There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences.  The only thing that comes close to it is greed.  I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable.  We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative.  They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth.  Truth is truth.  Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me.  The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about.  Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person.  I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge.  In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method.  The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science…  Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms…  This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both.  I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”.  I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality.  So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist.  For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level.  I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion.  In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions.  This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs.  It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth.  Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC.  I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity.  There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word.  Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language.  Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality.  It simply was not invented for that world.  And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life.  As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help.  We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking.  One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on.  Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong.  He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him.  During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically.  We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions.  I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away.  I was healed.  There was never any difficulty moving through this experience.  It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again.  However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking.  Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times.  Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth.  My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality.  The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration.  As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at.  I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance.  Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language.  It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science.  Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn.  The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me.  One complements the other.  I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc.  There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful.  Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically.  On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle.  On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician.  Being a human being is far too often a struggle.  Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life.  Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound.  Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively.  Here is where the problems lay.  Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore.  My gratitude abounds for this space in thought.  I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced.  The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine.  We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• When Things Go Wrong
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• Phoenix Rising

Fact of the matter is that it’s one of those few things in life that is black and white.  It’s either the truth or its not.  If it’s not, it’s not truth-full and so the part where it’s not the truth, is the lie.

A white lie is often told to protect someone’s feelings – like when your wife just spent $250 at the beauty parlor and had her hair cut and the goofball ruined it and she comes home proudly, but looking like somebody else, you say, “Hey honey, you look real cute.”

Fibs are harmless lies that really don’t matter like telling your neighbor that you didn’t come to their party because you weren’t feeling well when you really went out to a movie instead.  Fibs and white lies both fall under the same confusing category.  The term “white lie” is pretty laughable when you think about it.  Does the word “white’ make it OK?  Is the lie more pure because it’s white?  Is it cleaner?  Pretty confusing.

And then there’s exaggeration – a fault that I’ve been accused of probably too often.  I like to say when accused, “Well, I’m in show business.  Think of it as promotion – making the success or the adventure or the story just a tad more interesting or dramatic or even a bit more heroic.  But truthfully, I’ve learned to see that they’re all just a bunch of lies and that, essentially, if we slow down and think things out and live higher and more noble lives from moment to moment, we do not have to lie.  Lying is just really a bad habit.

And then there are the inveterate liars…  These are the people that have a disease – a dis-ease with the truth.  They lie so often that they lose consciousness of the truth and lose the ability to discern between the two.  Their lying becomes so habitual that they lose their connection with the reality of the truth and lie so often that they begin to believe their own lies  — in essence, they lie so much that they even lie to themselves about lying.  A vicious circle.

In my life I’ve suspected several and absolutely identified two.

One was a man who I worked with for many years.  He was a fine musician and we had a great partnership in music, a great musical simpatico between us and a terrific collaboration that always resulted in powerful production.  I loved him like a brother and we were joined at the hip.  But I began to watch him lie and not know what to do about it.

Confronting a liar is very difficult.  It’s easier to confront a thief or a murderer.  With a thief, you point out the stolen money in his hand and if you catch him red-handed, you’ve got the material proof.  With a murderer you’ve got the body or the gun or the fingerprints.  But with a liar, it’s all a bit nebulous, and usually a liar can and will back up his original lie with another ten to do anything he can do to wiggle out.

Even the experts say that confronting a liar is a near impossible thing.   It’s very hard to make it stick and ruins the relationship and destroys the moment.

With my male friend, his lies became so obvious to me after a while that I would be embarrassed by his effrontery – so much so that I could not even protest the most obvious of lies.  I would stand and listen to him unravel his whoppers and be so flabbergasted that he would actually think that I was dumb enough to believe him, that I could not say anything in retort.  To challenge him would be so difficult that I would just say nothing and walk away shaking my head.

Of course, the more he “got away with it”, the more he did it.  It grew to such proportions that it absolutely destroyed our relationship.  I lost my trust in his center.  I never knew when he was lying or truthful because he didn’t know either.  To him, it was all the truth and to me, they were all lies.

