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.

Insight

March 10th, 2009

I like to think of a blog as a modern day soapbox. For some of you, the term “soapbox” may be so archaic as to be unheard of.

Wikipedia to the rescue:

“The term originates from when speakers would stand on a wooden box meant for holding soap. The term is also used metaphorically to describe a person engaging in often flamboyant impromptu or unofficial public speaking, as in the phrases “He’s on his soapbox”, or “Get off your soapbox.”

Well. I’ve been dabbling in this modern form of “soapboxing” for about a year now. It is, of course, a social phenomenon that has gratefully taken an amazing hold on the public consciousness. Probably some form of grass roots negative reaction to today’s politicians. Except, whereas the old form of soapboxing was mostly political, today’s blog can be just about anything that’s on your mind. All made possible by this amazing invention called the internet.

What’s on my mind these days is Inspiration - all things inspirational. And I’ve now decided, mostly because of the urging of others and the state of our world, to try to get up here on this soapbox every day and establish a real consistency. It’s my promise to you.

There’s one real positive difference between blogging and soapboxing: You’re invited to bring your own soap box to the party. You’re invited to respond. Without you feeding back, it’s just me out here yakkin’.

So get on your soapbox. Join the fun.

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

Long Live New Music!

March 6th, 2009

In the old record business model it used to be that the life span of an artist’s new CD was about 3 months. After 3 months, if a song or CD did not “break out”, the record company would usually give up on the CD and stop the promotion. Then the CD would die. Often, because of the high costs of storage, the excess CDs would simply be destroyed.

It usually takes 6 months to a year to create a CD. Why then so short a life span?

Because the money it took to promote it nationally, even locally, through radio was so exorbitant. In those short 3 months a company could literally spend millions of dollars basically promoting one single off the CD. If it tanked, bye bye to all the work. And most of them did just that – they tanked. For a great variety of reasons – many of which had nothing to do with the worth of the music.

Today, it’s an entirely different story. Radio is fast slipping away as the communication medium for music. The internet is the new radio. No longer do artists have to manufacture tens of thousands of CDs in preparation for launch. Digital downloads took care of that. The high cost of storing all those jewel cased CDs does not exist anymore. Promotion on the internet relies more on smart creativity than the almighty buck.

So now good and even great music does not have to die and disappear. It can simply sit there in virtual space and wait to be discovered. And so in a very intriguing way, music always remains new – new to the listener who discovers it.

This is one of the high concepts behind Watchfire Music. It’s a trusted destination for people of all faiths and cultures to explore, experience and ultimately purchase new Inspirational music – no matter how old it is. It is always new. Fifty years from now it can still be sitting there on our site at virtually no cost to us waiting to be discovered.

A good reason to explore the site. It’s all new.

On: Interrupting

Interrupting - We’re becoming a nation of interrupters and interruptions. It’s starting to drive me a little batty.

Television is the worst offender. Scary thing is that television is such a trendsetter and we, the sheep, follow blindly along. Television is built on interruptions – the commercial. We’re sailing along through a good story or a great game and suddenly (often designed to come at the best part of the story) whammo, we’re interrupted out of our reverie with a commercial. We’ve learned to live with this over the years – it being the commercial that enabled free television, but then along came cable and TV wasn’t free anymore. Money wins. But as I’ve said, we’ve learned to live with it.

Now, however, they’ve decided that they have the right to take over a quarter to a third of our screen during the regular program and make their announcements, doing whatever silly thing they can think of to grab our attention graphically and sonically.

Mark my word, soon we’ll see product commercials in these spots as well. Why do we stand for this kind of interruption? It’s just going to get worse and worse and we all know it.

Tune in to just about any news talk show now and it’s just ridiculous. No one can finish a sentence. It started with the hosts who in their overwhelming egos would not let their guests finish. I can just imagine some lightweight producer saying, “Oh, I like this style. It makes for such good, fast television. It’s like reality news – just the way people talk.” What it is is just a bunch of people pushing to get heard.

Interrupting stimulates frustration which creates anger which results in fighting. This is what these people seem to be doing all the time now. Whatever happened to the rules of debate? Whoever said it was a good idea to not let an expert guest make his point?

We, as a society, are losing our ability to listen – to listen to one another. Interrupting is the classic result of that. Break it down. People who interrupt are people who have stopped listening and feel that what they have to say in the moment is more important than the person who is talking. This is the ultimate breakdown in communication. This is anti-communication.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more information about Peter Link and his company, Watchfire Music,
please visit us at Watchfire Music.com.

