What Is Inspirational Music?

What is Inspirational Music?

To inspire is “…to breathe life into”. To lift thought higher. To fill with hope. Inspirational music is just that. The genre of the music doesn’t matter – it can be pop, country, jazz, R&B, gospel, heavy mental – whatever. The lyrics must be in some way uplifting.

A love song is an Inspirational song. “I woke up this morning and I feel good.” is an Inspirational lyric. It is inclusive; it is spiritually trans-denominational. All are included. Along the way it promises to brighten your life and enliven your soul. How? Simple, really. With great music.

We claim a new category. At a time in our world when fear is rampant and hope is down, the ability to inspire mankind seems to be of utmost necessity. And so we set out on this musical adventure with the goal to preach to none, but to include all in our endeavors.

What are the endeavors?

Inspirational music embraces all spiritual ideas but promotes no religious theology.

Inspirational music spans all cultures, religions and people. It believes that all people have inside of themselves truth, life, love, spirit, soul.And so it serves all mankind.

Inspirational music has no doctrine to preach, no mission to fulfill except to offer positive value in the music and lyrics.

It is its mission only to be a gathering of light.

Inspirational books are a clearly defined category. We all know what Inspirational books are. Books that inspire. Well, Inspirational music is the same. It is music that inspires us – to reach greater heights, to be a better person, to love mankind, to carry on.

Where is God in all this? Where He or She or It always was and is — right smack in the middle, at the circumference… and everywhere in between. If you don’t believe in God, or if you don’t believe in your old definition of God, Inspirational music is there to help you find your peace when you are at war, help you be a better individual on the planet, or help you find a new and better definition. If you do believe in God, Inspirational music is there to do the same as above.

We say that Inspirational music is a new category and yet it’s really as old as music itself. It is the cave man beating on the stretched skin of an animal. It is the synthesist programming Spectrasonics Omnisphere. It is an old man on a curb, whiskey voice and gutbucket guitar, howling at the moon. It is the Beatles changing the world. It is Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. It is Frank Zappa. It is A Chorus Line. It is Puccini’s Madam Butterfly.

Inspirational music, if done right, should speak to all of us – or one of us. Ultimately it reconnects with its derivation. That is, it breathes life into people no mater what their religion, their culture, their tradition. It wakes you up, it calms you down, it lightens your life, it deepens your thought.

Inspirational music inspires.

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.

Close Encounter With A Mat Knife

OK, so I had one. I had just changed the blade to a new one. Extremely sharp. Not paying attention and talking away while doing some paper cuts, before I knew it, I had slashed my thumb to the bone. It was so fast I didn’t even feel it until after it happened. Then, oddly enough, there was only the recollection of pain – there was never a pain in the moment of slashing. Later on I realized that in the recollection I was just making the pain up, because in the moment of the cut the blade was so sharp and the act was so fast that there was no time for the pain.

My brain remembered the pain where it should have been, but wasn’t. So what was pain but something my mind made up.

Meanwhile blood everywhere, rush to the bathroom, clean the cut, (pretty scary looking, but straight and simple) apply the bandages. Wonder: Should I get stitches? Very deep. Decide to just bind it with a bandage. A half inch slash on the meaty tip of my left thumb. War hero.

I handled fear. After all… Just a thumb. Then I began to learn for the next 2 weeks just all the amazing things a left thumb does in life. Can’t tie shoes, can’t button my right shirt sleeve, can’t shower with any normalcy, can’t play the guitar, and on and on.

Every three days I change the bandages. Looks about the same each time, but I can just feel all those little guys in there just knitting and mending away. It’s kind of exciting, really, how the body heals.

So I decide to experiment and stimulate the process. Each morning as I wake I lie there and envision the knitting. I’m into quantum physics and so I take it to the atomic level in my imagination – right down to the shifting and organization of the molecules and atoms. I stop looking at it to determine the extent of the injury and instead hold the vision of the perfect thumb in my imagination. The atom/molecule reorganization game is just a mind game that I play with myself for a few moments every morning.

But it works. After 2 weeks I discard the bandages for good. Let the air in. Oh, I’m careful with it. I baby the left hand. But I hold to the thought of the perfect thumb and mentally rearrange the atoms into their rightful place.