In the end, I stepped away from this friendship and never worked with him again.  I’m not sure he ever really understood.  I think he was very hurt by my pull-back, but I could have never confronted him with the enormity of my doubt and the absolute reality of what I knew to be true.  I’ve realized that I got trapped in his consciousness and, by not nailing him, actually took part in his avoidance of the truth.  In the end he made a liar out of me.

It was an extremely difficult situation and, to this day, I don’t know how I could have fixed it – and so I walked away from the entire mess and never went back.

The second habitual liar that I’ve encountered was a woman that I employed.  She was extremely bright and could have been hugely effective in her job, but she too was such an inveterate liar that she even believed her own BS.  At first she would lie about the things she had accomplished, the promises she had made and the hopes that she offered me.  When none of these came to any reality, she would always have ten more in the ready.  As the lies began to pile up, she couldn’t remember her own lies and would change her stories and when I would question her change of story she would get angry and lie her way out of the confusion.

Because not everything was a lie – there were actually occasional truths mixed in – it took a longer time to see and be able to identify the patterns, but within months, I had seen enough and heard enough.

No one wants a lie to be a lie.  Lies are told to right a wrong, not wrong a right.  Lies are told to make something OK or better or even wondrous.  And so we too want them to be true, but after a while, when we finally see and understand the patterns of lying and suspect, and then know that we’re being lied to, we simply stand demoralized and wait for the next lie to appear.  When it appears, we see it immediately.

With this lady (she was no lady), as much as I wanted her to be successful, as much as I needed her to be successful, ultimately she was hollow.  There was no real substance to her.  It was all false fabrication.  I kept wishing it weren’t, hoping that some of the promises made would come true, but ultimately she was simply ineffective because she was so distant from the truth.

Even when I would confront her with the hollowness of her words and the failures of her so-called efforts, she would weave such a tale of falsehood to get out of the trap that she had gotten herself into that there was nothing I could do except relieve her of her duties and ultimately her job.

The saddest thing about the whole mess was that she was so caught up in her lying that she absolutely believed herself.  That was what was so wondrous to me.  She would say things that we all knew were wild fabrications of the imagination and absolutely believe them.  She was so used to lying that she instantly bought her own lies lock, stock and barrel.

I know only one way of healing such a condition.  To pray about it.  Stepping away from the person , as I did in both cases, let’s be clear, was not a healing solution.  It rid me of the problem to a great extent, but it did not heal the error.  A habitual liar has a mighty problem to deal with and it’s tougher, in a way, than a cancer.  A cancer you can see, you can feel.  It becomes something you have to deal with.  It confronts you.

Lying, on the other hand, is something that when confronted, the habitual liar simply lies their way around and lies their way past.  Ultimately this is a problem for a power greater than I.

Perhaps if I were a sharper judge of character and could nip it in the bud in the beginning that would help.  But we don’t want to start new relationships that way – looking for the untruths.

Perhaps if I were more centered myself and closer on a more consistent level to the absolute truth moment to moment this would help.  Sounds like I got something here…

Identify more with the truth.  Live the truth more fully.  Attract the truth.  Raise the bar.  Set a higher standard of truth around you.  Purify the atmosphere.  Demand honesty both from within and without.

Dictionary definition of lying: To pretend with intent to deceive.

Pretty damning…

Physician, heal thyself.

NOTE: You have just read Peter Link’s 400th Blog Post.  Cause for some form of quiet celebration among readers… )

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• Words Of Wisdom
• The Atheist
• The Changing Scene
• Send A Signal
• Through An Open Door

I’ve always been curious to meet an atheist.  Whenever someone announces themselves as one, I always try to take a moment (or often many more) and discus their atheism with them.  I like to first start with the obvious question, “Define God?”

I’ve had this opportunity 15-20 times in life and it’s always been the same experience.  Once they’ve explained their definition of God to me, I’ve always found myself saying back to them the same line: “Well then, I must be an atheist too because I don’t believe in that god either.”

