Sparks from the Fire

Note: It’s been a month since my last post.  That’s my first pause of its kind in nearly five years of writing this blog.  Sometimes ya’ just got to refuel, I guess.  I didn’t plan it; it just happened, but I’m back.  Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Poem by Peter Link

You can’t sell imagination in jars.
So what?
It’s already ours.

You can’t buy it in a box
Or learn it in the school of hard knocks

You won’t find it in the attic
Or in any way limited to just the aristocratic
Nor is it in any way idiosyncratic
It’s just a blessing to us all

Call it a gift from God
A flight of fancy
The quixotic muse of the heart
The mythic invention of wishful thinking
A fantastical work of art

An ingenious moment of genius
The conceive of make-believe
The romance that burns between yus
The extravagant dream we weave

Michaelangelo, the sculptor
Really got it right
He looked beyond the eyes
Beyond what the eyes could see
He saw the angel in the marble
And carved until he set her free.

Imagination was the key
And the door opened wide
To the treasures of the mind
That lie inside

Imagination!
Mind’s eye to the world of make-believe
The most wondrous of inventions
Designed to make the world believe
What we perceive

Imagination!
The rising of the curtain
On creative mind
The visionary’s chance
To define the undefined
And leave the world of physicality behind

Imagination …
The chance to stand in God’s shoes
And schmooze with the Muse
And fabricate a world
Out of nothing

I am responsible.  Each of you is responsible.  Not just Adam Lanza, but we as a people are responsible.

Those who war are responsible.  Those who greed are responsible, for greed makes war.  Those who ignore are responsible.  We as a human race must take action and raise our collective consciousness up past the point where this act is impossible.

So far we have known better than to start nuclear war.  If we know better on this issue, we can know better than to ever have a repeat of Newtown, CT.  How many school shootings do we have to bear before we as a people get it?

It’s not a matter of putting more locks on the school doors; it’s a matter of raising consciousness.

But I start with myself.  So what am I going to do about it?  “It” — the most shocking act of my lifetime.  What have I done to be a part of this?  What can I do going forward to heal my grief, your grief, the grief of a nation – the shame of mankind?

I can live better, that’s what.  I can speak up and not stand for this!  We talk about gun control.  Gun Control!  We must abolish them altogether.  As a race, forget they ever existed!  Melt them down into plowshares.  They have no purpose.  Limit them to the “sport” of killing animals?  Bah!  Get another hobby.

But it’s so much more than just guns; it’s a great mistake of the human consciousness.  If we can’t overcome these notions of killing each other then we as a human race deserve to be wiped out one day.  And if that happens then we as a human race will have done it to ourselves.

Newtown, CT must be our call to action – the action of consciousness.  What do we carry each moment in consciousness?  What are we conscious of?

Raise consciousness.  I need to do whatever I can in my life, to do my part, to live more and more in the purity of thought.  To enforce a higher consciousness wherever and whenever I can.  To take a mighty stand, in whatever way possible, for the goodness and purity of thought.  And I/we must start today, right now.

Not just pray for the grieving.  That is not enough.  We must raise the consciousness of the world – through prayer, through good deeds, through sacrifice, through our thinking.

For we are all responsible.

Last night I made a house call to one of my student’s apartment.  I had to travel there by subway around 8:00 in the evening.  While sitting in the subway in a car about one third full, I noticed a Spanish gentleman literally falling down drunk standing in the doorway holding on to the pole with both hands, but trying mightily to remain erect.

He then began to talk to two African-American women sitting beneath him – one a pretty and sweet looking woman in her 30s sitting with probably her mother.  Because he was so drunk he began falling all over them.  They were obviously bothered by this and were leaning the other way so as to not be touched by this man.

One learns to pretty much to mind one’s own business in the NY subways – the dangers being obvious, but this continued intermittently for several minutes.  People were watching, but nobody was moving to help.

I stood up and walked down the car to the doorway where the man was now bothering the ladies again and heard the drunk blubber, “Aw c’mon Shweetie, I thought you was my frien’?”  The younger one and closest to him responded, “OK, we’re friends, Mister, but you have to stay at arm’s length.”

