So I’m about to release a new CD.

A Thing of the Past

Every time I approach a new musical project, and especially when I am about to release a new one, I like to go back and listen to my earlier work. It gives me a sense of the continuity (or lack thereof) of my journey with music. It reminds me of some of my old tricks, successes and failures. And most of all, it puts things into perspective. I have achieved things in the past. I have tried and failed in the past. I released it into the world. And – for the most part – nothing terribly distressing happened.

As I’ve been preparing for the release of Clothe Yourself in Righteousness, I’ve hardly had to seek out those old projects. They have been leaping into my focus unprovoked (once when I was noodling on the guitar, my fingers found an old song of mine and I had to come over to the computer to listen. Another time, a friend quoted an old song back to me in an email).

Untapped Potential

One thing that I love about this music is that it’s potential is not diminished by time. A good song is still a good song, even if I didn’t promote the hell out of it. And they still speak to me, often in deeper and more nuanced ways than when I first wrote them (and then there’s the occasional cringe at something that I wish I could retract. But such is art I guess).

So I want to share that journey with you. Whether you’ve been following along for the 10 (!) years that I’ve been on this journey with the art form, or you’re just now joining in, I’m going to take the next 12 days to celebrate my last 4 albums.

Songs on Youtube

Lately I’ve been noticing myself going to youtube more and more just to listen to music, even if its just a still frame of the album cover. I thought, “why not?”… I’m letting people listen to everything for free on my bandcamp page anyway.

I’ll post a song a day on youtube, starting with 3 songs from “Self”, then “A Few Songs Occasioned”, then “The Art of Fully Being”, and “Mixed Vice Work”. On September 12, I’ll post the first video from “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”, and then I’ll be posting songs from that project every week.

As always, thanks for following along! As I listen back, I feel so grateful to have the ability to do this work, to have the inspiration to do the work, and to have your support. Blessings.

Jon

Retreat & Withdrawal

And here’s the first in the series… a song that I did my Sophomore year at Guilford (I was 20) after having a conversation with a mentor there about the difference between taking a healthy period of space to in order to re-engage with the community more fully — and disengaging altogether (a nuance that I need regular reminding of).

Sometimes Friends approach me after performances, on the internet, after a Meeting for Worship, and praise me, noting how deeply my ministry affects them.

With all due respect (and thank you, truly), we might be going about this thing all wrong.

Invited Into Fully Being

When I take on a new project, I find that it is more often because there is something about the subject matter that I don’t know than because I do. That is to say – I receive a leading to go where I am blind, not where I am familiar.

When I lived at Pendle Hill in 2006-07 I named my project The Art of Fully Being. I saw that our shame and fear of judgment causes us to live limited lives in which we allow ourselves to experience openly only a narrow scope.

Rather than feeling that “I have figured out the way to live fully and now it is time to tell everyone else”, I felt that I was being invited into knowing that my own shame and fear of judgment limits my ability to love myself, to allow myself to be (which undoubtedly affects my ability to love others and allow them to be!).

To be specific, I tend to panic when emotions arise in me that I am not proud of or comfortable with: anger, jealousy, doubt, shame. My panic exacerbates the emotion that I am trying to avoid. What if, instead of hating and fearing these emotions, I allow them to rise in me and examine them lovingly…?

“Why don’t you try it and see what happens?”
-The leading to make The Art of Fully Being

What a gift is art. And what a challenge.

Invited to Clothe Myself in Righteousness

My current project is about nakedness. On a similar vein to TAoFB, I have found that our shame and fear of judgment hinders our authenticity in the world. We care deeply about being loved and being accepted, and we often will go to great lengths to prove our worthiness and hide aspects of ourselves that we perceive to make us unworthy.

I see that I wrap my perceived value up into my identity. My ability to be a clear and loving presence is hindered by my anxiety about how others perceive me and what I see as my value level in the social hierarchy. I have found myself clothing myself in my value as a musician or as a well known Friend. In this project I have been invited to dig past those layers, and it has caused a great deal of soul searching.

…and the project is not done. I am still in the final stages of recording (just posted this update on the CYiR website) and surely will continue to be ministered to by the project (often it is in the presentation and reaction to the project that I am the most stretched, as you might remember from my last music video).