Often the definition portrayed is archaic, anthropomorphic, and usually something taught them by confused parents or Sunday School teachers, but always ideas that I find equally hard to swallow.

Can this be the most misunderstood word in the human language?  Quite possibly so.  I’m not here to rectify that.  I have had an evolving, ever-changing struggle with the concept of God for over a half a century now.  I’m not at all sure what God is, but I do have a feeling for what He, She or It is not.

A guy in the sky with a long white beard?  No.  A He or a She?  No.  A Father/ Mother?  Sort of…  An infinite and eternal concept?  Probably.  Love, Life, Truth, Being, Interconnection?  Yes.

I saw an amazing video presentation on my TED app last week by Alexander Tsiaras called “Conception to birth – visualized”.  It’s a talk showing human development from conception to birth and beyond.  Mr. Tsiaras is and associate professor at Yale and presents a beautiful and compelling talk and video on birth.  In it, he states that, as a scientist, before he explored this project, he was essentially an atheist, but that in the course of working on the project, he realized the absolute necessity of a higher power.

As I watched his wondrous video, I too saw the absolute of God.  The biological mechanism that produces each of us, the mathematical structure that forms the fetus from the two cells of egg and sperm, the absolutely miraculous evolution of egg into human person he explains is mystery, magic and divinity.  The intelligence behind this marvel called birth is so staggering that it can only be the result of some higher power.

Now I’m not sure where to put all this material result of matter molecules forming human beings, because essentially I see this human experience as an illusion – like a dream – and basically unreal in the first place, but here is a most compelling drama played out for thought.

Where does all this material existence come from in the first place?  Or is there a first place to begin with?  If it isn’t, then it didn’t come at all and isn’t really here.  Whoa…  Getting pretty deep here, Pete.  In so deep I’ll never get out.

But simply looking at this material existence – at the wonders of the human body, the infinity and scale of the cosmos, the organization of nature, the breakdown of matter into its relative nothingness, the wondrous, unexplainable and inconceivable concepts that we pass through daily and take so for granted, how can anyone with a thought past themselves not see that there is something out there, in there, everywhere that is not controlling the organization and ebb and flow of these staggering concepts.

Something is in control of all this even when things seem out of control in our own lives.  Something is still in control of the building and sustenance of life, of the evolution and organization of nature, of the revolving of our tiny planet around our small sun, (much less the creation and disposition of the many universes around us).

It is all so far beyond us, so far beyond the confines of our limited thinking and understanding – even our own brains that we carry around in our own heads are pitifully understood.  And yet it all goes on working.

I sat in an airplane last month and watched the cars below all stay in their places on their side of the road and not run into each other – thousands, millions of cars all staying in their lanes – millions of drivers avoiding instant death moment to moment driving home after work.  Something else was clearly in control.  Sometimes one of these millions breaks the rules and swerves out of control, but trillions of moments go by as the universe works and inside each of those cars sits a man or woman focused on something totally different than staying alive – their love affairs, their shopping lists, the music on the radio.  They all naturally stay in their lanes within the laws of organization and only rarely does the system break down.

From my perch in the plane, all those tiny headlights traveling at 70 miles an hour, all making it home to dinner spoke to me of God in control of His/Its universe.

And so I say to all of you self-proclaimed atheists out there, “Redefine your god concept.  If you don’t like the name, call it ‘dog’.  I don’t care, but open your thought to a higher power, a universal organization, a force of nature – something beyond yourself that is perchance in control.

We do not live in chaos no matter how chaotic our lives.  We live in the immaculate organization of matter molecules and constituent masses so perfectly organized around us that we take the whole thing for granted moment to moment.  To whom do we owe that?

Next time you take a breath.  Next time your eye blinks.  Next time your heart beats.  Next time you smile. And on and on and on…

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Words Of Wisdom
• Loving God
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• Straight ‘A’s

Zero Mostel was a large man – not particularly tall, but large.  He had a voluptuous appetite for both food and all the rest of life as well.  Many people don’t know this, but besides being a huge Broadway star culminating in his unforgettable performance originating the role of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, he was also a wondrous painter.  He once invited me over to his studio which covered an entire floor of a rebuilt factory and was filled with the paintings of a lifetime.

