“How I Built Myself, With My Mother’s Help”
from the album “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”
by Jon Watts
Produced by Jake Thro
Violin by Marina Vishnyakova
“This is Just a (Love) Song”
from the album “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness”
by Jon Watts
Produced by Jake Thro
Violin by Marina Vishnyakova
Playing “This is Just a (Love) Song” with Marina at Richmond Friends Meeting for the CD release party of Clothe Yourself in Righteousness.
Yesterday I sent out this newsletter in which I listed all of the challenges I faced and overcame in order to successfully record my most recent song, “Together We Compose This Bloody, Bleeding, Beating Drum“. And although I haven’t heard this particular feedback (or any, yet), it just occurred to me that listing those challenges might easily seem like bragging.
Oh, look at how great I am, I made this thing after it was so hard but I pulled it off anyway. Yahoo, me!
I am aware that the appearance of this kind of self-congratulatory attitude can be damning, especially in our humble Liberal Quaker culture. Maybe this would be a little more culturally appropriate:
Here’s something I made. It’s OK I guess.
But what kind of celebration is that for something that you’ve just witnessed, against all odds, overcome the inertia of inexistence?
Here’s the real message behind my bragging:
I had so many opportunities to screw this up, to get in the way. I almost took all of them.
It almost didn’t happen. It came so close to not happening. Over and over again. There were SO MANY times when it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, and I wanted to force it, to push it into existence despite its resistance and then to shrug my shoulders when it ended up being mediocre and say, “what could I do? I was on a deadline.” or whatever.
But instead I prayed and waited and listened, and when it was put aside, out of the way, left alone, in the periphery something moved, something shifted, way opened, and it once again had it’s own life, it’s own power.
It’s better than I ever could have imagined it. I am in awe of this song, that it exists, that it works, that, after all the turmoil and not-knowing and nonlinear progress, it came together, it came to life.
Look at the miracle and blessing that is this song. It almost didn’t exist. It had so many opportunities to not exist. The odds were well against it. And yet here it is, screaming and kicking and beautiful.
HALLELUJAH AMEN WE ARE BLESSED