December/January

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photograph from New Year retreat walk – credit Ha

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Release of my first album More The Love That’s Given/ Foxx’s Frequency January Playlists/ Sharings through the year (this month depression) and Oak Tree Film/Contemplations on whiteness.

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Many thanks to friends who came to mark the release of More The love That’s Given in December – it was a lovely evening with many friends and many instruments, many stories; it felt good.

The album (and acoustic version) is on now Spotify, a stream of the full album is also available here on Youtube thanks to Canadian music angel Mr Foxx’s Frequency 🙂 and the album has it’s own page here – with stories of the songs and…

an invitation to share…

Started last year I would like to continue to invite stories of the songs to collect together here. My wish is to do one a month through this year starting with ‘depression’ the theme of the album’s opening song Be Still.

If you feel you can share please send me a note through the contact page and we can see together how best to do it. It would appear here with your name or anonymously.

January playlists and a live video from aforementioned Foxx’s Frequency featuring a couple of songs from the album, Lay Down and There’s A Place alongside many other songwriters from around the world. Click through to find many songs I have been touched by in the last few weeks – and Oak Tree.

thank you my friends Josh Donaldson (for the idea) and Will Saunders for helping film on the day for Josh’s project Concious Film Company

This is ‘Oak Tree’ and song about loving trees in all their beauty and awesomeness!

Its also about ecology and our relationship to nature: in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, a buddhist monk who many of you know I love,

‘We need to change our way of thinking and seeing things. We need to realise that the Earth is not just our environment. The Earth is not something outside of us. Breathing with mindfulness and contemplating your body, you realise that you are the Earth. You realise that your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Look around you–what you see is not your environment, it is you.

When we can truly see and understand the Earth, love is born in our hearts. We feel connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one’

(Thich Nhat Hanh’s contemplations at the request of the UN’s climate change convention summit 2014)

good quote isn’t it ?!

and lastly I’ll be returning to All Saints Community Church in January to begin recording new songs.

I have 4 which I plan to do first:

Listen To Women/Young Colours/This Skin and Oh Friends.

3 are written and one, This Skin, is being written. This is about whiteness, having white skin and the history tied into that and how that’s playing out in the world now – my reading into this subject has been the below books and podcasts – I wonder if others have also been reading and if so would like to share?

In many ways a concerning start to 2020; may you find peace and loving strength in your own ways as we begin the new year

love

Joe