Over the last year, songwriting has been one of my primary paths of healing and resonance through the hardest season of my life. For many years I struggled with playing music. I would play a bit, then drop it for months or years.
But when my wife and children left Portugal I knew deep in my bones that music would take me home—not to any home in the world around me but to the home hidden deep within.
I took my guitar and embarked upon the first chapter of my sabbatical in nature—in Aljezur, Portugal to be exact. I strapped my surfboard onto the roof and decided I would face my lifelong fear of drowning at the same time as learning how to write music again.
During one of our ReFi Lisboa events I was very blessed to meet an amazing man named Patrick Blooming who became my songwriting coach and taught me how to write songs from the heart. This demo I’m releasing today reflects the pinnacle of my journey to create an EP.
I wrote it a few weeks ago after putting my children to sleep in my rented accommodation in Norwich, knowing that my time here in England was coming to a close—for now... We were driving home and a song came on that really stirred in me. It was a song called “Hey God” by an artist named BRENNAN, below.
There was something about the aching simplicity of his complaint to a God who seemed not to be there when he needed it most—something about the fleeting moment with my children in the car, something about the precious countdown of nights remaining where I would tuck my children into the bedroom of my rented home here in England—something struck me…
I put my boys to sleep, holding them both in my arms, kissing their foreheads as we recounted all that we were grateful for. Jesse said he was grateful for his brother Reuben. Reuben really liked that.
I closed the door and walked downstairs, put on the song, grabbed my guitar and found the key. After fumbling around with the chords I felt the voice of the first verse move through me:
You say that your god is outside me above.
You say that your god is supposed to be love…
As I sang I remembered the mahogany-lined walls of the megachurch where I first went to school in Colorado. I saw the massive six-figure sound system, the packed congregations and the little children running around in school uniforms packing shoe boxes full of Christmas gifts to send to less fortunate children in Mexico.
I remembered the anguish and torment of being told about these strict rules—everywhere—all the time, and the looming terror of eternal punishment and eternal reward dividing my being in half. I sang and tears poured out of my face.
I closed my eyes and my fingers found the chords to match the melody. Then I remembered one of my favorite chord forms and as soon as I played the words of the chorus pushed through in a piercing falsetto tone:
Only love is real.
Only love can win.
Only love can know itself
And be as one
When shadow welcomes home the sun.
I sang tears of release as I integrated my 33-years of seeking as a founder, a husband, a father. I felt the weight of my divorce and separation weighing heavy on my chest. I felt the scorn of finger wagging brothers and sisters telling me what to do, what not to do and the hypocrisy of it all.
I continued to write, the words flowing out of me—my eyes closed as I sang. I remembered this feeling before. It was as if behind the darkness of my closed eyes there was an ecstatic light show. Glistening remnants of the sun bounced behind my eyelids. Hidden colors of purples, blues and hues of red ebbed and flowed.
This has only ever happened to me once before: In a dark room in the basement of my university in New Orleans in 2009. I had closed myself in and trusted me inner voice not to turn on the light. I had only just begun to learn piano and something inside said I should forget about what the keys looked like and just focus on how they felt.
I remember the feeling of my voice beating through my heart, the melody, the fingertips on the piano keys moving effortlessly as if I had played for decades, even though I’d only just begun to learn the scales.
I breathed a sigh of release as I wrote down the lyrics do the song, expressing gratitude for this wonderful moment of flow—keeping an ear out for my kids upstairs—and continued writing.
Within a couple hours I’d recorded a demo of the song and felt a massive openness in my chest. No therapy could ever do this for me. No medicine journey either. Only music. Only love.
I proceeded to leave for Portugal the next day and embark upon a journey that became the most wild, miraculous and challenging weeks of my life. I sang this song in circles of friends and began opening my heart to the world as a musician, a writer, and a soul. I allowed myself to be witnessed beyond the professional veneer I’d built for myself over the years, allowed myself to be broken and bruised.
What ensued was nothing short of astonishing, and inspired by these moments of being seen in the early moments of my flourishing gifts as a musician, I decided to release this demo as a teaser for my upcoming album.
I’m releasing it here on Regenera.xyz as I believe that it all fits together in one overarching theme: The regeneration of the earth IS the regeneration of our hearts.
As we come into alignment with who we are as a part of nature we will begin to live lives in service of the whole. As we plant trees, cultivate food and share feasts with our human and more-than-human family we will restore the emptiness that the modern world has dug so deeply into our heart.
I’ll be releasing a handful of other demos in the days to come before dropping the studio versions of the songs and hosting a launch party for my album at TDF in Portugal.
Subscribe to stay tuned!
See you on the other side.
Only Love Is Real — EP COMING SOON