Zero -- Self Portrait

I had the chance to get to know him and work with him in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses In Nighttown directed by Burgess Meredith for which I wrote songs and underscore.  Zero was probably well into his 70s by then and at about 5’ 10” and 280 lbs, carried a lot of girth.  Because of this largess, he sometimes had trouble walking and even standing for long periods of time.  When he would go to get up out of a chair everyone would want to rush over and help him up and, of course, he would have none of it.

Any yet he was one of those – one of those stories we so often hear about actors who have some infliction off-stage, yet seem to lose it on-stage when they become someone else.

From the first day of rehearsal, everyone in the company absolutely loved Zero.  You couldn’t help it.  Oh, he was loud and large in every way and full of himself, but he was an absolute star – totally magnetic, hilariously funny, lightening fast with a quip and probably the most loveable large teddy bear I’ve ever known.  By lunch after the first morning of the rehearsal, he knew everyone’s name by heart in a company of 45 actors.

That tells you a lot about how much he cared for his fellow actor.

Here was a man who drew me to my quiet spot in the wings night after night as I studied and marveled at just how the man did it – how he radiated life, how he found the energy for this huge, complex role of magnificent words and images and how he sustained this for eight grueling shows a week.  If there was ever a man who carried us all on his back, Zero was the man.

In one particularly memorable scene he had a dance.  I had scored the dance with an original Irish jig that I had written especially for Zero that he loved, complete with a hilarious elephant walk section which actually satirizes Zero himself.  I had even snuck in a short musical quote from Fiddler On The Roof referencing his iconic performance of If I Were A Rich Man, that nobody really recognized but Zero.  It was our secret and at the first musical rehearsal with the orchestra when he first heard it, he screamed “HAH” and wheeled on his heel and winked at me as he danced along.

He was, in this dance, unbelievably light on his feet and danced on his toes parodying the ballerina elephants in Disney’s Fantasia.  Oh how he loved to do this number!

One second show on a Saturday night well into the run you could see from the sweat flying off his body and his drenched costume that he was especially tired.  I had long ago placed a chair in an unused wing far downstage where I would often sit and watch him work.  On this particular night, and even some performances afterwards, he was just about a quarter of the way into this long celebrative dance which was, by now, on of our real showstoppers.

I could see that he was in some trouble out there.  He looked into the wing where I sat and in the middle of the dance mouthed the word, “Chair” to me.  I knew instantly exactly what he wanted and stood up and lifted the chair to my chest with the back away from me.  Zero did a quick re-choreographing of his steps which brought him over to me standing off-stage with the chair.  There, he grabbed the chair with a wink and, not missing a beat or a step, danced the chair to center stage, sat down and finished the entire number sitting.

The audience loved it.  It got the biggest applause yet and I swear that he did all of the choreography of the dance sitting, sweating, acting, panting, elephanting, and wowing his audience.

He was a star.  He let nothing get in the way of entertaining his audience.  If he couldn’t dance standing up, well then, he’d just do it sitting down.  And, by golly, he did.

Years later when I heard that Zero had passed on, I cried like a baby.  The world lost, not a man, but a huge force of nature that day and I got to watch him up close and personal.

Again, many years ago, I got a call one Saturday afternoon from a friend who said, “Hey Pete, I got two free tickets to see Elton John tonight at the Garden.  Wanna go?”

Does the sun shine?

I soon learned why the tickets were free.  They were the worst seats in the house.  The present Madison Square Garden is not square.  Rather it is round and actually rather oblong within.  The stage was placed at one end of the arena and the basketball court/hockey ring was filled with seats as well as 7/8ths of the rest of the house to fit the audience of 25,000 screamin’ rockin’ fans.

