July 2016

While Don heaps one spoonful of Folgers instant coffee in his morning cup, I had the unfortunate opportunity to learn I need two or three to make my cup worth while. Between calls to medical personnel, teaching, and now time in Reveal Audio Studios, I haven't remembered to stop at the grocery store yet this week.

But that will change soon. Sam and Courtney are coming for dinner and even spending the night. So a food stop is next.

I was hoping Nathan would join, but he's sitting beside me in the studio as I type so I won't complain... or rather, I won't complain too much.

I wrote three songs this summer and even sang them at Eddie's Attic, a local song writer's venue way across town. Snot filled my head and congestion covered my vocal cords, meaning I didn't sound great. But the poet needed to express and the experience proved therapeutic.

Listening to Nathan record background tracks for those songs today takes me far from the week of violence. For years ago, when I recorded my first two CD's  in this studio (available here on Amazon), Nathan was in middle school, unaware that his cords held a power beyond my own.

So while families fight, politicians haggle, and rioters destroy, we're building vocal tracks, harmonizing our genetically linked voices in a way only family can.

And while you may not be singing with those who mean a lot to you, I like to believe that in some small way, you're attempting some form of harmony too. Does that make me a Pollyanna? Like I'm just trying to create a world where the good outweighs the bad?

For even as bombs blow and murderers murder, I wonder if there's any chance the quiet good actually outweighs the catastrophic bad.

Deep in the book of Romans Paul commanded, "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace" (Romans 6: 13 -14 NIV).

Even on the worst of days I wonder if there's any chance there are more instruments of righteousness than wickedness?  It sure doesn't seem like it most of the time. But for every act of evil, messengers of hope arise, providing aid in a multitude of ways.

So when July came to a close and the violence seemed unending, I spent days finishing this song. In fact, I had so many lyric potentials that I shared them at a Schreer family gathering solely seeking input.

Thus the final product is a conglomeration of verbal ideas from Papa, Deb, Mary, Sam, Courtney, and Nathan Schreer.

I wasn't going to record it today but after hoodlums trashed another city, inciting civil unrest, it seemed fitting to make it available.

Why the serious words are set to a circus-like accompaniment, I don't know. It just came out of my fingers that way and remains unlike anything I've ever composed.

May it stir your heart like it did mine.

photo credit: música y café via photopin (license)