Thursday, December 4, 2014

I'm back and I ain't a-fray'd. New album in the works!

I started this blog awhile back, when I started recording my first album, Seven Years Now. Basically, I wanted a forum where I could express my thoughts on recording and the making of records. And it only made sense to do that when I was in the midst of that process, content to be the weatherman reporting on the swirling storms all around me. So thus the huge gaps here in the blog: time spent writing songs, performing, living, and getting ready to jump back in to the fray. But now I'm pleased to announce I am back in that fray! YES, the fray. Except maybe "fray" is the wrong word. It connotes competition. Yeah, it's not the right word at all. Scratch that. I'm really not doing this for any kind of reward. Absolutely no trophies will be distributed in the making of this record! It doesn't accurately capture what it means to me to make (and record) music. Which begs the question, what does it mean? What does any of this mean? Why am I doing this at all? Okay, I'm going to attempt here what they call a "mission statement."

I feel that music is necessary. Necessary for life, for the proper experience of living. Just as necessary as food or air or water. As human beings we are blessed and condemned with a degree of self-awareness that opens us to particularly human ways of suffering. We are aware of our own mortality. We are haunted by our own memories. We are aware of the violence and injustice that can descend on the individual, on the family, on the group. And somehow we must live through the dark weight of that experience. Music enables us to not only live through it, but to somehow transfigure it. And perhaps, in the end, to leave us transfigured as well. In effect, music allows us to ease the burden of suffering, to lighten the weight of contingency. So that when the rhythms of life take a dark and unexpected turn, we can keep dancing. We can keep singing. We can truly be alive.

Okay, rant over. The high horse has been sent back to the stable. The soap box has been re-filled with soap and is back on the soap truck, headed to the next soap store... But the fact is I am back making a new album. And I'm very excited. Please stay tuned to this blog for updates, digressive meandering, and the random slipshod musings of a songwriter who doesn't know any better.

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