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Last Tuesday morning, Taylor Barton found herself sitting at home in Amagansett, writing an addendum she never saw coming.
She laughed to herself. It was a surreal moment that made her think about the power of music—her life’s passion, which she lives out alongside her husband, G.E. Smith—as well as Bob Dylan, saving the planet, her father’s encouragement and a failed scuba diving trip in Mexico 25 years ago.
These were the forces that came together in order for her to write her first children’s e-book, “Pedro ’n’ Pip,” complete with an original score, and illustrations by Dana Cooper, which was released that same day on iBooks and iTunes. Plans are in motion for the book to be used in classrooms across the country in partnership with Discovery—hence the addendum, she said, and a teacher’s curriculum.
This is her tour de force, she said. She can feel it already.
“There’s just certain things in your life. If there were anything in my life that I would want to be known for, this would be it,” she said. “This would be my contribution. I feel very strongly about wanting to do this and wanting it done.”
It all started on a beach in Mexico a quarter century ago, she recalled. The then-27-year-old signed up for scuba diving lessons but made it through only two of them, too terrified to progress any further. So, she took a nap on the beach instead.
She dreamed of a raspy-voiced octopus, a rock ’n’ roll legend under the sea who became the cornerstone of a musical that she would stage as a full-fledged production in the early 1990s at The Village Gate in Manhattan. But the play—which followed the adventures of rocktopus Pedro and a 10-year-old scuba diver named Pip as they navigate the aftermath of a fictitious oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—was ahead of its time, Ms. Barton explained.
When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill devastated the Louisiana swamplands in 2010, killing 11 people and unquantifiable marine life in the process, chills ran down Ms. Barton’s spine. She had predicted it nearly two decades earlier.
“That was amazing to me, too. It was almost like an omen,” she said. “It was almost like I was projecting the future. There’s a song in my book called ‘Preaching Future from the Past’ and ... when I listen to it, I get chills. I say, ‘Oh my God. This came from some muse.’ I have no idea, it just absolutely spilled out of me. I wasn’t thinking about it, really, and it just happened.
“Back then, the play was optioned by Disney, and it had so much potential, but at the time it just didn’t happen,” she continued. “Like many things, it could have changed my life right then and there, but it just didn’t happen. I did other things and had an amazing career. This is better timing for this project than 1990, actually.”
It was only when Ms. Barton found herself in New Orleans three years ago, assisting the Environmental Defense Fund with a benefit concert series, that she revisited “Pedro ’n’ Pip” in a new light. She wrote a few new songs, assembled a cast—with a couple original members returning—and recorded the new book, which stayed true to the play with one key difference.
“I changed Pip from a boy to a girl, and I like it much better with the girl,” she said. ‘I just think it’s much more stereotyped to have a boy be a hero, and to have a girl be a hero like this is pretty fun.”
Pip’s journey with Pedro is reminiscent of Ms. Barton’s time on the road with Mr. Smith when they first got together. She was a young dancer and singer finding her voice, and he was the sideman to Bob Dylan—the inspiration behind the rocktopus. From 1988 to 1992, she saw about 2,000 shows and observed Mr. Dylan behind the scenes, she said.
“I learned a lot about songwriting watching Dylan and learned a lot about what it was like to be famous,” she said. “I always admired Bob so much because he deflected the fame machine—very anti-Kardashian for today. I really, really admired that about him. He did not allow the world to shape him. He shaped the world.”
And in a way, that is what she is doing with the book. She has her father, David Barton Jr., to thank for that. Even at 92 years old, he is still pushing her to chase her passion, just as he did while raising her in Baltimore. He gave her encouragement and told her that any dream is possible, so she should go for it.
“While I’m sitting here writing this addendum, the first question I’ve posed to the kids is, ‘What is your dream? What do you want to do?’ I want to inspire kids to find that core source of their inspiration and also their calling. ‘How can you change the planet in your unique way? Not the way somebody tells you to, but in the way you want to.’ And I feel fortunate that I had a father who asked me those questions and then believed in me.”
For more information about Taylor Barton and “Pedro ’n’ Pip,” visit taylorbarton.com/pedro-n-pip.
on Sep 19, 2016