But I can already point to major shifts in the way that I approach art. Instead of comfortably nestling my voice into layers and layers of instruments, production, and backup vocals, I have felt called to “strip it down”, lift my voice out and place it, bare, out in the front of the mix. The guitar work, similarly, is bare, with few layers and other instruments to distract.

I am videotaping each part of each recording session and will post videos online. This is taking something that once was a very private, solitary process for me and exposing it.

I am putting the project (my baby!) into the hands of others for the mixing and mastering.

Each of these things is dramatically new and different, and oh, how naked I feel! I am certain that the songs will speak to people, but while I am glad that others can benefit as witnesses of my projects, I wonder if passive observation is an easy way out.

We are all able to listen to the ways in which we are called into radical experiments in being. It is fine to appreciate “my” ministry, but I would like to encourage us to see others’ ministries as a beginning, or as the inspiration to follow the leadings that would minister to us.

The Memory of Success

In 2006, when I sat down to write and record my senior project at Guilford College, I was excited to try something new: a studio. No more setting up and putting away microphones in my bedroom. No more setting up and breaking down my entire studio just to record one quick sound. No more wires criss-crossing rooms when guests walk in and want to sit down and chat… and – most importantly – no more distractions!!

I was very blessed to have Max Carter (Friends Center Director) sharing and supporting my vision. He recommended that I get in touch with Friendship Friends Meeting across the street from Guilford, who allowed me to use their basement for the recording. The magic of A Few Songs Occasioned is in large part a direct result of creating that space for my artistic creation.

So much so that, the following year at Pendle Hill when I intended to write and record an even more personal album, my first step was to secure a separate, isolated space for creation. Again, the result — The Art of Fully Being — was powerful.

Relearning Old Lessons

Somehow, along the way, I had lost touch with the truth that I discovered at Friendship Friends Meeting. Securing a space for my new project wasn’t on my list of priorities. At all. I set up my recording equipment in the living room of the small West Philly apartment I share with my girlfriend and moved on to more pressing issues, like fundraising.

Lo and behold, when I went to record the album, the space was one of the (several) major blocks to moving forward. In fact, there were so many barriers to the art flowing forth that I even began to question the essence of the leading. Have I been faithful? Is way closing? (oh god, what does it mean if it is?) Despair.

Grace to the rescue.

Faithful Friends

Deciding to stick with my leading and work on the barriers one by one was a step of faithfulness. I haven’t recorded a full length album in over 3 years. Perhaps I was just rusty… maybe my sense of panic was misplaced, and I am called to be patient and methodical about my leading, even in the face of barriers.

As an entry level attempt at resolving the space issue, I posted a blog entry, a note on facebook, and a twitter message about my dilemma. I had faith that what needed to happen would happen (whether I am able to recognize the reasoning or not) and that I was reaching in the right direction.

After being contacted by several meetings and good natured folks with advice, I followed up with a youth member of Fallsington Meeting in lower Bucks county. I met a few of their members and got a tour of the Meeting House. I fell in love with an unused space, their “old kitchen” that was in use before building a new addition.

After approving the idea in business meeting, Fallsington Meeting has welcomed me and my project with open arms. I find myself in a similar position to my creative years at Guilford and Pendle Hill… isolated, without distraction, faithful… I spend most of my time in the old kitchen at Fallsington Meetinghouse, going on long walks in the woods and often recording music into the wee hours of the morning. I have no internet there. I don’t answer my phone. I have made space for a more subtle, more urgent line. And I’ve just begun to hear it clearly again.

The past two days, after meeting most of the members of Fallsington Meeting, and I’m feeling even more grateful. What a faithful, seeking group of people who would be willing to go out on such a limb and offer space in their beautiful old Philadelphia Meetinghouse for something new, fresh and slightly unpredictable!!!

Hope and Joy

On top of jumping for joy in the middle of the night because I am so full of the spirit, I am given hope by the faithfulness of this meeting and their openness. Quakerism is, at its core, about making space for the sacred, and to the best of my knowledge, that is happening at Fallsington Friends Meeting.

• See photos of my new studio space.
• Watch a video of my first recording in the new space
• Read about Fallsington Friends Meeting

The Beginnings of My Vocational Discernment

During my senior year at Guilford (‘05-’06), there was an active discussion about vocation. “Where my great passion meets the world’s great need” was the phrase bouncing around in my head and the community’s collective consciousness.