It’s now 2 weeks since I removed the bandages. 4 weeks since I encountered the mat knife. I still feel those little guys workin’ away in there hauling and shifting those atoms, but from the outward appearance there’s no cut, no scar – just normal thumb.

What happened here? I mentally reconstructed my body. In the normal order of things I always had a perfect thumb, but fear resulting in a confused mind created a gap in that concept – a cut. When I got my mind back in order, my body followed suit. I know that if I were stronger mentally, I could have done it faster. It just takes practice. Must have something to do with the way Jesus worked. “Whatsoever things you see that I do, you can do also.”

Pretty amazing.

Sacred Song Writing

I come from the theater. Oh I grew up on rock n’ roll and folk, but my real training in lyric writing was in the theater. It wasn’t until then that I really began to grow as a lyricist, as a storyteller.

The lyrics of a theatrical song have to have movement, they have to go from point A to point B dramatically. Otherwise they just tend to sit there on the stage, no matter how beautiful, and often end up getting cut from the show because they don’t move the plot forward and are too much of a stage wait.

So when I began to write sacred songs it was only natural that I wrote in theatrical traditions: Start with a problem, the more difficult, the better, and then, in the course of the song, work out the solution, or at least come to some point of change, some realization, so that a solution is in sight. Then you have drama and I know, in all of art, without drama, things tend to get a little thin or shallow. Drama is what holds people to the moments, keeps their interest. “What’s going to happen next?”

But (turning point) I found that sacred songs tended to not follow this tradition. They were often either all positive (mostly the case) or occasionally all negative. They often lacked the dramatic movement that I so naturally looked for in a good song lyric. I also found that they were not necessarily shallow and were quite often rich with content and inspiration, but, for me, just somehow did not go all the way in giving the listener what I felt they deserved.

So it is still my belief, still my natural style to write in the more theatrical tradition. I have to force myself to adapt the other and occasionally do. In the case of hymn writing, the older tradition is what is expected and so I’m probably not much of a natural hymn writer. But solos or choral pieces are a different story.

I like to think of these as musical testimonies. Start with the problem. End with the healing. And along the way illuminate how the healing was realized. Then, dramatically, you shed light on the subject and pull the listener through the dramatic story. The following song presents just such a dramatic surprise.

Where Were You
Music and Lyrics: Peter Link

Once I walked with you
How I burned
You were always there for me
And then I turned
So I walked alone
Through the cold
Wearied by regrets
A thousand fold

Where were you?
I tried turning the time back
Searching the ashes
Looking through stones unturned
But where were you?
I kept trying to find you
Tracing my footsteps
Searching through all I’d known

Where were you?
And where was I?
I kept passing through shadows
Searching the moonlight
Lost in the dark of night

Once I walked with you
Then I turned
I dared to go it on my own
But then I learned

You were there
All along in the sunrise
There in the moonlight
There in the rain with me

Where were you?
Always there in the forests
There in the waters
There in the children
There in the skylark
There in the lamp light
There in the dark

Always here in my life with me

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

On: Faith

Faith…
I sat in my favorite chair. I knew it was time to figure the problem out. I had been struggling with it for over a year and needed to get my arms around it because I knew it was a great idea and great ideas just don’t come along that often.

Flash back one year. Jenny Burton and I have just finished a show in Boca Raton and are driving up the coast of Florida. We get into a long discussion about her career and where it’s going. We have this great idea! We shall put together a group of 9 of our favorite NY studio singers behind her and do a show of Inspirational music.

We’ve been doing very successful industrial shows exploring this Gospel/R&B based genre using 3 singers in the studio and triple tracking them for a particular sound that has really been captivating audiences. We’ve developed this music to a very specific sound behind Jenny and know from years’ experience that we’ve found something that really works. Now we should commercialize it and move it into the mainstream.

And so, determined to see this through, I begin to explore ways of financing and developing this idea. I find it’s not easy. It’s expensive! Ten singers… and we don’t even have a band yet.

In the course of the year, however, four different situations do come up which will provide the means for getting this idea on. Sadly, they all fall through. Bummer.

So here I am sitting in my favorite chair. I do not have the money for this big idea. I know it’s a right idea, but something seems to stop it at every turn. Frustrated…

I have no ideas, I have no money, I have nothing.

