Dear friends,
Thank you! Thank you for the overwhelming feedback in responses to last week's release of Wearing Love. I can't even explain what a great feeling it was to put this out into the world. Now I have one minor request for you...
Please share!
There is no media machine behind this one. YOU are it!
My hope is that this message catches like wildfire and ignites hearts anywhere and everywhere!
Yep, there I said it. That's my grand plan for taking over the world!
About the Project
I am not a dancer...obviously :)
But as the vision for this project became clearer over the last few months, it was apparent to me that this would need to be a dance video...and that I would need to be the one doing the dancing. Hehe. Yikes!
Enter the last 3 months of my life: finishing the song arrangement, recording and working across cities with my producer, bassist, and electric guitarist, Vision-casting and storyboarding w/ Creative Director Michael Rothermel, interpreting and choreographing a dance through my body, and repeated attempts at creating a golden globe.
Wearing Love is my response to 2020. In the blackhole of identity politics, social media wars, and our country's polarizing responses to racial injustice, this song is a response and a challenge to come up higher and do better...to wear love better than we wear our pride...or our political affiliations.
About the Song
There’s no way to talk about this song without talking about the pangs of learning how to love the people closest to you. Wearing Love was the outworking of a painful 2019 - being on the road less and being around loved ones more. Constant head-butting, re-evaluating, and recalibrating were my defaults and I kept having to ask myself, “do I really wanna do this?” And yet, even when I said “no”, the answer always eventually returned to “yes”. Learning to love has been and will continue to be life’s greatest battle.
Which brings me to this song’s other influence: super-hero movies.
Yeah...i know :)
The image of fighting for love was a vivid one for me. I kept thinking of a verse in scripture where Peter asks Jesus, “How many times do I have to forgive my brother or sister when he hurts me? Like seven?” And Jesus answers “Seven? Try 70x7”...meaning “you’ll eventually lose count.”
And so I realized I had begun to think of love as a covering - something that you have to wear like skin. Something you can’t leave home without. Love as a cloak and love as a weapon. A superpower. Strong enough to protect from offense and even stronger in its ability to transform an atmosphere and change everything and everyone around it.
everyone will wonder, you did not go under.
you were undercover, wearing love
Zoom out to January 2020. I had just finished writing the song and had no idea what the year would bring. As the months began to unfold, I realized Wearing Love was no longer about my personal life but a reflection on a world in chaos.
In a time when fear has never been so palpable and offense is just a flavor of the day, the bridge of this song began to take on a whole new meaning...
slow your breathing, no more scheming, quit competing
just love
Breathing. With all of its many vantage points breathing has become quite controversial: from choosing how we use our breath to speak to each other in conflict, to dealing with a virus that attacks the lungs, to watching George Floyd’s very breath slip away.
If love could be used as a weapon instead of fear, 2020 would have no doubt played out differently. I know, it’s a lofty idea. But 2020 has not necessarily brought conflict, it’s only unearthed what was already there. And so the question moving forward is (and has always been) how do we approach the world we encounter every time we step out our front door?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
I know this year has not been what any of us expected. Most of us feel like we're crawling over the finish line. But I just want to say I am so very thankful for you.
Stay healthy, stay hopeful.
Joy
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