Songs From Earth

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his album actually came from a very vivid dream I had. You know, one of those dreams that is so real that when you wake up it takes you a few minutes to decide whether the Dream or 'Reality' is more real?

In my dream I was in an ancient Greek temple. I described it to a friend of mine who is something of an expert on such things and he said I was describing an ancient Greek Aesclepion—a temple specifically for healing. (Hippocrates, perhaps the founder of Western medicine, and whose 'Hippocratic Oath' new doctors still swear, received his medical training at an Aeslcepion.) Interestingly, in Aesclepions, they believed that healing could only take place while you were asleep.

In any event, in the middle of the temple, seated on an ornate bench, was a woman. There was no one else there except she and I. Somehow I knew it was Sophia—the ancient goddess of Wisdom. And she was weeping. I was a temple musician (big surprise, I suppose), and as I was thinking 'what could I play for her to comfort her?' I woke up.

Just a dream. But there's certainly no lack of comforting that needs to happen these days. And certain groups in ancient times believed that Sophia was an intermediary between God and humanity, so in a way Sophia is a short-hand for the whole world. For everyone on Earth. (In dream-symbolism.)

On the heels of this dream, I wrote all the music for Songs from Earth in one maniacal 3-day weekend. (It wasn't pretty.) Of course it took me a month or so after that to properly record the music and produce the album.

See my article on "The Healing Powers of the Glass Armonica"