I have faith, but what is faith? Yeah, come to think of it, what is faith? I sit and contemplate this word. I realize that in order to have faith one must start with nothing. If you have something, a glimmer, a dollar, a possibility, etc., then you don’t need faith, you just start with a glimmer, a dollar, a possibility, etc. Faith is for when you have nothing.

Then you have to have faith in faith. And since you have nothing, it only makes sense to have a total reliance on faith because what other choice do you have? You have nothing, but faith. So do that. Have nothing but faith.

This means that you can’t have doubt, Pete, I say to myself. You can only have faith. If you have a choice between having nothing or having nothing and faith, what do you choose? Duh.

I saw and understood this simple logic. It made total sense to me. All I had to do was to have faith, but I had to have total faith. That was easy because I had nothing. So I decided then and there to have total faith.

“Faith in what?” you might ask. Faith in a right idea. I believe that God gives a right idea and sees it through? So I must have total faith in this right idea.

I even thought if you have total faith and then it still doesn’t work out, then you don’t have to deal with this word “faith” any more. You can dismiss it as a sham and move on to other things. So let’s find out, Pete. HAVE TOTAL FAITH!

And so I did. At that point I got up from my favorite chair and went to bed, clear that now the idea was going to happen.

The next morning I got up, called the nine singers, explained my great idea, told them I had no money, but was going to do this on faith, invited them to join me and they all said ‘yes’ immediately and we went into rehearsal the next week.

The group, The Jenny Burton Experience, broke all box office records and played to packed houses in their more than seven year run at New York City’s “Don’t Tell Mama” and swept all the major music awards in New York City for best vocal group.

They then performed for tens of thousands of people at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Carnegie Hall, opened for Al Green at Trump Marina, opened for Stevie Wonder at Lincoln Center, and headlined at Resorts International in Atlantic City.

It started on faith and nothing but. The following lyric is to one of the groups closing songs:

FAITH
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

AS I SIT WITH MY HEAD IN MY HAND
AND FIGHT FOR THE WAY TO BREAK FREE
KNOWING NOTHING AROUND ME
HAS GONE AS PLANNED
AND NOW IT IS ALL UP TO ME

WHEN NOTHING IS LEFT TO HOLD ON TO
AND NOWHERE IS THERE TO TURN
THE FIRE CONSUMING THE SPIRIT WITHIN ME
TILL NOTHING IS LEFT TO BURN

WHEN OUT OF THE DARKENING SHADOWS
A VOICE A WHISPER A SIGN
THE SIMPLEST OF ANSWERS
AT THE HARDEST OF TIMES
A LIGHT CALLING OUT TO THE BLIND

WHEN ALL IS LOST
HAVE FAITH
HAVE FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
FAITH CAN WALK THE SEA
FAITH CAN HEAL THE HEARTACHE
FAITH ALONE CAN COMFORT ME
AND IN YOUR TRIALS OF FIRE
FAITH CAN SEE YOU THROUGH
FAITH REQUIRES
NO MAGIC NO MONEY
NO MIRRORS NO MAYBES
NO MATCHES NO MAKE-UP
NO MANUAL NO MEDICINE
JUST FAITH

SO WHEN NOTHING IS LEFT TO HOLD ON TO
AND NOWHERE IS THERE TO TURN
WHEN THE FIRE’S CONSUMING THE SPIRIT WITHIN YOU
TILL NOTHING IS LEFT TO BURN
WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST
HAVE FAITH
HAVE FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
FAITH CAN WALK THE SEA
FAITH CAN HEAL THE HEARTACHE
FAITH ALONE CAN COMFORT ME
AND IN YOUR TRIALS OF FIRE
FAITH CAN SEE YOU THROUGH
FAITH REQUIRES
NO MAGIC NO MONEY
NO MIRRORS NO MAYBES
NO MATCHES NO MAKE-UP
NO MANUAL NO MEDICINE
JUST FAITH
FAITH

FAITH CAN HEAL YOU
AND FAITH CAN COMFORT YOU
FAITH WILL WALK WITH YOU
THERE’S NO MEDICINE JUST FAITH

FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN
OH YEAH!

So, have faith…

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

Insight-Mindy Jostyn

Mindy Jostyn

I worked with Toots Thielman, some say the greatest harmonica player of our time, and as a child my dad would take the whole family to see The Harmonicats whenever they were in town.