Cy Young's 'Aesop's Fables for the 21st Century'

Talk about Insights! Now here’s a guy who was the King of Insights. No, I’m not talking about Cy Young, (though he certainly has had his share) I’m talking about his predecessor, Aesop.

Wikipedia tells us, “Aesop (620-560 BC), a slave and story-teller who lived in Ancient Greece, wrote Aesop’s Fables, a blanket term for collections of brief fables, usually involving anthropomorphic animals. His fables are some of the most well known in the world. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children” (and many adults who need moral refresher courses) “today. Many stories included in Aesop’s Fables, such as The Fox and the Grapes (from which the idiom “sour grapes” was derived), The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, are well-known throughout the world.”

Interesting how the folks back in 500 BC struggled with many of the same moral problems as we do today. I could not have raised my own son without The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was a philosophical staple in our home and it got so that all I would have to say was, “The Boy Who” and my son would roll his eyes and finish with, “Cried Wolf”. The tale’s moral was so clear that it was one of the few inarguable lessons of his childhood.

These humble incidents taught and still teach great truths and do so in Biblical proportion. A race between a turtle and a rabbit becomes a life lesson that is considered by us and governs us over and over. Now if this ain’t inspirational, I don’t know what is.

So when Cy Young first approached me with his 21st Century musicalized version of Aesop’s Fables, I gladly put it on top of the stack. On top of it all was the fact that Cy’s treatment was truly funny, child hip and immanently singable.

If you have children, or if you know children, you will be doing them a great disservice if you don’t immediately rush out and buy Cy Young’s most charming musical on CD. In fact, you don’t even have to “rush out”. You can just sit back and order it on line with a few easy clicks.

Do so now. Teach your children (or grandchildren) life’s great truths. Save the world.

To listen to Cy Young's album 'Aesop's Fables for the 21st Century' click on the blog entry's title where you will be redirected to our website.

Insight-Peter Link

I grew up a drummer. My dad gave me my first pair of sticks at the age of seven. He had been a professional drummer before the great depression changed the lives of millions. I had dreamed of a drum set since “don’t remember when”.

But the drum set did not come quickly. Dad said, “You play on this here window ledge for a year – till the paint wears out. If you stick with it, then we’ll see.” For a year, every night after supper, I marched up stairs to our HiFi room and played along with Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, The Dorsey Brothers – on Dad’s old 78s. Nobody had to tell me to go practice, ever. I was just driven to do it.

Dad taught me my rudiments, my double paradiddles, my triple ratamacues. I learned to play these complex beats so fast that they became rhythmic drum rolls. I played the paint off that old window ledge. At the end of the year there was a dent a quarter of an inch deep in the wood and a brand new Gretsch mother of pearl snare drum under the Christmas tree – the best that money could buy.

“This is great, Dad, but where’s the drum set?” Dad wisely answered, “You learn to play the snare drum this year and if you’re still interested next Christmas, there’ll be a matching bass drum under the tree.”

And so it went. Each Christmas there was another matching mother of pearl Gretsch drum, a floor tom, a side tom, a high hat cymbal, etc. under the tree – the best that money could buy.

I graduated from Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa to Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry and then on to The Beatles and the Beach Boys. In the seventh grade I began to play with the best college dance band in St. Louis. I was many different things as a child, but always a drummer. There was always that rock band, always the Pete Link drum solo – little kid wailing on the toms.

In college I picked up the guitar. I knew there needed to be more to music than just the beat. For me it was the same thing all over again. Nobody ever had to tell me to practice. I played till the pain from my fingers went up my arm. Folk music, Rock n’ Roll, Big Band, Jazz – there were no favorites. It was all just music.

In the seventies I put the guitar down. I finally found an instrument that could fulfill my musical imagination – the computer. It’s been my life ever since. (Ten years later I did pick up that guitar again and resume my love affair with my Martin D-35S.) But the computer could do it all, not at first, but as it grew in its incredible abilities, I grew along with it, staying up with the mad advance of technology and trying to hold on to the natural talent within.

Today, still, nobody has to tell me to go practice. I’m still driven. If a day goes by and I don’t get into my studio, I feel robbed, I get ornery, I’m hard to live with. I’m becoming a bit of a recluse. I feel like I’m finally getting this thing called music by the tail and I really don’t much care about anything else. Oh, I love people, I love my wife and my son and my friends, etc., but what I live for is that studio. I am the best of me and truly in the moment of now, the power of now, when I’m playing my Dual Quad 3.0 Intel 16GB Ram Mac. This is heaven on earth. This, for me, is the height of creative expression. Mine is a life in music.