The only seats they didn’t sell was the section directly behind the stage at one end of the oblong.  Our seats were the last two seats before the roped off section, so we were effectually behind the stage and behind the band.  Had I bought the tickets, I would have been furious.  Before the concert, as we were ushered to our seats, my friend wanted to leave, but I somehow felt right at home once again having the opportunity to watch a star do his thing from the wings.

We faced the back of all the band members and if you’ve ever seen Elton, you know that he plays sitting, standing, jumping and dancing – and sings looking over his right shoulder into the mic so that he can turn his face to the audience.  We only occasionally saw his face in profile that night.  We were totally out of it.  We never saw the faces of the band our seats were so bad.  It was actually worse than standing in the wings.

So Elton put us on the piano.  Actually, Elton put everyone in the audience on the piano – all 25,000 people.  As a performer, he didn’t go out to us, he brought us to him.  That was his charisma.  We were all equal, no matter where our seats, we all had great seats – there on the piano.

I, of course, never moved from my chair, and yet I felt like he was singing and playing especially for me all night.  That’s what it means to be a star.  To me, that’s star quality.  I’ve had the occasion to witness it – we all have – and I really can’t tell you how he did it, but I know he did it.  I was there.

I think it is just one of those God-given gifts that some of the lucky ones get — a largess, or humanity, so powerful as to take over an arena of people and hold them transfixed for hours.  Call it talent; call it magnanimity, but I don’t think charisma like that can be taught.  It can be released by a great teacher if you have it to begin with, but, as a teacher, I’ve never really figured out how to teach it if ya’ don’t got it to begin with.

That’s really why I’ve been drawn to the wings all these years to study it and try to get an insight into where it comes from, how it’s done.

Stay tuned for more such explorations and sightings in my next couple of posts.

Even More Inspiration

• By The Numbers?
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Spiritual Scientist
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• The Changing Scene
• The Logic of Logic II

Back then, LPs were large enough – approximately 12”x12” – so that the cardboard cover they came in could have all kinds of information about the music and the artist.  I remember to this day literally paragraphs of my Ellington At Newport (Jazz Festival) that I played and read until the grooves wore out.

Back then they even gave a Grammy for “Best Liner Notes” each year.

Then the medium began to shrink – first to the size of a CD and now to nothing more than a digital download of the cover and the names of the songs if you’re lucky.  Lost along the way were other pictures besides the cover, lyrics and especially my beloved liner notes.

Several years back when I started producing CDs regularly I tried to keep the time-honored traditions by releasing CDs with 8 to 24 page booklet inserts.  Inspirational music depends a lot on its lyrical content and I always felt it necessary to include those lyrics and especially give credit to all the musicians, singers, designers, etc. who worked to complete the project.  But the cost of the booklet became prohibitive.

Today a 4 panel booklet CD will cost $1.14 per unit from the manufacturer if I buy at least 1000.  Take that booklet to 18-24 pages and the cost soars to over $3.00 per unit.  There go the profits.

So Watchfire Music and a few other artists turned to the Digi-Book.  What is a Digi-Book?  “A Digi-Book is an electronic version of an album’s liner notes and vital information.  This downloadable digital booklet contains photos, lyrics, and notes written by the artists and producers of the album as well as all sorts of information pertinent to the experience.”

Better yet, go look for yourself!  WFM’s latest is a gorgeous journey of nearly 40 full screen pages of pictures, lyrics, quotes, artist insights and credit material with bios that is visually stunning and completely informative regarding the experience of making the CD and other vital information.

Designed by WFM’s leading designer, Sara Gray, who also did Julia Wade’s Every Day gem of a booklet, this digital package looks fabulous on your computer screen and can actually be printed as well.  If you print, we suggest using Glossy Photo Paper for a beautiful treasured keepsake of the album experience.

But you don’t have to print it to enjoy it.  Backlit from your computer screen, it’s a colorful experience that is sure to delight anyone who is into the music on the album.

Best of all, it’s FREE!  You can download it and send it to a friend in just a click or two.

We even created a new section of the site just for Digi-Books!  Just go to the far right of the Nav Bar and click on Digi-Books.