Also we’d always catch Johnny Puleo (a virtuoso midget harmonica player) when he would appear on TV. In my teenage years, working as a cowboy summers in Colorado I learned to play sitting around campfires at night.

It was after that I began to discover the wonders of Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Larry Adler, Paul Butterfield and yes, the wonder of Stevie Wonder. I never got that good on the thing, never practiced enough. But I’ve always deeply appreciated the music that pours from these little “child toys” when handled by a virtuoso.

Word had it that Mindy Jostyn could also play that thang. I produced the last album of her too short life and towards the end one day she said, “Let’s put a little blues harp on this song”. I set up the mic, sat back in my producer’s chair and listened to her go to work.

This was a month before she left us and already she was so weak from coughing that she couldn’t sing, but could she ever blow. What came out of her that day was pure genius – a command of the instrument that shocked me, a gut wrenching bluesy funk that made me laugh and cry at the same time and a celebration of life that I will never forget.

She couldn’t sing anymore, so she sang through this “toy”. She joined the ranks that day in my book. I thought then, “Oh my God, I’m gonna study with her and learn what she knows”.

Too late.

Mindy mastered many instruments – guitar, piano, fiddle, her voice. Harmonica was her best. I know. I was there that day.

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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 website.

Insight-Larry Steelman

Larry Steelman
Now here’s a talent. This guy is prolific as well. He sends me 2-3 new songs a week from his new works to listen to, and listen to I do. And I can’t get these songs out of my head. And he’s persistent!

At first I thought, “Lord, this guy’s gonna drive me crazy pushing his music on me”, but now I simply look forward to the next one. Larry Steelman’s gonna go far. Mark my word. He’s got talent. He’s got drive.

Also he’s got the music in him. Ain’t God good? What a gift he gives us. What a joy to go through this lifetime and have the music in ya’! Larry Steelman is just one of those fortunate human beings.

Way to go, God!

Check out Larry Steelman’s CD on Watchfire Music’s site, or click on the blog entry's title and be automatically redirected to our site.

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.

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.

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

In The Presence of Greatness

Last night I sat in the presence of greatness. I have spent many years coaching leaders in the art of public speaking. To stand in front of an audience, command or invite their attention and then enthrall them with ideas is an extremely skilled and gifted endeavor. Anyone who has ever given a speech before knows of its nerves, its dry mouth, its verbal stumblings, its pitfalls. Last night I watched it done very well – and to an audience of millions.

Whether you are for Barak Obama or not, this historical moment must go down as a moment of greatness. What is greatness? I’ve thought about it a lot since then and my own homespun definition would be, “the ability to succeed beyond expectations at an extremely important moment in life”. We all delight in these moments of our fellow man and woman because it is a measure of our own capability. It is mankind at its best.

In sports we all marvel at the greatness of Michael Jordan or Joe Montana and most recently the greatness of Michael Phelps. Dwight Eisenhower had such a moment on the night of June 5, 1944. John Kennedy rose to greatness at the Bay of Pigs. In the world of entertainment I have watched supreme moments of greatness in the performances of Barbara Streisand, Elton John and James Taylor.

A few human beings have even lived lives of greatness – Jesus, Guatama Buddha, Mother Teresa – to name three. And then there are the moments by the un-named and unremembered except for their acts – the mother who lifts the car off of her baby, the farmer who works all night to cover his crops before the frost, the child who plays her recital piece with perfection.

But last night I got to sit and watch a man stand in his own greatness and shed great light on all mankind with his endeavor. It simply made me feel better about myself that man could rise to such heights. It made me proud to be an American once again, yes, but more importantly, it made me proud and awed to be a part of mankind. Whether he makes a good president or not, he succeeded beyond expectations in, so far, what may have been the most important moment of his life standing on the pinnacle of world attention.
I sat and studied greatness in action and I am blessed for it.

A Corner On Truth

I think about truth a lot. It’s fast becoming my life’s greatest interest – far out-pacing money, music and the Yankees. Daily dealings with all the various concepts of the word “Inspirational” seem to focus my life more and more on the spiritual, and I know that’s a good thing. So I’m not resisting it; in fact, I’m opening up to it. And it’s certainly opening up to me.

