Dear Listener,
I’m writing from the Warren, my little house on a Tennessee hill. My dog is barking outside at what I’m pretty sure must be a skunk. I suspect this because Moondog has reeked of skunk for a few weeks now, and today it smelled like he got a fresh spray of it. We don’t pet him much these days. My children and wife are fast asleep, and I’m experiencing a sort of postpartum depression.
The creative process is in some ways like a birthing. Jamie is quick to remind me that writing a song feels nothing like labor. But still, there’s a period of expectation, which includes fear and worry and excitement and hope, followed by a healthy dose of struggle. In the end there’s something new in the world, and by God’s grace he has allowed you to take part in it. If you’re lucky that new thing is beautiful. And when the drama is over you’re left feeling…something. Something like emptiness. You might feel useless, or restless, or listless, or sad–even as you’re deeply grateful for the gift you’ve been given. It doesn’t last long, and it isn’t overpowering, but it’s there.
The album we just finished recording (though it hasn’t been mixed or mastered yet) took a little less than a month, and the writing of the songs started 18 months ago. I went into it with a blank slate: no theme, no album title, no concept. Just thirteen new songs, the Captains Courageous, and the hope that somehow we’d emerge with something that might move people. I wrote the song titles on a marker board in the studio, then I checked off each song as we finished the main tracks, wondering what this album would have to say to you, the Listener. I wondered what it would have to say to me. I’m still not totally sure.
I know what the songs are about. Or at least what I meant for them to be about. Several are about this place around me: the Warren, with its trees and trails, the change of light on the hill, the family that gives our little spot in the world life and story, and the God who blesses and keeps us and the land too. The songs are also about hope. And in order for them to be about hope, they have to be about what hope kills: despair. Fear. Loneliness. Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel, and some of these songs were written in the tunnel. I hope they bear some of that light to you.
So here I sit at the end of a good day’s work, thinking about the hours we spent harnessing these ideas, words, and melodies to binary code so the Listener could hear a song on his or her way to work and feel something in a numbing world. We have done our work, and now it’s time for the mystery of music and story to do its work. We have done what we could, and the songs must do what we cannot.
As I write this I’m wonder-struck by this world Christ made. How thankful I am that he would give us music, that he would give us time itself so the notes have somewhere to go, that the Word would give us words that carry pictures and ideas and glories from one mind into the secret garden of another, even that he would allow us technology that enables these little kinetic works of art to flit around the world like birds and to make nests in even a single heart.
I dreamed of doing this when I was a kid. I tiptoed down my street in the wee hours of morning, down to the dock by the city park, hoping no one would see the guitar in my hand. I dangled my legs over the still water and looked down at the stars and sang every song I knew, wishing I had just one of my own. I had not language (or faith) for it at the time, but looking back I believe I came to the lake because I was called there. Something woke me in the night, and I came. I didn’t know it was the Lord. I thought the voice was music itself. I came and said, “You called?” But music said, “No. Go back to bed.” Years later, when I still thought music was calling, I came to it only to find restlessness, dissatisfaction, even destruction. I said again, “You called?” And music said, “No. Go back to bed. And next time, when you wake, say ‘Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.’ ”
I’m no Samuel, of course, but you get the point. God was calling me (as he’s calling you) to something unimaginable. It was not to fame or fortune. It was not to music. It was to himself. And so, at the end of an album I am reminded of all the time I spent twenty years ago with my neighbor’s Harmony guitar, learning songs by Tesla, and Extreme, and Skynyrd, never once believing that I’d one day find great pleasure singing songs about, of all people, Jesus. If you had told me then that I’d one day get a chance to make several albums of my own songs (or write books) I would have laughed even as I ached for it to be true. I would have been even more skeptical if you had told me that my real joy wouldn’t be found in the music itself, or in the creation of it, but in the communion it creates between you and me–and the sweeter communion between me and the Father.
Thanks for supporting me and mine all these years. I love telling these stories. I love writing the songs. Though I’m hardly adequate or wise or deserving of attention, I hope these will find you and water your garden. I hope they become to you more than I can make them.
I guess that’s it. I have a full heart and needed a place to spill over.
Tomorrow morning I plan to head to the coffee shop and answer some snail mail letters from kids who read the Wingfeather Saga, then I’ll get busy on book three. I’m sure that later this year when I finish it I’ll write another gushy-mushy post about another postpartum funk. I can hardly wait.
Sincerely,
AP
Plus, there are far worse things than buffalo in the boring places of the...