I’m not going to write much more about it because that would be redundant to the experience, so take a moment or two right now to follow this link and experience it for yourself.

Oh yes, while you’re at it, Buy The Goin’ Home CD!  The whole package is worth far more than the price of admission.  That’s a promise.

We did a soft release last Thanksgiving Day and already, in one week, Goin’ Home is our best selling CD of the year.  I can’t tell you how excited we all are here at WFM at the promise that this CD and Digi-Book holds for the coming months.  We thank so many of you, literally hundreds of people who have already been so supportive of this project.

The package is finished. It’s available now.  We promised it for Christmas and delivered.  It’s a wondrous Christmas gift idea and with WFM’s Send To A Friend capability, it’s the easiest of shopping ventures – all from your easy chair in front of your computer.  Give the gift of music and a perspicacious look at the road to eternal life.

Don’t forget the Digi-Book!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• The Changing Scene
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• My Body

During this time we invented a company, Watchfire Music, to sell our product and to be the machinery behind all of our musical efforts.  It has been just that for us, and so we continue to try to make it all work during these historically toughest of times.

My approach has been to try new things to see if they would work, to stay creative and turn out good and great product and to sometimes pause and simply watch where the world, and especially our industry, is going next.

If we were a rich organization, if there were an endless financial stream of support, we could be leaders in the industry – we certainly know and understand the technology and keep up to date on the evolution of music and the Internet – but we don’t have that deep well of cash.

Many companies have tried to lead and gone down trying.  We have survived because we have stayed small and nimble, watching for the technology to evolve to a point where the industry would settle into a music delivery system that would make sense during this collapse and ever-changing time.

To a certain extent, it has worked.  We’ve not spent millions of investor money.  We have a powerful and well-developed ecommerce website that is pretty automated, easy to manage and graceful to change.  And we have gone from a start-up company to more than a breakeven company in these 5 years of both success and failure.

Have we failed?  You bet.  I could name 20 great ideas that have come and gone and now only exist in the depths of one of my hard drives.  Have we had our share of successes?  Another “You bet”.  After all, we’re still here.

Will we change things again?  A third YOU BET.

It seems now that with the success of Spotify and Pandora, music is now a streaming medium.  For the average Joe with their smart phones and iPods and iPads and whatever new fandangled thing is just over the next horizon, music is available to be searched and found, listened to at any time and collected in organized fashion – all for free.

This puts a serious dent in the ability to maintain a company that sells recorded music.  Oh yes, I know, there are still people who want to actually own their favorite music, still people who want to play their music on their CD players and hear the music at its quality best, but unfortunately they are a rapidly dwindling few.

Case in point:  We have one lovely man and wife set of “customers” who absolutely love WFM Radio and are often found writing us and suggesting new programming, updating of our channels and new ideas for better radio.  They are devoted listeners to our free radio.  They have never bought a single download.  They’re happy with what we give them, but do not buy.

I look at all this and wonder…

Where do we go from here?

Over the next months we will continue to watch, listen, work and pray.

This Christmas I have a new CD, Goin’ Home, coming out that is presently the hope of our company.  We’re going to do new things in new ways that we’ve never done before.  We’re going to try to do everything in our power and imagination to reach people with this life-changing and life-supporting idea.  We’re going to spend more money than ever before on promotion and packaging and quality.

My favorite quote from music blogger Bob Lefsetz sits before me here on my desk.  “But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?” It’s all I think about these days.  I will tell you this:

We’re gonna give it a shot.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• By The Numbers?
• Phoenix Rising
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now

“I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.  I want you to get up right now and go to the window.  Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’  I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’  Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to … stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Back in 1976, newsman Howard Beale, played by actor Peter Finch in the movie Network, uttered these immortal words that, for those of us who saw the movie and Finch’s riveting performance, have stuck with many of us for a quarter century.

Back then it was a grand idea as, in the movie, thousands rushed to their windows and did just that.

Today it’s really happening.  And it’s a good thing!