We’re in a spiritual age. Looking back through history, these ages come in cycles. This is the next one. Go into any bookstore. Books for seekers abound. Christian music is the one genre of music that has actually grown during this terribly trying time in the music industry. Oprah announces discussions with Eckhart Tolle on line and millions show up to partake. Never before has content for seekers been more available.

I study my own religion, but I read voraciously Wayne Dyer, Yogananda, Ram Dass, Spalding’s Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East, Joseph Smith’s Book Of Mormon, The Gospel According to Jesus, Tolle’s A New Earth and on and on. I like to say, “I’m getting’ it any way I can.” Truth, that is.

One thing strikes me along this road. Why is it that so many people think they have a corner on truth? How preposterous to think that the Christians are right and everybody else is wrong – that the Sunnites are better than the Sheites. There’s gotta be truth to every religion – otherwise, why would people be drawn to it in the first place

I suggest it’s not religion that separates us, but language. “The words are different, so the philosophy’s gotta be different” is the mistake we humans make. And we Christians are some of the worst offenders. How arrogant to think that only Jesus got it right. Jesus did get it right, but he wasn’t alone. Confucius, Lao Tsu, Marianne Williamson, Mohammed, Billy Graham, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Mr. Tolle, Mary Baker Eddy – they all got it right on one level or another.

In Spalding’s Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East which I happen to be reading now, the great Masters recognize Jesus as “the greatest teacher”, “a true prophet”. He is revered, studied and taught right along with their own prophets and gurus.

Why are we so exclusive?

Ultimately, fear and ignorance. Fear of being wrong. And so we wall ourselves off in single-minded blindness to the truths available everywhere. This fear creates in us an ignorance of the great teachings of thousands of deep thinkers that have come before us and are right now among us. A great human mistake. No one has a corner on truth.

God makes truth available to all mankind in all languages. We’re all reaching for the same thing. All religions have found it on some level or another just as all religions have also confused it on one level or another. It’s a human thang.

The book I’m now reading says it very well. “Those associated with the churches must realize that the church but typifies the one thing, the Christ Consciousness in all mankind. If they realize this, where can the diversity lie but in the concept of man’s mortal mind?

See what this diversity has led to, the greatest wars, the intense hate engendered between nations and families and even individuals, and all because one church organization or another has thought that its creed or doctrine was better than that of another. Yet all in reality are the same for they all lead to the same place… The church organizations and those associated with them are coming closer each day and the time will come when they will be united as one. When all are as one, there will be no need of organization.”

“Yet the fault does not lie wholly with the church organizations. Few people have awakened to the realization of what life really holds for them. We find the greater majority drifting through life, dissatisfied, dazed, crushed, or uncertain. Each must learn to lay hold on life and begin to express from his own life center, with purposeful, definite action, the gifts that God has given him. Each must unfold his own life.”

Certainly one reason that the individual turns to a religion is for a meeting of the minds. Then, often, that religion separates itself from the rest of the world in its exclusivity. This is one place where we humans get lost instead of getting found. This is where the seeker gets complacent thinking that he has found the truth, when, in fact, he has only found a corner of it. The whole world of truth lies before us. Stay on the road. We’ll never find it by lingering on the corner.

Three Cups of Tea

Hold on to your Inspirational hats! I lost mine over Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin’s Inspirational classic, Three Cups of Tea, which I just finished reading. Published by Penguin Books, this little gem produces a guaranteed 10 inspired tears per chapter and gets you connected up to the world along the way. I won’t tell you the plot or what it’s about; suffice it to say, ‘Just read it!’

This man, Greg Mortenson, is as close to a modern day saint as they come and I’m a better man for the chance of getting to know him. He goes to the top of my donation list – if there was ever a charity where you could count on the giving getting to the right getter, baby, this is the one.

I’ve always known somewhere deep inside of me that giving is where it’s at when it comes to living this life. I made a decision a number of years ago that this is what I want to do through my music. This true story that I’ve just read puts giving on the highest visceral and demonstrative plane. Here is a man who epitomizes the word. I thought I was giving to the world in my own small way. This man’s life defines the word. He has reshaped my thinking.

This book is a mountain of Inspiration.

Visit Greg’s site about his organization, Central Asia Institute.

