Dreamwalker (of course) begins in dreams. When I was 15 years old I heard music singing from the stars in a powerful night-dream. From that moment I have been trying to make those sounds, and the album that I am recording is the first creation that begins to manifest the songs I was called to sing all those years ago. I hear them in dreams, blowing through the eaves of trees, or while I am shaking my rattle in the early morning light. One song I heard as the subway doors opened while deep in a day-dream about lions. They usually find their their way to my guitar or piano, where they are born into strange little faerie songs before being infused with electronics. The time spent inside the pages of my journals brings me to this moment. Those moments with the page when everything else falls away, and there is nothing but the pen on the vast whiteness of paper stretched out forever. These are the moments that build the foundation of my artistic universe.
The Path: A few winters ago the songs on Dreamwalker find me. I spend the cold dark nights recording demos in my home studio and dreaming of a way to bring them to life in the world. It is a wonderful time. I let the whole world go. No shows, no social engagements, no plans on my calendar. Just me, the page, pen, keyboard, guitar, and computer. I write and record all year long, cataloging music from years past and creating a new library of sound. By the following winter I ask the Universe (and everyone I know) to connect me with collaborators. The perfect producers to help me to record this authentic offering of sound. These are the songs I have always been meaning to make. The songs all the others have been leading up to. A dream team comes through almost immediately through some of my very closest friends, and I know that it is right. In fact, I have been dreaming of recording with them for years. . .
Communication with Dave and Dhruva flows like quicksilver in the studio. Ideas spark like lightning, new boundaries are pushed, and sounds that have never been made before are born. Their mastery as recording artists and inborn musical talents are astounding, and I am forever grateful for the gifts they share within my songs.
Month follows month, and year follows year. As I write this entry, it is almost 2 years since the beginning of our collaboration at Sharmaji Studios. Ornate electronic music of this kind is not born quickly, and the 3 of us are in the flow of many projects at once. Dave and I are finishing the final songs now, and I look back at the time I spent curled in my winter cocoon all those years ago writing these songs.
I am new now. I have heard the songs from my dreams made manifest in the world, and I am different because of it. For all of the ease I experience in the studio, there is also a massive pressure that an artist feels when birthing something new into the world. Each note can be so serious, each beat of the drum can hold all the meaning of the heart. These are the sounds of my soul laid bare. They are a healing balm that makes me whole. They are the things my heart says when it is all alone, reaching towards the unseen world and marveling at the multiverse.
Soon they will fly from me, and belong to all of you. I intend to touch the Great River of Song when I am writing and recording, and the songs in that river belong to all of us. The songs have a meaning to me, but they will mean sometime new to you–maybe something I could never understand. I am listening for the next ones now. They are flowing down from the sky, and up from the roots of my being. The river is never ending, and mine but one of her many voices.
Photo by Luz Maxine Nienow Castelazo