Sparks from the Fire

Inspirational Story:
Lyman was 14 years old when Canada entered The Great War.  It was August 5, 1914 and Britain declared war on behalf of the whole British Empire.  Lyman was sitting in school when word came and all the boys simply got up, left class and rushed down to the recruiting office to join up.

Because they were only 14 none of then were allowed to join, but because Lyman was big for his age and lied about his age, he not only got in, but also after a few short months found himself in the trenches of France fighting the Germans. (more…)

Pete, with Wildcats hat – Summer before Link's Leopards

Putting Inspirational music aside for the moment, I’d like to recount still one of the most inspirational stories of my life.  This blog is about ALL things Inspirational, so here goes…

The Glendale Wildcats were suddenly defunct.  It was April and I was in the 6^th grade.  Baseball was my life.

The St. Louis Cardinals with Stan Musial as its Hall of Fame player were my passion, but the Glendale Wildcats was the Little League team I had played on the summer before.

The Wildcats had lost their sponsor and that meant no team, no baseball for the summer — an impossible situation to face for a 6^th grader. (more…)

I’m writing you from inside the music.  I suppose I’ll come out sometime, but I don’t know when.  It’s pretty safe in here and I’ll have to admit, I rather like it and sometimes wonder if perhaps I just shouldn’t stay here the rest of my life.

I just spent the last 4 days immersed in the otherworld of notes and sound, strings and woodwinds, Logic and Kontakt, push and pull.  ‘Immersed’ is a shallow description of where I have existed for the last 96 hours.  ‘Lost’ is perhaps more accurate, but I can’t say I was ever lost, but rather ‘found’.

I came halfway out occasionally to grab a quick bite of something to eat or drink, check the Yankee game scores on espn.com, but even that would only be a quick half hour and the song would still be raging through my brain, the ideas still formulating, the desire to rush back into the studio and sketch the next 4 bars overwhelming.

I did sleep in spurts – far from my normal schedule – sometimes in mid afternoon, sometimes catching two hours at 8 and not knowing if it were PM or AM.  I didn’t read my email; I did not answer the phone except to talk to the Missus who was away for 4 days.  I did not go out.  I simply lived in the music.

Even as I write I feel myself slipping out of that world and back into the normal one.  I don’t like the feeling.  It’s really good in there.  There’s no pressure, no sense of time, no sense of place, no interruption of thought, only pure problem solving on the most creative plain.  It’s 96 hours poured into 4 minutes and 30 seconds of song.  It’s building a house from the bottom up.  It’s a kind of madness perhaps, but an exquisite madness.

Perhaps I should explain myself, but to do that would be to further stand outside the experience and I’m not sure I really want to do that yet.  But here goes.  I’m orchestrating and sometimes composing a new album for Julia Wade.  We’ve been really slow to start mainly because of her far too busy schedule and my own duties at Watchfire U.  The CD is long overdue.  She hasn’t done an album in a couple of years and that’s a sin.

How can a singer be too busy to do an album?  Ridiculous!  But I lived it.  I saw it happen and I’m partly responsible.  But cast the past aside; we’ve started – I think.  I know I have and she promises to be not far behind – still clearing out a world of responsibilities.

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• You are the light of the world.  Live your life as if this were true because it is true.
• But can you build something so grand, people will be drawn to you?
• God, use me as an instrument of thy peace.
• It’s much easier to be done than satisfied.
• Be not slothful in business, but fervent in Spirit – serving the Lord.

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

My son, Dustin and his lady friend, Lauren, took me to see Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland for Easter last night and I had a bit of a resurrection.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.  I literally did not want to blink for fear of missing something.

Hats off to Mr. Burton and his fabulous international crew for making this picture.  It could be the perfect story told in 3D.  I fell right down the rabbit hole with that little girl and spent 2 delighted hours in Tim’s surrealistic dream.

The experience made me so grateful for my eyes, so grateful for this magical God-endowed gift called sight.  What a trip – to be able to see!  What a concept!  When you really think about it, it’s our most precious gift besides simply being.

To be born blind must be one of life’s saddest tragedies, but to go blind must be even worse because then you know what you’re missing.

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In the long run, what does it matter?  Christianity’s biggest split seems to me to be was he or wasn’t he.  Was Jesus God?  Just doesn’t make sense.  To me it seems like he was not.

Don’t mean to stir up a hornet’s nest here (or maybe I do), but I think a ton of people here got it wrong.

For my money, Jesus was the way-shower, the exemplar.  He was sent here to be an example for us on the subject of how to live our lives.  He was a human being just like us and that was the point.  He showed us our potential – what we could be if we knew what he knew and practiced what he practiced.

He taught us how to think, how to treat our fellow man, how to heal, how to live.

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Well, it’s truly just around the corner.  I know we’ve been promising this for a long time now, but finally I can say for certain the immortal words, “Coming Soon!”

We’ve been talking about this widget/gadget/app for over a year now and I’m more than happy to report that we’re in the last stages of production.  It’s so “done” that I’m finishing up the programming for each genre this coming week and you should see the first beta tests this April.

We’re excited here at WFM because you’ve been asking for this for some time now.  People I speak to every day have said repeatedly, “I go to Watchfire Music every day just to listen to the samples.”  This has actually been somewhat frustrating to me because as a composer/producer I want our customers and fans to hear the whole song – not just a 1:00 sample.

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Stephen Schwartz - Composer/Lyricist

Many years ago when I was in my mid 20s, I served as composer-in-residence at the New York Shakespeare Festival for around five years.  It was an unbelievable opportunity to learn on the job, get major experience writing for the theater and work with the best people in the business.

Most composers for the theater are happy if they can get a show on and out there in the public eye once every three to five years.  In my five years at the Festival I did music for over 40 productions.

In the course of doing all that work I had the opportunity to meet and work with the best talent in the world in the theater.  At the time, though I often wrote lyrics stumbling blindly along, I always collaborated with a lyricist when it came to anything important.  My abilities as a composer were far ahead of my lyric writing chops.

I remember one evening while there at NYSF running into Stephen Schwartz who was a contemporary.  Steven had written the music and lyrics for Godspell and Pippin and later for Wicked and a host of animated Disney films.  I was looking for a lyricist for a project at the NYSF and asked him if he might be interested in collaborating.

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