Blue Swan

Here's a new song I wrote tonight.
Enjoy. :)

Can You Feel The Beat Of My Heart (Performed by Simone Hviid)

Congratulations to Bren and 丹丹 on their one year wedding anniversary. 

Below is the song as it was meant to be sung.

To see my earlier post about this song, click here.

Hope you enjoy. :)

Plants (An Original Song)

In February of 2011 I finished the melancholy 8 song album entitled Losing Heart.
The title of the album is based on a popular talk by former Governing Body member Dan Sydlik entitled "Don't Lose Heart."

With the lyrical themes I attempted to address a variety of topics such as not wanting to show a spirit of self-sacrifice, blood, childbirth/having a family in the last days, loneliness, imperfection etc.
The singing styles I used in this album also vary drastically track to track from deliberately lazy (My Blood) to outright jarring on "Opossum" (the song I like most and I think others will hate the most from this album.)

Losing Heart is a 16 minute low-budget artsy-fartsy album that is special to me personally. It was an attempt to capture certain despondent feelings many Jehovah's Witnesses experience. However, it is not an album I expect many people to enjoy and it doesn't best represent the musical spirit I want to share with the public. If you want to listen to it anyways, you can click here.

"Plants," the final song on this album, is a more accessible exception to the rest of the album. I tried to set it up as the climax in chronological and thematic context with the other songs.

One occasion after performing this song publicly in Shanghai a young woman came up to me and mentioned that while she liked the song, she wanted clarification as to what it meant. She asked if I was metaphorically alluding to the challenge a guy has when wooing a woman, or perhaps if I was literally talking about houseplants. Others asked if I was talking about the challenges of getting a Bible Student to progress--especially en lieu of the 'dragon' reference.

I think I was supposed to say something like, 'It's whatever you make it out to be,' but instead I probably replied with an ineloquent but honest 'I don't really know.'
Today, I do know what it means to me. It's a reflective poem to myself about coming to grips with trying and ultimately failing.

Sorry about the voice crack in the song (See last statement from previous paragraph).

An English Circuit Assembly Weekend in the DR

Click here for the full collection of photos from last weekend in my flickr album.

In case you do like them, most of the credit goes to my friend Simone who took many of the shots, and all the shots were taken on her camera. 

I only did the editing.

Below are a few lower quality preview shots. 

The highlights for me were when Circuit Overseer Robert Jones reminded us that this is not a 'needgreater' assembly as some may refer to it...it's a regular assembly for all those in the English Circuit (We ain't special just because we're serving where the need is great!).

I also really like the continuing trend of the bad example/good example demonstrations that make points really stand out.

As always, one of the best things about English Assembly time is the fact that people from all over the island--new faces and old ones--get together to create great memories.

The next English Assembly is the District Convention in Santo Domingo on May 16th through the 18th. It will be great as always, and it's an early convention compared to the rest of the world's convention dates.

Maybe you could join us for one or all of the days and plan a trip to the DR.