Instructions for Life-From The Dalai Lama

I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E
from the Dalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs:
- Respect for self
- Respect for others and
- Responsibility for all your actions

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

Watchfire Music Inspirational Radio

Watchfire Music signs a deal with uVuMobile, a telecommunications company with 12 million subscribers, to provide content for two radio stations – WFM Heart Beat Radio, an up-tempo Inspirational radio station and WFM Quiet Soul Radio, a laid back and more contemplative format. Both stations will play Watchfire Music artist’s material 24/7 to subscriber’s cell phones.

For more information, please click on the blog entry's title and be redirected to our website.

I Am A Seeker

The short and incomplete history of a seeker

I am a seeker. “What do you seek?” you may ask. Perhaps first let’s get on the same page with what it means to seek. Webster’s Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary says, to ‘seek’ is, “to search, to pursue, to explore, to try to learn or discover.”

What do I seek? I seek truth. Again, our dictionary says that truth is “the real or true state of things.” So by definition a seeker is an ‘explorer’ of the ‘real or true state of things’.

Many people seek through their religion. I do too, but I’ve learned in life to grab it any way I can from any place it comes – as long as at its center there is truth.

When asked how he could possibly break through and smash the traditions of music with his historic and monumental work The Rite Of Spring, Igor Stravinsky said that in order to break the barriers of music, one has to first have studied and know all of music to begin with.

And so, as a seeker of truth in music, I listen to the likes of Bach, Mozart, Tshaikovsky, Copeland, Gershwin, Lennon and McCartney, Dylan, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Stravinsky among many others. As a seeker of truth in life, I listen to the Bible, Confucious, The Koran, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Krishnamurti, The I Ching, and Lao Tsu.

As a child I learned about the truth through the Bible and the amazing writings of Mary Baker Eddy – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and her Prose Works. These books and truths therein became my center and foundation, though not the circumference of my thought.

In the 1960s, as a young man, like many others of my generation, I experimented with drugs. I do not advocate this today for many reasons, but back then I pursued a deeper sense of reality through a careful and scientific experimentation of the drug, LSD.

This drug opened my mind like no other experience and taught me first hand that there was so much more to life than meets the five physical senses. The experiences set me on a determined life course to learn more about the unreality of matter, this illusion in which we live, and my relationship with a God whose definition seems to grow and change almost daily in its magnitude.

This naturally led me to Harvard professor Richard Alpert aka Baba Ram Dass who wrote a weirdly monumental book that I have read and re-read many times trying to absorb its truths, Be Here Now.

From Ram Dass I branched out to Rajneesh and read all his teachings in book form. The Mustard Seed, a study of the teachings of Jesus from the point of view of an Eastern guru, was pure enlightenment.

My year as a Hindu, or rather I should say in the daily study of that gorgeous structure of thought, broke my Christian barriers down and opened up a world of truths from the perspectives of different languages and cultures.

My readings and life study of the Dhammapada, the words of Guatama Buddha, taught me of the immaculate wisdom of this profound man and most importantly solidified in me the fact that we Christians did not have a corner on truth. I went through the EST experience with Werner Erhardt and learned not to blame others for what we ourselves choose in life.

My two mentors in life, though not necessarily spiritual teachers per se, also taught me incredible truths about this mortal experience. First, there was a great high school teacher and coach, Jack Eyerly, who taught me that I could truly accomplish about anything I chose to truly go after.

Secondly, there was Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher, who taught me the science of being an artist. Though I studied acting with him for four years, he taught me unbeknownst to both of us at the time, more about composing music than any other teacher in my life because he taught me the workings of my inner emotional being. This understanding has been the foundation for my work as a composer for many years.

My middle years in life were spent in the mind-boggling trials and joys of fatherhood and the learning of my musical craft. As a provider, student and career builder, I must admit slipping off the seekers path and, in fact, settling for life as it came and oft times scrambling to keep up.

But as my much beloved son moved steadily away from under my tutelage, I found the time and the impulse to get back on that seeker’s path. I found myself fascinated with the recent discoveries of quantum physics and laughed that our world’s quantum physicists were ‘discovering’ what Mary Baker Eddy had ‘discovered’ almost 150 years ago in her book Science And Health and countless Eastern mystics had ‘discovered’ over the centuries — and of course what Jesus illuminated in his healings, his walk on the water and other defiance of material laws, including his raising of the dead.

And yet the study of quantum physics only further concretized my understanding of the unreality of matter and the interconnectivity of all being and the fact that “God is All-in-all”.

