slacking & lacking...

Hello! Just wanted to apologize for my lack of posts since I created this here weblog. It looks I average only about 3 posts a month. Not great. I have TONS of thoughts and (I think) interesting things to write about/discuss, but I just haven't developed the habit of getting on here every few days and sharing them with you. I'm going to try to do better. Here's some current thoughts/happenings in my life.

As some of you know, I am, among other things, a songwriter. I'm so thankful for this drive and passion in my life; it's a joyful thing to be able to create something 'beautiful' out of just an idea. And yet music is more than just an expression of an idea; into a song enters something else that is substantial on its own. I heard a quote recently (well, I had heard it before, but I recently found it written down) that comments on this extraordinary phenomena. It's from Arthur Shopenhauer:

'Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity these Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of thing itself.'

Read more about Shopenhauer here. I don't fully understand this quote, but it awakens something fascinating in my mind as a lover of the creation of music. I heard it partially explained once something like this: A painting of a tree merely represents a tree that already exists in the real world; it's the 'copy of the Idea' of a tree. But a song about the trees, while of course copying the characteristics of trees in the lyrics, invokes something else in the music on the emotional level perhaps that... hmm, gosh, it's really hard to explain! But think about the Schopenhaur quote for a while and leave me a comment.

I got the quote from the Deepwater Media Group website (I've added their link to the right). This is an in-house art production company, particularly for church use, that seeks to utilize image, word and sound to 'communicate provocative, eternal and transcendant truths.' It's headed by my friend Trey Dunham, and I'm so excited to offer my songwriting passion toward its goals.

I have recently joined up with my friend Ryan Huffman (the link to his blog is to the right) and his lyrical skills to co-write some songs, and it's been a blast. Someday you all will be able to hear the recordings of these and hopefully all my songs! Stay tuned for that...