This album, this CD, Ode To Joy, is simply the latest culmination of that life. I grew up a Pop musician, an eclectic popular music creator. A decade ago I met, fell in love with and married Julia Wade, an opera singer. Musically, I pulled her my way, but along the way, she pulled me hers. We spent three glorious years with season tickets to Carnegie Hall studying and having our minds blown by our favorite orchestra – The Philadelphia. This experience gave me something to hope for, something to dream.

This CD is the first iteration of that dream. I plan to continue down this road for the rest of my life. This is not an album of songs, rather, a series of impressions on the theme of joy. With each movement, I started with a loved melody from my life, stated it and then let the musings take it from there. Sometimes I even dropped the original theme after it had given me a start.

I mixed the musical styles of my life joyfully, not caring who I might offend, but just going with what I heard, drawing from the diverse musical styles of the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. My intention in the beginning was to create a purely instrumental album. That’s not the way it worked out. Along the way I kept finding things I wanted to say, and so I said them, or sang them, or had my friends sing them.

The experience of making this CD was one of the best of my life. I am ever grateful for the technological tools at my disposal – my computer and its constantly expanding software. I am ever grateful for the flip side, my talent, my connection with the Source of creativity, with the God given light of joy in my life. It is this light, this joy that I sing about, in all its ramifications. It is my Ode To Joy.

If you are interested in listening to Peter Link's "Ode To Joy" album, please click on the blog entry's title and be automatically redirected to his artist page at Watchfire Music:

Fear or Confidence-A Question of Balance

In tough financial times like these the choice always seems to lie between fear and confidence. Simply put, we fear running out of money and lose confidence in the support of the financial systems around us. Then everybody stops spending and begins to hoard their money out of fear. Result: recession.

When times are good we’re confident that our supply will be there tomorrow and so we buy what we need – not necessarily what we want, but what we need. We live civilized, without fear, in a state of grateful ‘enough’.

There is, unfortunately, a third choice that has no reality, no practicality. It is the selfish choice of overspending – better known as debt.

America is clearly at the result of this third choice today. And it’s not just big business, government and Wall Street that is to blame. It is the gross misconception that we, as Americans, deserve to have more than we produce. It is an unbalance of reality, a confusion of the truth.

Several years ago my wife and I cancelled all of our credit cards. I was an abuser of this faulty system. Gratefully I woke up one day and saw the light, and today we buy what we can afford. If I can’t afford something I need, then I work harder for it. I save for it. I am a happier man for this practice. We now live relatively debt free, separating the needs from the wants, buying only what we can afford. Once we got used to living this way, we found ourselves much happier and freer.

This is the true American way. Hard work and good thinking is the foundation that America was built on. Today America staggers because it has lost touch with its foundational thinking. Most Americans live in debt, that is, live out of balance with reality.

Our times simply reflect our thinking as a nation. It is time to rebalance. It is time to live clean.

This does not mean that we should live in fear and hoard. That too is a mistake. We must return quickly to confidence, to balance.

Confidence in what? Government? Big business? Wall Street? Heavens no! Rather, confidence in the eternal fact that God supplies. God directs. God controls. “Ask and it shall be given” is the Bible’s imperative. But I don’t believe that this means that God goes on supplying those who greed when debt is the result of greed.

I believe that God supplies those who need. That means that those who produce, receive supply equal to the quality of their production. What goes out comes back in. I understand that this is the way it works. I understand it because I see the principle manifested this way in my life.

I cannot speak for the poor. I’ve been penniless, but never poor. Poverty is a trapped mindset, a depression of hope. We, as a people, are just as responsible for poverty as we are for greed and gluttony. They are the two ends of the spectrum of human thought.

What can we do about it? Pray for the extremes and live clean. Give to the poor when we can and actively protest those who greed, but first clean up the poverty and gluttony in our own lives. First balance our own individual lives. Regain confidence in the right source of supply, the open font and spend God’s gifts wisely.

A rebalancing at this time is good, but we all need to participate. We all need to do our part, however small, in the rebalancing of America. If everybody stopped and reconsidered the balance of supply in their lives and adjusted accordingly, I can’t imagine that this would not be once more a nation of financial confidence.