Music.
When people would ask me “would you rather lose your hearing or your vision” I would always say, "vision - if I lost my hearing, I wouldn’t be able to hear music." The power of music has always been with me. I can feel its might going back far before I was even born. But in choosing hearing over vision, I know now that even if I lost both, my connection to music would maybe be even stronger - as music goes beyond our human ears. The song where all songs are birthed from needs none of the human five senses, as it is pure vibration.
Exactly because of this profound power of music, it is a great responsibility to make music.
As with any powerful force, music can heal or harm. Music can evolve us, or devolve us. So I do not make music because I am ‘talented’ or have ‘a unique voice’ or am a ‘good lyricist’, but rather because I feel a call to (without perfection) make music that is medicine, that is evolving.
When it is deeply understood in its true purpose and form:
Music is a science.
Music is a vehicle of love.
Music is a great responsibility.
Music is responsiveness to what humanity calls for.
Music is always in connection with others.
Music can’t be owned.
Music is pure joy in motion.
Music is a conduit for truth and wisdom to be shared.
Music will always hold the quality in which the person making it lives their life in every moment.
Words.
I love writing lyrics. The way words come together in unexpected and delightful ways never ceases to amaze me. How I can begin writing without even knowing what the song is about to discover an amazingly powerful song emerges. How the words come through me, but are not ‘my ideas’. How the chords and melody can land in the morning, only to soon have the perfectly accompanying lyrics just “download” while on a walk later that day. When it is truly flowing, it is pure magic.
But writing lyrics is equally a great responsibility. We are sadly lacking in songs that have lyrics that offer the listener true liberation and advance. I have come to understand intimately how the lyrics of songs are a form of expression that is inextricably connected to how the scribe of those words lives day to day.
We have become accustomed to songs that are clearly imposing upon us via another’s anger, sorrow, addictions, insecurities and other messages that will never free us. Many of us don’t blink as we dance to someone singing about harming another, or taking drugs that could easily kill them, or that celebrate misogeny, given-up-ness, or self-loathing. But if we take a moment to notice those, they become obvious. Much more insidious are the songs that speak about love and truth - and the words may be poetic and faultless - but if that person who writes and or sings them is not embodying what they sing about, there will be an emptiness in them, a falseness. And thus we consume a story about love and truth that has no lived foundation to truly source. But there is another way. We can also offer songs that arise out of a love of humanity, truly loving relationships, a willingness to see and respond in words to what is awry with our world, and to share revelations that help break the chains that bind us.
Love.
I make music in honor of all of this, and to offer out the love that burst forth from my heart of hearts for all of humanity. In the midst of the insanity and suffering in this world we traverse each day, I share with you songs that offer a spaciousness and wisdom that is ageless and timeless and that we all are part of. I record songs that hold reminders about what we truly are, and that we can be in this world, but - as the lyrics from “Don’t Wait for the World to Change” say - know that “We sure ain’t from here”.
My songs are for everyone.
They are my love notes to the world.
Humbly and with immense love,
Deborah