just hours before, Sinatra told his arranger, the brilliant Nelson Riddle: “I want a long crescendo.”

After an all-nighter arranging the song, Riddle received a standing ovation from the orchestra after the first run through. Sinatra usually captured the recording he wanted in five or so takes, but this night was different. This one went eleven, twelve, thirteen takes — “some of them would have been false starts, only seconds long, but some went on longer until Frank raised a hand, shaking his head, stopping the music, and telling the band and the control booth what had to change,” wrote Kaplan. “Then take twenty-two.”

The first verse, bridge and chorus give way to the harrumphing base rhythm. The interlude builds to a show-stopping trombone solo—the voice of the Muse itself, sputtering, shining, stretching into fullness, released from the Inner Critic like a genie from their bottle. Kindred spirits of brass and strings swell in support. The trombone tucks back in as Sinatra vamps for the Creative, dismissing the nay-sayers with a flick of jazzy arrogance. He sings “as easily and bell-clearly as if he had just stepped out of the shower and taken it into his mind to do a little Cole Porter,” wrote Kaplan. Trombone soloist Milt Bernhart later recalled how Sinatra “knew something special was happening” in this session. Today, this recording is considered the definitive version of the song.

Lift off achieved, the familiar, syncopated rhythm where we first met our fledging Creative returns. Her wings flap to the beat. Same notes, made new. Under her skin. Over the top.