Sparks from the Fire

Picture of Peter Link???

Yesterday I contemplated the bone head of a skeleton.  I thought to myself, “Is that what I look like inside?”  Pretty weird.  Then I thought of my pancreas.  I don’t think of my pancreas very often.  In fact, I don’t even know where it is.

It’s mine.  I’ve carried it around for over 5 decades and I don’t even know where it is.  I mean, I know where my shoes are and I’ve only had them for about 3 months now.  But my pancreas!  Come to think of it, I don’t even know why I have it!  I mean I guess I’m glad I do, but why?  What’s it for?

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A family pastor once said at a funeral. “Ed is like a cracked walnut, the shell is here and the nut is gone.”

I’m back to work on my new CD, Going Home, reflections on crossing over and beyond.

It’s a little tricky sometimes writing music about death. It’s a subject that I’m presently fascinated with, but I’m not looking at it in the usual ways – tragic, sad, devastating and final.

Rather, I’m trying to see the experience from different angles – trying to make some practical sense of it all.

I’m also trying to make the CD an inspiring piece about an experience that we all will face some day and probably don’t consider enough in our lives. Yes, there’s clearly a deep sadness attached to the experience. We usually don’t want to leave and hopefully, there are folks around us who don’t want us to go.

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The Missus and I love the movies. In less busy times we would go twice a week.  Now we rely more on Netflix to serve our passion.  It’s a hobby for me – one of two – the movies and the Yankees.

I love a good adventure and will sit through most chick flicks and even get a little teary-eyed along with the Missus. We’ve also gotten into the documentaries of late because when it comes to the normal everyday movies, well, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I don’t know whether it’s me or the industry, but it just seems that there’s really less and less that I want to drag my weary bones to. So Netflix really has been a kind of savior for us. If I can’t find anything new that’s of interest, then I can always go and visit an old chestnut.

Occasionally I take a chance and stumble across something terrific. In the case of The Adventure of English, I did just that. To fortify my new tangential direction as writer/blogger, I decided that this was a title that might even teach me something.

Usually with the documentaries, when they come in multi- parts, I like to break them up a bit and pepper them with a good war story or even a chick flick, but in this case I forgot to check and ended up getting all 8 episodes in a row. I groaned at the thought of going back to English class 8 nights in a row.

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It used to be I would write a song and once it was finished – lyrics and music – then I would begin to look for someone to record it. Perhaps make a demo of it and put it out there. Wait months before someone might pick it up. Then wait again until they recorded it and the album came out. Even then, I might never get the feedback from it. After all, most people never check to see who wrote a song on an album.

In fact, I’ve often found that most people think the singer always writes the songs and they’re often shocked to hear that they often don’t.

As an example, Barry Manilow is a good, solid songwriter, but he did not write his hits. They were written by other guys. Among the hits, which he did not, write are “Mandy“, “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again“, “Weekend in New England“, “Looks Like We Made It“, “Can’t Smile Without You” and “Ready to Take a Chance Again“.  Even “I Write The Songs,” for example, was not written by Barry, but was written by Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys.

Barry did write “Copacabana.”

This is to take nothing away from Barry. He’s a great performer with a tremendous career. This is only to give a proper nod to the songwriters who often toil in obscurity.

Well, that said, now it’s a bit of a different world. It’s now the world of the Internet, of blogs and instant messaging and email and instant everything. It may be a lot more confusing, but it certainly is faster.

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I am inspired by my work. For the past year writing this blog, I have gotten up nearly every night and sat here and thought and wrote about what inspires people, what inspires me and just what Inspiration is. I’ve mentioned before that the root definition of the word “Inspiration” is ‘to inspire, to breathe life into”. I’ve learned during the course of this that this is oh so true.

The building and development of Watchfire Music over these past 3 years has been extremely time consuming, to say the least. We’ve all worked our tails off to bring this idea to fruition. For me, it’s been a hugely creative process and I’ve learned more these past 3 years about business than in the previous total years of my life.

But the process has short-changed me as a composer – especially in the last 6 months. I’ve looked down that hallway in my apartment here into my dark and lonely studio and wondered if I’d ever get back in there again. In the course of the last year, until last week, I had written just one song all year. That’s the first time that has happened in many decades.

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My wife, Julia, and I love to go to the movies. Who doesn’t? It’s our favorite thing to do when we get out of the house and we’re fortunate to have about 25 theaters a block away in Times Square.

Now I’m not any more of a movie critic than you are, but I know good acting when I see it and I am especially fascinated by good director’s work.

Last night we saw both. In fact, we saw, for me, the second really good movie of the summer (the first being Star Trek).

(500) Days of Summer is billed as “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. This post modern love story is never what we expect it to be – it’s thorny yet exhilarating, funny and sad, a twisted journey of highs and lows that doesn’t quite go where we think it will.”

I love these kinds of movies where the stories are original. Far too often I recognize plots where I can see a bunch of Hollywood writers sitting around in a room trying to think up the next plot twist together. These stories, with their cliché concepts leave me pretty cold. I don’t much go in for formula writing. (more…)

I’m not a writer who’s worried about writer’s block. I’ve learned where creativity comes from — God. The first thing I do when I sit down to compose is to pray because it puts me in tune with the force that I know to be God. My watchword is, “The worst things I write come from me; the best things I write come through me.” So, I titled my own album, “Thru Me.”

The creative process is really about connecting to God – connecting to the source of inspiration. I understand that if I connect myself with God, who is All, I connect myself with the allness of life — all the energy, spirit, soul, and beauties of truth.

Then, once I’ve connected, if I have the human mechanical ability to orchestrate, play the guitar, piano, etc., I do my part in the creative process. It’s a collaboration with God or a collaboration with the allness of life. God is the source of creativity, and we humans invent the story line or arrange the musical notes. God supplies the impetus.

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