Three Cheers to Fertility

In all honesty, it’s completely ridiculous to me that my debut full-length album as indie rapper Forefeather went live over a month and a half ago. I guess that’s a pretty good example of how intensely life’s big transitions can shake up the awareness. …Not to mention another reminder of how living and working at a yoga retreat center can be such a time warp.

Making the shift from the state of labor that I’d been in for so long to the spaciousness of no longer being responsible for my child (in the form of this album) was one of the biggest and most sudden transitions I’ve ever gone through….

Don’t get me wrong here though, I wouldn’t want to make it seem to you like I’m claiming to understand the experience of carrying or birthing a baby, but it’s crazy to me how many parallels there seem to be in that when you really put a lot of dedication into a project like this. To be honest, I think I might have experienced a hefty wave of postpartum depression since the beginning of January.

Classic comparison, I know… and an easy one to make, as someone who’s never grown a human inside of them, let alone given birth to one. I never understood how a lot of artists could so underhandedly liken the process of creating an album to that of bearing and delivering a child to the world, but someone who’s recently become the proud father of a full-length concept album, I definitely get it. This thing needed a lot of nourishment from me before being willing to breathe on its own.

On the other hand, my hunch is that when someone becomes a parent, that’s where the real adventure begins. Again, my intention is definitely not to talk down the process of growing a person inside of you, but it can’t be anywhere near as humbling, exciting, and exhausting as the act of actually raising the kid. For me, the creation process of this album was much more engaging and exciting than the bittersweet agony of letting it wander out of my hands and exist outside of my own tiny little window of consciousness. If we’re being honest here, it was pretty hard to hand this thing over to you guys. I miss it.

Hmm. You know what I think that probably means, though?

I guess I’ll have to go ahead and make another one.

This is me, feeling fertile.

‘

Have a nice day.

🙂

A Secular Monk

The next single from my upcoming album is called Secular Monk, and it’ll go live (right here) tomorrow (December 9th) afternoon.

The track is very dear to my heart… You can consider it a reminder not to take life too seriously.

It’s about the reverence that can be found in the most seemingly insignificant moments. Well, I think that’s what it’s about. To be honest, it’s kind of the oddball track on this album. I don’t know if it even makes sense to try to say what I think it’s about. You’ll probably just have to decide for yourself.

One of Summer and I’s favorite places on our trip was this amazing retreat center called “Misty Mountains“. A magnificent, and virtually inaccessible (but incredibly picturesque) little community tucked way up in the Himalayas, owned by an inspiring romantic and artist named Madhur.

This recitation of one of Madhur’s poems (titled “Angelo“) provides the context for the song:

Secular Monk will be available to stream or download tomorrow (December 9th, 2014) right here, or from http://www.forefeather.com/.

Dennis – The Song, the Sample, the Salesman…

I’m dropping the first official single from this new project on Tuesday, November 25th. 

The song is called Dennis.

It’s the first track from my upcoming album “3Rhythms” (December 28th), and the instrumental is built mostly from this sample of a salesman in Rishikesh demonstrating the sound of one of his tibetan singing bowls:

The album 3Rhythms is a direct result of my sister and I’s trip to India in April of this year. It was funded both by a grant from the Jerome Foundation, and a Kickstarter campaign that promised a collaborative art project between my sister and I.

Dennis is the first track on the album. It was also the first track I completed for the album, and I think it serves as a great entry point into the entirely new artist that I’ve become since embarking upon this project.