At that she held out her arm and held him gently away as he staggered and tried to keep from falling across their laps.

I watched his hands.  I just wanted to make sure he was not carrying any kind of weapon. (more…)

I was channel surfing the other night on the tube and I came across a rock concert on AXS TV, my new favorite channel on TV’s great wasteland.  It was an AC/DC concert.  For those of you unfamiliar with AC/DC, they are a high voltage rock ‘n’ roll band that has been consistently selling-out concert tours for over 40 years now with global sales totaling more than 200 million albums.

I was surprised to see an audience full of young people following this group because the group looks “old.”  The rock and roll, drug induced, no sleep lifestyle unfortunately does not produce baby faces and ever-young images.

The kids in the audience were having a ball though, and I was glad to see that groups like the Stones, Metallica and AC/DC were still happinin’ and appreciated.  After all, these are the guys that had a large hand in creating rock and roll to begin with.

The stage was replete with today’s necessary light show, fireworks and other pyrotechnic effects, and number after number went by projecting basically the same theme over and over – Hell, fire and brimstone, the devil and all things dark and spitting from the center of the earth.

Probably the typical message of many bands preaching to teenagers revolting from too much parentally enforced Sunday School.

As I watched, enjoying the power of the music, I began to tire of the same theme over and over.  They had given out little red devil’s horns for everyone in the audience to wear and even some of the musicians in the band wore them  — actually rather dopey and goofy looking …

I began to wonder, “What is this really all about?”  Devil worship?  Revolution from the good old straight and narrow?  Even worse, some sort of pagan ritual played out on a Saturday night?

The band, and especially the lead singer, screamed constantly the same message and the stage effects backed it all up, but then I began to look deeper at the whole scene.  The audience was simply having fun.  They were smiling, joyful, singing along, all standing throughout — they in their little red devil horns were one of the happiest groups of 20,000 I’d seen in a long time. (more…)

Several nights ago I woke up with a cramp in my calf.  As I lay there trying to relax both leg and mind, I knew that the pressures of my recent days had brought me to this point of dysfunction.

Finally, being unsuccessful in letting the thoughts go and the cramp worsening, I got up, put my robe on, and left the bedroom so as not to disturb my sleeping wife.

I began to first hobble groggily, then walk through the living room, kitchen, hallway, circling through my apartment praying and stretching as the pain and tension subsided.  I walked for about 10 minutes until my mind cleared and the pain went away.

On what was to be my last lap I suddenly stopped in the middle of the living room rug as I contemplated both mental condition and body and this thought came searing through my brain: We are the inventions of a far greater mind. 

I began to think once again about what a wondrous invention my body is and how it has really very little to do with me.  I didn’t create it, I don’t understand it, I don’t really maintain it, it even appears, at times, to be self healing, etc., etc. – thoughts I’ve had all to often of late.

I walked on …

I began to imagine a man sitting somewhere in another dimension, an alien from outer space perhaps, ;o) certainly a mind far greater than my own feeble flutterings, perhaps working on a hobby like a person might build a ship in a bottle.

This mind or ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘being’ decides, in its spare time, to occupy his giant brain by building a universe and placing in the middle of that universe a fascinating little ball of matter called Planet Earth.

Then being bored with this universe thing, he (or she) decides to populate it with little beings – all different, with these fascinating micro bodies that are splendid inventions of technology …

You get the idea. (more…)

I’m going to ask each of you to do something personal, something that will cost you, something that you would do selflessly for us, but something that I can almost guarantee will enhance your life on one level or another.  Ready?  Here goes …

Click here and go purchase Julia Wade’s new CD, Silk Road.  If you like, go listen to the samples first, but please don’t stop there – that’s not really fair to either Julia or me.  The samples are meant to be teasers.  Be teased, then buy it.

It’s a CD that we are so very proud of and have worked our tails off completing for this Holiday season.  It is absolutely some of our best work as a team, and actually everything we do – Watchfire Music, Link Recording Studios, Classes that we teach, The Watchfire Music Listening Room productions (I could go on and on) – is centered around the release of new music in CD form.

