In a departure from the usual post on Inspirational music, today I’d like to tell you about a kid I just met.

Kids!
I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!
Kids!
Who can understand anything they say?
Kids!
They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs!
Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!
While we’re on the subject:
Kids!
You can talk and talk till your face is blue!
Kids!
But they still just do what they want to do!
Why can’t they be like we were,
Perfect in every way?
What’s the matter with kids today?

From Bye Bye Birdie by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams

I needed a sound system for our up-and-coming WFM Listening Room House Concerts and suddenly remembered that for the last 5 years I had a great one sitting in storage out in Colorado last used when the Missus and I had a house and recording studio out there.

The problem was, how to get it from Colorado to NYC.  A trip out there was impossible both time-wise and financially.  I’d have to get somebody to go into that unopened-for-the-last-5-years storage room, pack it all up and send it to me.  Not the most fun or rewarding job on the planet.  On top of that, I needed it fast.

I called my old cowboy buddy, Tom Flower, who happens to be not only a genuine cowboy, but also a high school teacher.  I couldn’t ask him to do it.  He’d feel obliged to do it for nothing and I wouldn’t ask my worst enemy (if I had one) to do this job – especially for free.

I thought he might know a responsible kid at school who might want to pick up a few extra bucks.  Trouble was, this is a very expensive Genelec studio system that would need to be packed up just right and handled with ultimate professional care.

So the thought of some kid (see above lyric) who I didn’t even know tackling this job with any authority made me wince every time I thought of it.  The above song has played through my mind several times over the past two weeks.

On top of that, I needed someone who could go into this unopened store-room, weed through all our stuff, find everything including all the right cabling, and care for it like I would.

Probably an impossible task, all things considered.

Tom gave me the number of one JT Gilmore of Westcliffe Colorado.  When we first talked by phone I found JT to be quite the kid.  Trouble was, though our conversation was peppered with “Yes Sirs” and “No Sirs”, a seemingly forgotten mannerism these days, JT was extremely busy and getting ready to leave for college within the week.  Yikes!

But I had no choice.  I was committed to this particular sound system and took a deep breath and said to JT, “If you want the job, you got it.”  He never asked about money and when I took another deep breath and told him I could only pay him $15 per hour, his response was, “Wow, thanks, Mr. Link.”

My worries somewhat alleviated, I then gave him the details of the job, told him that I would, on top of it all, be on a week-long business trip and not be reachable.  He’d have to get this all together and really pull through for me all on his own.

The day came when he entered the storage room for the first time, me on the cell phone talking him through the procedure of finding it all.  In the course of the half hour spent he also came across several large boxes of my precious 35mm slides from many of my past Broadway shows.  I decided with a gulp that he should pack those up also and send them off as well.

Now as well as sending a sound system worth a small fortune across the country, he was also packing and sending a couple of crates of precious memories.

But I had no time and neither did JT.  We were both leaving in 2 days.  I hung up the phone, mumbled a few words of prayer to the unknown god of Fedex and moved on in life.

Yesterday I got home from my business trip having completely forgotten about JT and his adventures only to find 5 huge boxes perfectly packed, taped up far beyond the necessary and beautifully delivered waiting in my hallway.

I dove in wondering what condition I would find things.

As the song says, “Perfect in every way…”

Though I had forgotten to ask him, he had even thought to include the slide projector along with the slides.  This way I might even be able to view them!

All was in perfect condition, perfectly packed, in perfect order.  A job extremely well done.

Was I surprised?  Not after getting to know this fine young man.

Kids!  Faith restored!

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

• For Kids Only
• Close Encounter With A Mat Knife
• Long Live New Music!
• On Faith

Then, oddly enough, there was only the recollection of pain – there was never a pain in the moment of slashing.

Later on I realized that in the recollection I was just making the pain up, because in the moment of the cut the blade was so sharp and the act was so fast that there was no time for the pain.

My brain remembered the pain where it should have been, but wasn’t.  So what was pain but something my mind made up.

Meanwhile blood everywhere, rush to the bathroom, clean the cut, (pretty scary looking, but straight and simple) apply the bandages. Wonder: Should I get stitches? Very deep. Decide to just bind it with a bandage. A half inch slash on the meaty tip of my left thumb. War hero.

