The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of the month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room will include news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.
Dear friends,
How is it August already?! Summer has flown by for me. I hope you’ve had some time to relax and enjoy the warm weather!
Last month I shared a demo I recorded of “Blessed Be,” a song I wrote for Joyplosion — our church’s summer Bible school program. Every year our pastor chooses a theme Bible verse for the week, and I set the verse to music to help everyone memorize it. We create hand motions to go with it and sing the song at each meeting during the camp. (My daughter has helped me the past few years by teaching the motions. It’s hard to do motions and play the guitar at the same time.)
In recording and sharing the demo for “Blessed Be,” though, I realized I didn’t have demo recordings of the songs I wrote the last two years. So, I have two new Joyplosion songs to share with you! The song from 2018, “A Chosen Race,” is here, and the song from 2017, “See What Kind of Love,” is here.
You can see and listen to all the Joyplosion songs (so far!) at a new page on my website: https://www.ajharbison.com/music/pop/joyplosion-songs.
I also wanted to share with you a portion of the new piece I’ve been composing, Seal Lullaby, based on the poem by Rudyard Kipling. It’s just a MIDI recording, but you can get a general feel for how it will sound. It’s very simple and will be easy to sing — just like a lullaby should be! You can hear it here: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/seallullabydemo.mp3.
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This path that I’m on, of becoming a composer and working toward what I hope will eventually be a freelance career, can be hard sometimes. It’s easy to become discontent with where I am, to wonder what the next step is and to ask if I’m even where I should be right now. But a couple of things have encouraged me, just in the last week, to keep on going. The first is a new single by my favorite NYC singer/songwriter, Melanie Penn, which struggles with the same questions; it’s called “I Will Trust.” You can watch the lyric video on YouTube here.
The second thing that encouraged me was a conversation with someone I’ve known for a while now who has recently become more of a friend. He told me the story of his career, which was truly amazing. There were times when he felt trapped, like he could never escape the impossible situation he was in. But then something miraculous came along and he was given an opportunity he never could have dreamed of.
Each of these things gave me hope and strength to keep pressing on, working hard, going after my dreams. It reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill, dealing with a much more serious situation but remaining a good call to perseverance in any endeavor: “If you’re going through hell… keep going.”
Peace,
AJ Harbison