Part 2 — As a producer:
It’s a busy time. Spent the weekend in the studio working on two projects. Will spend today, the day after Valentines Day, celebrating 14 year anniversary with the Missus. I’ll actually take the day off.
The rest of the winter months and spring are loaded with music projects for Watchfire Music – so many that I must get better organized and get my arms around them all. Here’s a list: (more…)
OK, so here’s my head start on our Christmas List for 2010 for Watchfire Music. Getting ahead of myself? No, not really. Just puttin’ it out there in the atmosphere. As you will see, it’s a pretty heady wish list, but I believe entirely possible and necessary for the continued development of the company.
Is this an announcement of what’s coming? I’d like to think so, but I know better considering all that would have to happen to get it all done. That’s why I’ll still consider it a wish list rather than an announcement. But you can bet on the fact that we’ll be bustin’ our tails this next year to try to get these things done for you.
First, our new major effort of expansion will be an entirely new division of Watchfire Music entitled “My Father’s House” – a spiritual community for youth of all ages to visit, meet, discuss, workshop, interact with, and explore. Watchfire Music is partnering with youth leader and visionary, Matthew Hoffman of Tampa, Florida in this dramatic build-out of the site. The first focus will be Hoffman’s modernization of the Ten Commandments, a musical trans-denominational interpretation on CD entitled “Laws 2 Live By”.
Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we welcome you all to The Ira Awards – the music industry’s evening celebrating its most underappreciated creators – the lyricists.
Ira Gershwin
In the music industry, when the royalty split is determined for songwriters, the industry standard for royalties is that the composer gets 50% and the lyricist gets the other 50%. Each contributor to the song shares equally. But when it comes to publicity, notoriety, and public appreciation, that’s where the equality stops. The composer always gets the lion’s share of the attention.
And so to right this inequality, to re-balance the appreciation for these underappreciated wordsmiths, I’ve decided to create just what this world needs most – another awards show – The Ira Awards, presented by Watchfire Music. Also I’ve decided to name it after the most underappreciated lyricist of them all – Ira Gershwin.
The Art of Healing – Step 1
At a young age I was taught the art of healing by my mother. She taught me to use basically four steps. The first was a protective or preventative measure and 2-4 were the steps I should take if I were to fail to practice the first.
Because of step one I rarely get sick or have physical problems. If I, for whatever reason, get lazy, forgetful, confused or even afraid, and have to move to steps 2-4, I at least have a plan to follow. When I’m smart or prescient enough to follow that plan to a ‘T’, I have always been a successful healer.
What proof do I have of this? I’ve never taken any medicine, I’ve only had one short visit with a doctor in my life, I’ve never felt the need to carry medical insurance and never been admitted to a hospital.
This, by the way, does not make me special. It is not really what some would deem as a ‘gift’, it’s really just normal practice. If your mom taught you to look both ways before crossing the street, you got a gift from mom. I got many gifts from my mom. Healing was one of them. Besides the fact that she gave birth to me, it was probably the best one.
OK, here comes the Fourth of July, the heat, fireworks, independence, food and drink. We here offer “all things Inspirational” and inspiration comes in all sizes – large, small, heavy and light. This one’s light. So sit down, put your feet up, have the butler pour you a cool one, and take the load off.
iced tea
Some things in life are so simple that, yes, they are inspired. I found one years ago that gets me through the summer. I like iced tea with lots of lemon to balance the sweet. Here’s a recipe for a no-cal drink that’s super easy to make without the no-cal taste and totally refreshing.
I use Crystal Light Natural Lemon Iced Tea and Crystal Light Natural Lemonade – you know, the kind that comes in those little 2” plastic canisters. If ya’ don’t have a butler, just rip the top off one of each yourself, pour them both into a 1 gallon jug and add water. Stir and serve with ice and a tall glass.
You don’t even have to cut up those messy lemons – the lemony flavor being just right from the lemonade. I’ve heard this called an Arnold Palmer, but to me it’s just a Half n’ Half – half iced tea and half lemonade. Now I didn’t say it was an original, but I do feel that I’ve refined the process down to its basic simplicity.
Everybody mourns in his own individual way. Some wail, some must crawl off by themselves, some need to be with others, some need to get drunk, others prefer to pray. To each his own.
I prefer the silence of meditation and memories. I prefer to mourn quietly. I don’t want to do it for a long time as I’d rather celebrate the life, but I do honor the act of mourning even though I believe in life eternal — especially for those who leave us seemingly early.