I had been writing and recording songs as a hobby since my senior year of high school. By 2006 I had even released a few CDs and played some shows. Music was, without a doubt, my great passion. But there were several major barriers between me and committing to my journey as a musician: (1) It is incredibly unlikely that one will succeed in this line of work; (2) Success often comes at the abandonment of the passion or love that brought one to explore music in the first place; (3) The majority of successful musicians are doing no great service to anything but their own egos.

I couldn’t see devoting myself to an extremely risky line of work for the sake of nothing but my faith in my own talent. My studies at Guilford pinballed my professional future between subjects in which I have a peripheral interest: psychology, sociology, restorative justice, philosophy.

Then I discovered Quakerism.

I should say, I re-discovered Quakerism. Or: I was convinced (as Quakers like to say).

Examining My Roots – A Deeper Commitment

I grew up Quaker. I was well versed in the modern Quaker jargon, the institutional acronyms, the banter of Young Friends, the songs of the camping programs and the schedules and rhythms of the FGC Gatherings. I thought I was as Quaker as they come.

The Early Friends said that baptism comes inwardly and powerfully when we make ourselves open to the spirit of Christ. My senior project for the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program was such an opportunity. Tired of music being an isolated thread in my life, I was inspired to write and record a CD of songs about the Early Friends and the beginnings of the Quaker movement.

The experience was incredible, not just for the personal and moving stories that I uncovered about the Early Quakers, but for the way that the world seemed to rise up around me to supply the resources needed to make the project powerful, alive. In sharing that life with my immediate community of Guilford and the wider community of Quakerism, I‘ve seen its impact be deep, meaningful, transformational. I had found where my great passion meets the world’s great need.

Settling into Action

Today, four years later, I spend my time traveling among Friends, exploring art and ministry and our collective history. I see this as being sacred, and very important, work and I am well supported in doing it.

Certainly I would not have discovered such a perfect, unconventional way to use my specific set of gifts had I not been given the opportunity to explore vocation in the safe container of Guilford College. I think of it as threading a needle (or threading several at once), which takes a lot of trial and error, thought and space. It is invaluable that undergraduates be given the space and guidance to do this explorative work, and I am always glad to know that Guilford and QLSP are still out there, helping to shape our soon-to-be ministers, musicians and leaders.

-Jon Watts QLSP ‘06

Reposted from the Friends Center Fall 2010 Newsletter

Reason #142: Public Signs

While there are many great reasons to fall in love with the Early Friends, I find that it is easiest to get caught up in the drama and fervor of their public “signs”.

Intended, in part, to break down the apathy of their countrymen, these signs were often reminders that Christianity began as a radical movement of action and personal commitment which has since been diluted by the rites, rituals and power dynamics of the modern church. Often their “signs” caused public controversy and landed these Quakers in jail or worse.

In this modern time when many contemporary Quakers are comfortably at ease with the status quo, the conviction of the Early Friends is exciting, if not challenging and a little intimidating. At the very least, I find that studying them raises some deep questions for our modern lives.

To take it one step further, it is my practice to not only study them from a distance but to incorporate that study into my art, creating a two-way relationship with the present (as witnessed on 2006′s A Few Songs Occasioned).

“Going Naked”

While A Few Songs Occasioned was an introductory overview of a few key stories in the origins of the Quaker movement, I have a new, more specific project in mind… the songwriting that I’ve done for Clothe Yourself in Righteousness is based upon the specific practice of “going naked as a sign”… its theology, stories, and implications for modern life.

As an artist, I have been inspired by the concept of making one’s self “naked before God,” as it is often this attitude that produces the most powerful art. Allowing my story to travel through these songs unfiltered by my own judgment is often an uncomfortably revealing process, but standing back I can recognize its value and importance as an artistic practice.

My new project, still in utero, is a combination of the kind of historical study in A Few Songs Occasioned and the kind of confessional revelation found in 2007′s The Art of Fully Being… certainly an exciting combination.

The ongoing fundraising campaign for Clothe Yourself in Righteousness only has two weeks left, and still needs $1,300 to be funded! Any support that you can give — from sharing on facebook to donating (anything from $2 to $500) — would be deeply appreciated.

Find out more…