Bloggers now take down selfish companies.  Egypt’s people stage a peaceful revolt and take back their government.  Bank of America abandons its plan to charge customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards for purchases. Only a month earlier, the bank had announced the new charge, immediately setting off a huge uproar from consumers.  The Occupy Wall Street movement grabs the attention of millions and whether you’re for it or agi’n it, you have to value it as the great American dream of free speech in action.

Netflix‘s video subscription service lost 800,000 customers in the third quarter —the biggest exodus in its history— even as its earnings rose 65 percent.

The losses were larger than management had previously warned. The unwelcome surprise, contained in financial results released, was compounded by a forecast calling for millions of Netflix Inc.’s DVD-by-mail subscribers to cancel the service in reaction to dramatic price increase that took effect last month.

The bad news bruised already battered stock as the shares plunged by more than 26 percent.

Netflix lost its luster among consumers and investors by raising prices as much as 60 percent in the U.S. and bungling an attempt to spin off its DVD-by-mail rental service.

The people spoke.  The people acted.  The people won.  The people sent signals.  They got up off their chairs, went over and opened their windows, stuck their heads out and shouted, “WE’RE AS MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Why is this so possible today 25 years after Network?  Because we now have a tremendously effective network called the Internet.  Instant communication banding together the peoples of the world.  Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and a plethora of other social communities organizing hundreds of millions of people to form a voice of the people.

We’re not always doing it right yet.  We’ve still got a lot to learn, but we’ve now got this amazing tool that makes peaceful revolution possible.

Let’s use it.  Let’s send a signal.  No longer do we have to take it on the chin from big business.  No longer do the rich have to get richer as the poor get poorer.  No longer do dictators have to control entire countries.  No longer do we have to throw open our windows and scream our protests into the night.  We, the people, now have a tremendous meeting hall.  It’s called the Internet.

Use it.  Send a signal.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• How To Handle A Liar
• The Atheist
• Tempo
• Words Of Wisdom
• Straight ‘A’s

Periodically I watched Steve’s addresses to his company touting his company’s new ideas and features with religious anticipation regarding what improvements he would bring to my life and work.  My life centered around the Mac computer both in the studio and at home.  I’m on the computer so much that I’ve learned to mouse equally with both hands – a left-handed mouser in the studio and a right-handed mouser in my home office.

Steve, with his clever wit, cool demeanor and sparkling eyes, was always three steps ahead of the game and out front of the pack.  I didn’t always agree with his choices, but I used them and grew to deeply respect his individuality.  He was the rare combination of artist, inventor and businessman and hugely successful at each — a true American hero.

Recently I read his sister’s eulogy, given at his memorial, and found him again to be leading me in yet another one of life’s endeavors.

As most of you know, I’m pretty consumed with my Goin’ Home – On Heaven And Beyond CD project these days.  In short, it’s about the transition we all face going from this world to the next and the meeting of it head on with open eyes and wonder. It’s about the eternality of life and its various preparations and speculations on the hereafter.

Right in the middle of the climactic phase of the project, my hero up and takes the journey himself.

His sister speaks about his last days in her eulogy:

His tone, his sister said, was “like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.”

“Even as he struggled physically in his last hours”, she said, “there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.”

“He was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.”

With his family surrounding him, his sister said, Jobs’ last words were: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

When I read this on my iPad, I just leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and smiled at his boyish wonder and anticipation of adventure.  Once again, even after leaving us, my hero showed us the way to live – and the way to die.

I realized that I loved this man though I never met him.  I loved his creative mind and I loved his wonder for life and, most importantly to me at this moment, I loved his open-minded excitement about moving on.

Goin’ home
Goin’ home
I’m a goin’ home
Quiet like
Some still day
I’m jes’ goin’ home

It’s not far
Jes’ close by
Through an open door
Work all done
Care laid by
Goin’ to fear no more

From Goin’ Home
Music and Lyrics by Antonin Dvorák & V.Labenske

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Nothing
• Spiritual Scientist
• How To Handle A Liar
• Words Of Wisdom
• The Center and Circumference of Pain