One Deer One Dove

So, what is this song about? Well, first how do I write music?  What is the process?

When I create, the closest semantic I can use is that the process is multidimensional.  It is as if when I write songs I become the space of the songs themselves. I become the music that we ARE.  This is similar to painting but more holographic, with sounds, colors, shapes, words, topics, people, and more. My lover Cal says that I continually talk with myself when creating, but I am unaware of this.

It is so interesting that while I am writing songs I am more than just me sitting and playing a keyboard and programming instruments. I am also each instrument and each musician as well, and each has their own personality and style that comes through. It is hard to explain, though I am sure many experience writing music in this same way. When I am for instance writing a song, within the "space" of my awareness the song exists and I am just opening for it to arrive.  If I am writing a cello line I am somehow working directly with a cellist (though I am also that cellist), and "we" are in an actual unique environment (such as a studio, or on a stage) and we are working together as one as we create. This is the case with every song. I am either working "with" the musicians directly, or the song is a scene playing out in my head like I am watching it happen and trying to keep up by taking (or writing) notes like a reporter. Yes, it feels that I am observing and documenting the notes and colors as fast as I am able, because when I am deep in one song I still hear the other potential songs "waiting" to "come in from some dimensional space within my head. And as I am writing, band members and choir members are coming and going.  Someone brings in taco bell, a feedback screeches - I mean it is a full-on visceral scene.

Another thing is that each phrase or melody also has a "world" within it. How do I explain this (though it is irrelevant but fun to attempt) so that one will know what I mean? Let us say that I am writing the intro bars to a verse of a song and this song is comprised of piano, percussion, and violins. Well, as I am in that space of "creating" I may be through my third eye flying (about 10' feet from the ground) above a rocky wave-lapped shoreline through the eye of a bird. Or, I am with the three musicians on an old rickety wooden stage in an opera house (crowd and all), or we are wind-caressed playing at a fog-engulfed edge of a cliff, etc. Every melody, phrase, or rest is like this. Each has an associated "thing" with it. There are worlds associated with each song like a movie. That was interesting to put into words.

So, concerning "One Deer, One Dove" I do not remember the exact movie or the exact process, but as you listen to the words you can imagine the scenes playing out and being woven. This song has a "personal" and experiential arc with a Universal theme. This song explains my experience of "feeling" more of myself and of being more than I had been. The personal arc of story is that there is a presence that becomes known when we "expand" that is more than a feeling, it is US. "Raining down through my soul..." is as clear as I can express it in this song. I am pointing to this presence that we are with the imagery. The second Universal theme is that we do not have to be ineffectual to be spiritual. We are the grace of the dove and the power, alertness, and agility of the deer. So many now are "thinking" spiritual, and not being whole. Wholeness contains All, and this includes the qualities of surrender and knowing.



I close my eyes, and I drift into silence
Through the doorway of the heart on an ocean of love

And there we are giving comfort and solace