It’s why we do all the rest, including our very successful WFM Digital Sheet Music division.  We live to produce recorded music.  I know you know that and just want to take this most special moment to re-enforce the purpose of our lives.

What’s the album about?  It’s about a journey that we’re on down an ancient/modern path/highway.

Where are we going?  Forward – into new and previously unexplored territory.

Will it be a totally new Julia?  Yes and no.  It’s an evolution.  It’s a widening of the highway.  It’s an exploration of new ideas while at the same time hammering the old into new shapes and sizes.

As you who read this blog regularly know, I tend to write long.  This time I’m going to keep it short so that you might take that time to go check out and support us in this precious endeavor.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks for following.  Thanks for listening.

We’re now in the final throes of recording and mixing Julia Wade’s new CD, Silk Road – Inspirational Journeys Across Planet Earth.  Some of the material of this new work was actually started nearly two years ago and then the project was tabled when we developed her Solos CD as a farewell gift to the Christian Science community when she finished her tenure as Soloist in Boston.

But we knew we had something really interesting going in Silk Road and we couldn’t wait to get beck to it.

The CD is due to hit the streets in early December and will be our major impetus throughout the holiday season.  She has just two more vocals to complete, all the orchestrations are completed and by the end of this next week I’ll be half way through the mixing.

It’s simply a most special project.  You’ll say, “Aren’t they all?” and I must answer, “Of course, but this one’s, for both of us, particularly transforming.”

Silk Road marks Julia’s arrival at the threshold of a new evolution in her music.  Her departure from her past carries forth her commitment to inspire through song not only on a sacred level, but also with an in depth look at the issues of our world at large and the individual human condition.

So it’s an album of songs that will continue to inspire her growing fan base with fresh new looks at spiritual reach through songs like Thinking Made It So and Julie Gold’s When He Walks With Me, but it also ventures into new territory dealing with the issues of our world today.

For the first time she now tries her hand at lyric writing and scores instantly with her own thoughts on What Peace Looks Like from the perspective of three children of the world from Uganda, the Sudan, and the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica.  The title song, Silk Road, promises a comparison of the ancient Silk Roads spanning China, Tibet and Europe with the modern day impact of the Internet.

And then there are the songs of love … (more…)

As a writer, which includes this blog and all my musical composition, I consider myself a bridge.  What is a bridge?  Google defines: “A structure that allows people or vehicles to cross an obstacle such as a river or canal …”

I’m interested in the obstacles that we all face in this partly human experience on Planet Earth and the crossing thereof.  The verb definition is most interesting to me: “To connect or reduce the distance between”.  That’s my goal – to reduce the distance between this human existence (mortality) and my spiritual completeness (spirituality).  To reduce it to nothing.

Many writers just write about the human experience.  The New York Times best-seller list is fill of these author’s works.

Many others write about their visions of the spiritual world and work with mostly immaculate ideas.

Both have their relevance and necessity.

I choose to work the middle ground.  It is my interest to both discover and then provide a bridge from one world to the next.  No matter how lofty my thought, no matter how impeccably I sometimes see the pure, spiritual Peter Link, I still find myself under the covers in bed the next morning waking up to life on Planet Earth.  As long as I keep doing this, I’m going to keep trying to find that bridge – and I’m going to keep writing about it.

And so my songs do not illuminate only pure and perfect worlds.  I write about the obstacles that we all face in getting there.  I try to write about the human condition approaching the divine.  That’s what fascinates me because that’s where I’m at.  I sometimes sense the divine in my life; I am sometimes touched by the divine, but I just don’t live there consistently quite yet.  After all, I live in New York City, two blocks from Times Square – a very complex and wide variety of existence.

I also live in my studio, in a most wondrously creative world surrounded by complex material technology that helps me immeasurably to express my thoughts, discoveries and feelings.  It is definitely a mixture of the material and the spiritual and in every working hour I’m looking for that bridge.  There are rough moments when I think I’m running out of time.  And then there are timeless moments when there is no time and I’m lost (strange word) in the wondrous world of creativity.

I like to tell the truth as I see it.  It’s my particular corner on life.  Perhaps it can illuminate a thought or two for you?  Perhaps it will ruffle your feathers.

And make you think … (more…)