I handled fear. After all…  Just a thumb. Then I began to learn for the next 2 weeks just all the amazing things a left thumb does in life. Can’t tie shoes, can’t button my right shirt sleeve, can’t shower with any normalcy, can’t play the guitar, and on and on.

Every three days I change the bandages. Looks about the same each time, but I can just feel all those little guys in there just knitting and mending away. It’s kind of exciting, really, how the body heals.

So I decide to experiment and stimulate the process. Each morning as I wake I lie there and envision the knitting. I’m into quantum physics and so I take it to the atomic level in my imagination – right down to the shifting and organization of the molecules and atoms.

I stop looking at it to determine the extent of the injury and instead hold the vision of the perfect thumb in my imagination.  The atom/molecule reorganization game is just a mind game that I play with myself for a few moments every morning.

But it works. After 2 weeks I discard the bandages for good. Let the air in. Oh, I’m careful with it. I baby the left hand. But I hold to the thought of the perfect thumb and mentally rearrange the atoms into their rightful place.

It’s now 2 weeks since I removed the bandages. 4 weeks since I encountered the mat knife. I still feel those little guys workin’ away in there hauling and shifting those atoms, but from the outward appearance there’s no cut, no scar – just normal thumb.

What happened here? I mentally reconstructed my body. In the normal order of things I always had a perfect thumb, but fear resulting in a confused mind created a gap in that concept – a cut.

When I got my mind back in order, my body followed suit.  I know that if I were stronger mentally, I could have done it faster.  It just takes practice.  Must have something to do with the way Jesus worked. “Whatsoever things you see that I do, you can do also.”

Pretty amazing.

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

• The Changing Scene
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Hitting The Wall
• Inspirational Music
• WFM Listening Room – Series II – Event 4

It usually takes 6 months to a year to create a CD. Why then so short a life span?

Because the money it took to promote it nationally, even locally, through radio was so exorbitant. In those short 3 months a company could literally spend millions of dollars basically promoting one single off the CD. If it tanked, bye bye to all the work. And most of them did just that – they tanked. For a great variety of reasons – many of which had nothing to do with the worth of the music.

Today, it’s an entirely different story. Radio is fast slipping away as the communication medium for music.  The internet is the new radio. No longer do artists have to manufacture tens of thousands of CDs in preparation for launch. Digital downloads took care of that. The high cost of storing all those jewel cased CDs does not exist anymore. Promotion on the internet relies more on smart creativity than the almighty buck.

So now good and even great music does not have to die and disappear. It can simply sit there in virtual space and wait to be discovered. And so in a very intriguing way, music always remains new – new to the listener who discovers it.

This is one of the high concepts behind Watchfire Music. It’s a trusted destination for people of all faiths and cultures to explore, experience and ultimately purchase new Inspirational music – no matter how old it is. It is always new. Fifty years from now it can still be sitting there on our site at virtually no cost to us waiting to be discovered.

A good reason to explore the site. It’s all new.

~ Peter Link

Even More Inspiration

• Gettin’ It Done
• Things To Come – Part 1
• Insight-Nancy Morris
• The Changing Scene
• Here We Go – Video
• Dream Realized

Flash back one year. Jenny Burton and I have just finished a show in Boca Raton and are driving up the coast of Florida. We get into a long discussion about her career and where it’s going. We have this great idea! We shall put together a group of 9 of our favorite NY studio singers behind her and do a show of Inspirational music.

We’ve been doing very successful industrial shows exploring this Gospel/R&B based genre using 3 singers in the studio and triple tracking them for a particular sound that has really been captivating audiences. We’ve developed this music to a very specific sound behind Jenny and know from years’ experience that we’ve found something that really works. Now we should commercialize it and move it into the mainstream.

And so, determined to see this through, I begin to explore ways of financing and developing this idea. I find it’s not easy. It’s expensive! Ten singers… and we don’t even have a band yet.

In the course of the year, however, four different situations do come up which will provide the means for getting this idea on. Sadly, they all fall through. Bummer.

So here I am sitting in my favorite chair. I do not have the money for this big idea. I know it’s a right idea, but something seems to stop it at every turn. Frustrated…

I have no ideas, I have no money, I have nothing.