11 Comments
Hi Andrew,
I love your books, my husband introduced them to me, and read On the Edge aloud to me, well at least part of it, before I just had to read ahead. I just finished North! and loved it. I have a rather silly question, but it has been rolling around and around since finishing….How did the same melody of the song of the ancient stones produce two so different results in Artham and Kalmar? In any case, cannot wait for the next book! Thanks for all your writing, and thanks to your family for sharing you with your readers
Katie
Andrew,
It’s kind of funny reading all of these gushing comments from strangers to a person who they don’t really know, but I find myself wanting to say the same things to you. My first college roommate introduced me to your music when Carried Along first came out. We were very different people and you were our first shared love that we built a incredible friendship on. I used to read your old on-line journal regularly because I loved the way that you shared what the Lord was doing in you. Honesty like that is hard to write and hard to come by. Thank you for that kind of bravery. It helped me to feel the huge hole in my own heart. The words that you wrote on the jacket of Love and Thunder are framed on my wall. My grandparents had a farm out in the country growing up and I feel like you pulled those words out of my heart, starring up at the stars.
I just wanted to take a minute to tell you how much your work has meant to me. I just finished reading North for the second time and got on-line to see how long I have to wait for the next one. I started reading through old posts and found myself crying reading this one. God has really used your words to awaken my heart and remind me of the richness that my soul longs for. It’s a reminder that there is so much more to life than just coasting. There are adventures to be had, mountains to climb, and forces to fight. I really needed something to remind me of that. Thank you for providing it. I think it’s so great that so many kids are taking this story in. But I hope that you remember people like me as well. What you’ve created isn’t just for children. I can’t wait for the next book!
The first time I heard a song that you wrote I was actually driving through the Rockies near Denver. A friend of mine put your CD in the player and I was half listening, half gazing out my window (I’m from Michigan and Mountains are as alien to me as toothy cows). But man, it was Karma or Kismet or Ka or some other form of fate twisting with destiny when we rounded a bend towards a valley clearing in the mountains with horses running across it in the distance, mountains on the horizon, and your voice singing the words, “And the mountains sing Your glory Hallelujah!” I was floored. Thank you for facilitating a very special communion between the Lord and I on that day. I’ve been a longtime fan ever since then and I cannot wait to hear the new Album.
Aaron H
Thanks for spilling your full heart out to us. I am quite certain that this album will mean just as much as your others have and I can hardly wait to get my hands on it. Have fun at the coffee shop tomorrow and happy writing!
As you sit in the center of your postpartum funk in your peaceful corner of Tennessee, I hope you are encouraged by knowing that when you enter that process, when you put pen to paper and let story sing it’s way to life, you are writing the soundtrack to my life. Literally, every Saturday morning we wake up, put your albums on shuffle, make pancakes with our little ones and sing along all day long. Your songs capture life as I’ve never heard it before and it’s as if your songs help me understand what I actually mean to say…they help me live what I actually mean to live. They speak the words my heart cannot find and sing of mysteries unfolding. Thank you for going through the struggle so that I can listen to the chords and harmonies and breathtaking lyrics and see deeper into this life and this story the Creator has written for me.
ahhhhh….. love it.
Can’t wait for the album
I sing your songs to my little man and little lady at night to help them to sleep (yours too Rich
. I’ve read your books to them before bed. We’ve laughed at the funny man with socks on his hands. We’ve struggled to remember all the words to Matthew’s Begats. Thanks for giving me some lumber and nails to build a bridge into the world of Daniel and Ellie. I appreciate it.
Thank you! Such an inspiration.
Can’t add to what Andrew C wrote above–he put it beautifully. Let me just echo my thanks that you share your God-given gifts with the rest of us!
Andrew:
Your struggle to express the Word in your heart is never in vain. From “Isn’t it Love?” to “North! Or be Eaten!”, the work you do has given my son and I a lot of joy, a common connection, and a burr under our saddles. Your struggle has become our own, and I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given us to think, wonder, and express our own struggles for others.
God bless you, brother! =)
AP,
Even though we’ve never met I feel like we’ve walked this journey with Jesus together. From Carried Away, and every point beyond that, the songs that have been given to you have given voice to my own walk, struggles, and awe. You sure are right about God’s calling to something unimaginable. So even as I and my family stand on a precipice of sorts, not knowing how God will move next, He has become more sweet with every step, in a way that defies articulation in words. But many times the music he gives you and others communicates His beauty beyond what words alone can.
Thanks for sharing your journey…