Though I have never struggled with alcoholism, a friend turned me on to the life-saving writings of the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the solid truths of his life guide.

I’ve been enlightened by the television talks of Wayne Dyer and several of his wonderful books, Inspiration and The Power of Intention, and that led me to my now absorption with the wisdom of Eckhart Tolle.

B.O. (Before Oprah) I read and studied The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle four or five times over the course of a year (I call it the sequel to Ram Dass’ Be Here Now) and that led me to A New Earth which, for me, has been my latest explosion of brain synapses in the discovery of truth.

What’s next? I can’t wait! Whoever’s out there figuring it all out, I’m grateful to you for clearing the path.

When we talk about Watchfire Music, our trans-denominational Inspirational music company, my partner, Jim Birch and I like to say, “Truth is truth.” We intend that to mean that no one person or organization has a corner on truth.

Truth can be found in all inspired works. And so we serve all religions and all walks of spiritual thought.

I don’t think God, in its infinite wisdom, picks out a few privileged people to own truth. I believe truth is available to all who seek, to all who quest to part the curtain and peer into the world and worlds beyond.

This act of exposing the true state of reality in the universe both spiritual and material, the true nature and largess of God and man’s relationship to God, and my own personal place in all this is fascinating to me. Often illusive, it is something, nevertheless, that I consider every day. I believe that it is the answer to the perpetual question, “Why are we here?” I personally feel that we are here to seek the truth of our existence.

And so I am a seeker.

When Will They Ever Learn?

We keep reading reports of the demise of the Recording Industry as we knew it. Frankly, I think we’re all better off. Judging from the past we’re in better hands with the new guard – those that are starting with a fresh new approach based upon the realities of the present day.

A Short 25 Year History of the Record Business in Headlines

1980s – 25 years ago
Major Labels (Sony-BMG, EMI, Warner, Universal) Cut Back Jazz Record Divisions
Majors Cut Back Adult Contemporary – say, “Only Pre-Teens and Teenagers Buy Music Anymore.

1990s – 10-15 years ago
Music Industry Focuses Mainly On Teens and Pre-teens
Many Music Giants Can’t Get a Record Deal Anymore – Too Old

2000 - Turn of the Century
Through Napster, Teenagers Rob Music Industry Blind
“This Ain’t Stealing, The Music’s Free!”
Teenagers all across America
Record Business Tanks
U.S. Government Shuts Down Napster

2006
2% of All Music Sold as Digital Downloads Off the Web
Majors Ignore Digital Download Trend
File Sharing Continues to Tank Music Business
HMV, Tower Records, Sam Goody Shut Their Doors

2007
20% of All Music Sold as Digital Downloads Off the Web
Majors Sit and Twiddle Their Thumbs While…
i-Tunes Sells Its First Billion Digital Downloads
Majors Continue To Ignore Power of the Web
No Record Stores In the Top 10 Music Retail Outlets
Walmart Leads the Way

2008
i-Tunes #1 Seller of Records on the Planet
Passes Walmart as Top Retail Outlet
Majors Begin to Stir from 25 Year Lethargy
3 of 4 Major Labels Form Joint Venture with MySpace
Big Labels Considering Giving Away All Music for Free Will Make Money On Advertising

So is this the way to revitalize the record Industry? Judging by the gross mistakes of past history, probably not. Rather it’s simply a blatant attempt on the part of the major labels to raid what was ostensibly a home for independent artists. It sadly shows how desperate they are to maintain their declining market power.

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

Inspiration from Africa

“I think music is a universal language and the Julia’s “Alabado sea Dios” speaks to me very deeply. I don’t understand a word in Spanish, but the music is WOW! I received this CD when my country, Kenya, was undergoing a very unharmonious and unhappy time.

I believe her voice echoing over the seeming chaos has been, and continues to be a most healing effect to this city just as it has soothed and healed me. This particular CD is most profound. I would like to thank Julia again and again and again.

Thanks! Asante sana Julia!”
(signed) Joseph.

How can this be? A CD sung entirely in Spanish finds its way to Kenya, Africa and moves and inspires this gentle man, Joseph, who speaks not a word of Spanish.

What is it about music that touches the heart, fires the imagination, brings us closer to God, reconnects us with our spiritual selves?