I have faith, but what is faith? Yeah, come to think of it, what is faith? I sit and contemplate this word. I realize that in order to have faith one must start with nothing. If you have something, a glimmer, a dollar, a possibility, etc., then you don’t need faith, you just start with a glimmer, a dollar, a possibility, etc. Faith is for when you have nothing.

Then you have to have faith in faith. And since you have nothing, it only makes sense to have a total reliance on faith because what other choice do you have? You have nothing, but faith. So do that. Have nothing but faith.

This means that you can’t have doubt, Pete, I say to myself. You can only have faith. If you have a choice between having nothing or having nothing and faith, what do you choose? Duh.

I saw and understood this simple logic. It made total sense to me. All I had to do was to have faith, but I had to have total faith. That was easy because I had nothing. So I decided then and there to have total faith.

“Faith in what?” you might ask. Faith in a right idea. I believe that God gives a right idea and sees it through? So I must have total faith in this right idea.

I even thought if you have total faith and then it still doesn’t work out, then you don’t have to deal with this word “faith” any more. You can dismiss it as a sham and move on to other things. So let’s find out, Pete. HAVE TOTAL FAITH!

And so I did. At that point I got up from my favorite chair and went to bed, clear that now the idea was going to happen.

The next morning I got up, called the nine singers, explained my great idea, told them I had no money, but was going to do this on faith, invited them to join me and they all said ‘yes’ immediately and we went into rehearsal the next week.

The group, The Jenny Burton Experience, broke all box office records and played to packed houses in their more than seven year run at New York City’s “Don’t Tell Mama” and swept all the major music awards in New York City for best vocal group.

They then performed for tens of thousands of people at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Carnegie Hall, opened for Al Green at Trump Marina, opened for Stevie Wonder at Lincoln Center, and headlined at Resorts International in Atlantic City.

It started on faith and nothing but. The following lyric is to one of the groups closing songs:

FAITH
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

AS I SIT WITH MY HEAD IN MY HAND
AND FIGHT FOR THE WAY TO BREAK FREE
KNOWING NOTHING AROUND ME
HAS GONE AS PLANNED
AND NOW IT IS ALL UP TO ME

WHEN NOTHING IS LEFT TO HOLD ON TO
AND NOWHERE IS THERE TO TURN
THE FIRE CONSUMING THE SPIRIT WITHIN ME
TILL NOTHING IS LEFT TO BURN

WHEN OUT OF THE DARKENING SHADOWS
A VOICE A WHISPER A SIGN
THE SIMPLEST OF ANSWERS
AT THE HARDEST OF TIMES
A LIGHT CALLING OUT TO THE BLIND

WHEN ALL IS LOST
HAVE FAITH
HAVE FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
FAITH CAN WALK THE SEA
FAITH CAN HEAL THE HEARTACHE
FAITH ALONE CAN COMFORT ME
AND IN YOUR TRIALS OF FIRE
FAITH CAN SEE YOU THROUGH
FAITH REQUIRES
NO MAGIC NO MONEY
NO MIRRORS NO MAYBES
NO MATCHES NO MAKE-UP
NO MANUAL NO MEDICINE
JUST FAITH

SO WHEN NOTHING IS LEFT TO HOLD ON TO
AND NOWHERE IS THERE TO TURN
WHEN THE FIRE’S CONSUMING THE SPIRIT WITHIN YOU
TILL NOTHING IS LEFT TO BURN
WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST
HAVE FAITH
HAVE FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
FAITH CAN WALK THE SEA
FAITH CAN HEAL THE HEARTACHE
FAITH ALONE CAN COMFORT ME
AND IN YOUR TRIALS OF FIRE
FAITH CAN SEE YOU THROUGH
FAITH REQUIRES
NO MAGIC NO MONEY
NO MIRRORS NO MAYBES
NO MATCHES NO MAKE-UP
NO MANUAL NO MEDICINE
JUST FAITH
FAITH

FAITH CAN HEAL YOU
AND FAITH CAN COMFORT YOU
FAITH WILL WALK WITH YOU
THERE’S NO MEDICINE JUST FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
OH YEAH!

So, have faith…

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For more information about Watchfire Music and their artists,
please visit us at Watchfire Music.com.
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Even More Inspiration

• WFM Listening Room – Series II Finale
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 3
• WFM Listening Room – Series II
• Life At Its Best
• WFM Listening Room 6
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1