photo-Paul Cyr

When a song comes the weather shifts subsumed by an all encompassing feeling. Sometimes the song emerges as a tiny thing, a few words accompanied by a guttural hum. If nourished, given plenty of attention, it may live up to its potential. In precious moments as luck will have it or longing will make it a song slowly slides out in one sitting: a thing to behold, tangible, real. She is someone to come home to, someone to get to know slowly, her gift, her story echoing loudly in your ears.

I am songwriting again aiming at recording a new album of songs in winter 2016. The subject I’m dancing around is inspired by a book by Paul Bogard The End of Night. The theme: the loss of the night sky in an age of artificial light.
Surely there must be an album of songs in that subject. So far I am staying mostly on topic. I wander a bit in imagining what a planet must experience in darkness. In those moments of melodic meandering I find myself going to poets, Rilke in particular helps me to understand the meaning of planets and souls circling and vice-versa. In other moments I am adrift in a boat at night and the Zen master Dogen helps me write a happily simple line. I rely perhaps too greatly on these masters who speak so clearly of midnight moonlight darkness. They are helping me find my way.