No Emotion

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it. To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

As a composer who has been thinking about this fascinating world of music for about 40 years now, I’ve come to think of music as essentially aural symbols of emotion. The drama of a song is hugely important to me as I write and governs its flow. Without emotion, what do you have? A passel of notes arranged by some intellectual method which most often results in a boring song – boring, because it does not go anywhere. Devoid of emotion, you have a song devoid of interest. It’s why people are not that attracted to computer written music. The computer is smart and can arrange music in lightening speed, creating millions of compositional patterns, but no computer has ever written a song that captures the public consciousness and probably never will unless somehow man is able to teach computers how to process with human emotion.

So I say to my friend, the soloist who sings with no emotion, please don’t sing my songs that way. Let the reality of your emotions be expressed through the lyrics and the melodies of the song. Touch people’s hearts with your feelings. Tickle their imaginations with your deep understanding of the full range of emotion that plays through a song. Share your emotional insights of these sacred songs with your audience, your congregation, so that all may take advantage of your spiritual insight.

When you hide your emotion or lid it down, you simply cut off the real experiential possibilities of the song. Bring your own particular corner of life to the song through your true feelings so that I may see the truth through your eyes. And if your personality, or better, your individuality, shines through the song, I say we’re all better off for it. If you can bring a tear to my eye or a laugh to my heart in the course of the solo, that really means that you have touched me so deeply with the truth of the song that I am moved – moved from one point of understanding to another higher one. And that, my friend, is why I go to church.

The Sneeze

March 16th, 2009

Perhaps you’ve heard or read this story as it was passed around. It’s worth repeating.

They walked in tandem, each of the ninety-two students filing into the already crowded auditorium. With their rich maroon gowns flowing and the traditional caps, they looked almost as grown up as they felt.

Dads swallowed hard behind broad smiles, and Moms freely brushed away tears.

This class would NOT pray during the commencements — not by choice, but because of a recent court ruling prohibiting it.

The principal and several students were careful to stay within the guidelines allowed by the ruling. They gave inspirational and challenging speeches, but no one mentioned divine guidance and no one asked for blessings on the graduates or their families.

The speeches were nice, but they were routine… until the final speech received a standing ovation.

A solitary student walked proudly to the microphone. He stood still and silent for just a moment, and then, it happened. All 92 students, every single one of them, suddenly SNEEZED!

The student on stage simply looked at the audience and said, “God bless you, each and every one of you!” And he walked off stage.

The audience exploded into applause. This graduating class had found a unique way to invoke God’s blessing on their future with or without the court’s approval.

This is a true story; it happened at the University of Maryland.

To Breathe Life Into…

March 7th, 2009

The root definition of the word “inspire” is from the Greek. Inspir – to breathe life into.

If there was ever a time that the world needs Inspiration, it is now. It is Inspiration that can lead us all out of this mess. And we’re not just talking about financial inspiration here, we’re talking about something much purer, much more universal, much deeper.

If we all look each day to inspire and to be inspired – how better can we lift our lives. Can we breathe life into each other? Can we inspire ourselves through giving? Can inspirational thought lift the countenance of the world? You bet.

A depression is just that – depression. To press down on. Rather we should be lifting up. It was human beings that got us into this mess. It’ll be inspired human beings that get us out. I’m gonna do my part. I’ve decided. If each of us lifts our lives just a little, maybe a lot, this world will work. It’s on each of us.

Breathe a little life into someone today. Inspire.

For more inspiration, visit our Inspirational Music Website, Watchfire Music.

~ Peter Link

On: Writer's Block

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.

I also find that if I do move into the moment that most writers recognize as writer’s block – when the creative juices just aren’t there or the ideas just aren’t flowing, that it means that I’m either not God connected or I simply don’t know enough about my subject. So I go to work. If I’m not God connected, I stop and connect – close my eyes, pray, focus on the simple truths of life, meditate on the source of my inspiration, even simply watch my breathing. I don’t need to do this for more than a minute or so to find my connection. Then I go back to the work at hand.

If I am still blocked, I do my part in the collaboration. I research my subject. I learn more about it, I try to look at it from different angles, I try to think more deeply about the moment

I’m all about being in the moment. I find that when I’m truly in the moment and surrounded by the ideas of the subject, full of the research that I have done, pregnant with the insights I have dreamed, then I’m ready to write. I’ll be on the piano or sitting with the guitar, and something in me will tell me to turn on the recorder, because here it comes. It’s not magic; it’s preparation. It’s about knowing my subject. It’s about having my own special corner on life and getting to the essence of that.

Neil Simon once told me that he doesn’t get writer’s block because he writes every day. He stays in shape – like an athlete. I’ve found this to be a great life lesson. I stay in shape to write by writing. And if for whatever reason I’m unable to write each day (sometimes life just takes me in other directions) I can get back to the flow pretty quickly.

If I haven’t written lately, I will always take the first day back and just play (a warm up), put no demands on myself for that day, just play in the music or the words, jot down phrases that come to mind, sing a few songs, become one again with my guitar and most importantly, put no pressure on myself to “come up with something”. This way the flow begins naturally – the flow with God and idea. It’s all a part of the research.

Then, usually, the next day starts with an excitement for the process, not a fear of blank. I keep pressure at bay by focusing on the truths of the concept. If nothing comes, I go back and tighten my concept. I’ve always said that if you can’t make a decision, then you just don’t know enough about your subject. Decisions should make themselves. When I’m fully prepared or fully informed, there’s no decision to make because the truth is revealed by the preparation. Work flows because I’m prepared and excited about communicating a clear idea.

Summary: Don’t buy into writer’s block. Don’t make a mysterious thing of it like it is some mental disease. It’s just another word for lack of research, lack of focus and mostly, lack of connection to the source.

Get connected. Do the research. Let it flow.

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For more information about Peter Link and his company, Watchfire Music,
please visit us at Watchfire Music.com, or click on the blog entry's title and be automatically redirected to our site.