UPDATE 2005-12-09: passion reborn?

I recently started attending Dallas Theological Seminary. Last Wednesday, Dr. Howard Hendricks, who co-teaches (with Dr. Mark Bailey) our introductory Bible Study Methods class, gave us an assignment to paraphrase Acts 3:1-10 in a creative way. No sooner had he described the assignment than I knew I had to write and record a song.

I last recorded music in 1997, and have written perhaps two or three songs over the past 8 years without actually recording them. Several people have given me very kind and encouraging comments via this website over those years, but I never had the time or onus to follow through on their urgings. This assignment gave me the clear start- and endpoint I needed to see a whole project through.

Over the past week, I wrote and recorded "Leap," which you can listen to from the link on the right. I presented it in class today and got a warm reception. That felt good. I'd love to continue writing and recording, but it does take a lot of time and energy. I've realized what I need is a real reason to invest time in it—my life is too busy for me to just make music "for fun" anymore.

Whether "passion" has been rekindled (see my older essay below), I can't yet say. But it does feel very good to have used my talents once again, and to have given them to others in a public forum, for a change.

requiem for passion

From 1989 until 1997 I wrote and recorded over 70 songs. A few of the more recent ones can be downloaded on this page.

Although the songs are aging now, I'm making them public for a number of reasons. On the one hand, I feel that I owe it to the songs to give them some airing. Perhaps I also feel I owe it to myself—that old self that was passionate about music and considered himself a musician—not to leave these songs collecting dust in the attic. So in part I'm seeking closure.

On the other hand, perhaps I'm putting up my music in the hope that my musical drive will reawaken again. Maybe it's really out of a desire not to find closure that I'm dredging up the past.

The songs were recorded in a crucible. Not literally of course, though some of them sound like it. I only mean that when they were recorded, few people heard them. I was driven to write this music, but when each song was done I did little to publicize it. My friends and family who did hear them gave me, I must say, only mild encouragement. I was in various short-lived bands over the years, and have played out only a handful times, so my music was rarely exposed to the broader public.

No doubt that was not entirely a fluke. I was frightened to play my music for others in those days. My heart, mind, soul, and blood were in these recordings, and I wasn't about to subject them to scorn.

Now I don't care so much. Perhaps I've grown more secure. Maybe there's just enough time between then and now that they're no longer “my” songs, but “his” songs—my younger self's. Either way, I'm not so anxious about the opinions of others.

Listening to the songs again now, I'm amazed how much energy and effort I put into each one. Considering that these were private recordings, each heard by just a handful of people, I think there's a remarkable intensity and care in the recordings. I suppose I always dreamed that one day my music would be world-renowned and I'd be a famous rock star. It was not to be. But no matter: my life is pretty cool as it is.

There is a lot that I'm proud of in these songs, and a few things I find embarrassing. There are some bad recordings, poorly engineered and mixed all wrong; some goofy lyrics; some missed notes; some bad singing. But there are also some great chord progressions, good melodies, nice lyrics, and some really heavenly moments here and there.

All of these songs are entirely my own. That is, I wrote both the lyrics and music, performed all the instruments, and engineered the recordings myself. On the bright side, I'm pleased to have been a fairly talented one-man recording studio. On the dark side, this is more evidence of my self-isolation, the crucible.

I said I'm not anxious about what other people think, but I'm not above encouragement. I'd appreciate a line.