I lost over a hundred friends in the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Back then, when someone you knew was diagnosed as HIV positive, that’s when you mourned. By the time they passed, you were grateful the ordeal was over for them. It wasn’t fun and I’m sorry to say that I got used to it somewhat. It became a regular occurrence in my life. Who was next, one wondered, and it was always somebody.
Two wonderful people that Julia and I knew lost their son, Maurizio, in the late 90s Swiss Air crash over Halifax. We went through this experience with these two loved ones and shared their grief. Up until this point in life I pretty much left grieving to all the others and tried to focus on the positives of the life lost, but in this situation I got caught in the middle of it and fully experienced the parent’s powerful grief.
God stands at his conveyor belt. The unborn babies come down the belt one by one as God stands with his hypodermic needle injecting life into the babys’ butts. He knows he has to push the plunger each time only down to the red line, but even God gets tired of this routine, loses concentration and consequently sometimes his thumb slips and He mistakenly pushes the plunger all the way down past the red line. “Oops”, He says, “there’s another performer!” And he tosses that baby over into another bin.
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was one of these. In fact, you might say that with Michael you had the one where God’s thumb slipped the most. For about a decade he was arguably the most talented man on the planet and definitely the world’s greatest performer.
In my lifetime I would place Michael right up there in the top 5 with The Beatles, Judy Garland, Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra. We watched Thriller until many of us knew all the steps. We totally rocked out to Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, I’m Bad, and Billie Jean, and my favorite will always be Man In The Mirror. That music stop into the big key change will ever be the epitome of great pop music. Michael was a great rocker, but the King Of Pop.
On top of it all he was a great innovative dancer, right up there with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. It wasn’t just Thriller that thrilled. Every time I ever saw Michael dance, my jaw would drop at this wondrous human being. The rhythm that poured from his body and his music was way beyond the rest of us mere mortals.
I was a fan. I was in awe of his talent. I loved him for being a super human performer and then I came crashing down just like the rest of you as he went over some mad crazy edge in his life and lost his balance. I laughed at him and dissed him and pitied him and finally shook my head and walked away from him as he became more and more confused with his own identity.
He never really had a boyhood — he was always out there entertaining us – and so in his adulthood he turned to playing with boys, hanging out with them and God knows what else.
He was a consummate performer, always trying to make the song, the step, the move new, better, best and he often succeeded. So it was only natural that he try to remake himself and his look new, better, best. For a minute there, when he had his long hair and his glove and his white socks, he succeeded again. But he couldn’t stop tinkering and for some reason thought he might try to make his make-up permanent. He was great, but he wasn’t God, and he found that out the hard way – losing his nose in the process.
(If you are looking the first installment of this article, simply visit In God We Trusted-Part 1)
So there we were, in total blackness. The bottom half of my body still wedged into the tightness of the 2’x3’ crawl space tunnel and the top half sticking out into some unknown space, me on my back, laying in an underground stream, with my four friends still in the tunnel behind me. It’s amazing how your other senses take over when one sense is dysfunctional.
The Way Out
I could not see, but the smell of the space had changed. It was no longer of rock and stale air, but now of clean, pure air with a strong hint of mineral water. It was a good smell, a freeing smell. The first thing I did was to elicit a loud but short “Ah” into the darkness. The return of the reverb totally surprised me. It told me that I was in a huge room. I took my flashlight from my belt and shined it into the darkness, but the room was so big that its beam found nothing but empty space. I whispered excitedly back to my spelunking buddies, “Pass me a flare.”
I lit the flare over my head as I lay prone on my back so as not to catch fire from the flare. As the flare flared in its brilliant redness, I shut my eyes to protect them from the sparks from the fire (no pun intended). The sudden light took long moments to get used to, my eyes being accustomed to the blackness of the cave tunnel.
When I could finally see, the room was bathed in red. The top half of my body was sticking out of a hole in the wall of this room about 40 feet up the wall as the stream trickled down the wall beneath me. In rainier times, the trickle would probably turn into a waterfall with a 40 foot drop. I did not feel precarious; rather I felt freed from the claustrophobia of the tunnel.
Peter Link, Creative Director of Watchfire Music, is the author of this blog. We'll be looking at all things inspirational, especially music. Read on and find out more about Inspiration on Planet Earth and beyond. And... you can also find out more about Peter at his personal Web site and also on the "About Peter Link" page below.
