I first started playing the guitar and singing songs during my late teenage years. I was very interested in and influenced by music by Peter, Paul, and Mary (both their own music and music they covered from other artists, like Bob Dylan). However I didn't write my own. I did however tend to rearrange some songs when I began to present them publicly. The folk style of music seemed to suit me - it has been a kind of "issues" music rather than "entertainment" music. (Later on Paul Stookey became born again and even released an album or two on his own reflecting his relationship to Yahshua.)
Once in my late teens or early twenties - let's say 1969?) I was practicing a song in my bedroom and my father walked by my closed door and said "Your flat." When I heard that I didn't reject him for saying that, but I didn't just thank him and correct the pitch, either. Somehow, unknowingly, I internalized what he said in a way that shut some kind of emotional door deep inside my soul. I continued to develop songs by other people and occasionally presented them in public places over the years that followed, but never really could seem to write my own songs. I would comment that I was a visual artist and as far as composing songs I didn't understand where the music came from and didn't seem to have lyrics occurring to me- but never the less I loved playing the guitar and working up arrangements and singing/playing in public (but I never sang privately in front of my parents)
One day around 1989? I was sitting in my car in the Barnett's Dairyette parking lot waiting for my order and the Holy Spirit placed in my mind the memory of that moment in my bedroom when I heard my dad say "I was flat". As far as I remember I hadn't thought about that during all those years since the moment it happened. Now as it came to my mind, I began to weep uncontrollably for several minutes. When that passed by, I 'looked at myself" and wondered where did that come from and why did it come from. The Holy Spirit didn't say anything about this moment ,my order was ready, I picked it up, ate it and went on my way.
About two years later in the late spring/early summer I was working for DaySpring Card Company mowing grass. For about 6 - 8 months I had been preparing a music special for the church we were part of. At the beginning of that preparing time, in the fall, I had started "writing a song". Lyrics had come to me and I was searching for the music but it just wasn't coming - it was really bad so I stopped working on it. Now as I was sitting on the mower, mowing, those lyrics came back to me only music came to me that started to work and kept working until the song was truly born! I had written a song. Then more songs began to pour out of me over the following weeks at a pace that I exclaimed"Woah, this is too much" and they stopped coming and I said "No, sorry, let them flow." And they continued fairly heavily for two or three years and I still write occasionally, but I know I can write a lot if I choose to.
During that amazing summer when this started up, I was thinking about the "special" I was still preparing for coming up in the fall. I realized that once I presented the songs in the special, then they would evaporate (except in people's memory) but as a visual artist when I show paintings in a show and the show is over the paintings are still there to see. So I said "there must be a way to have a record of these songs so they don't disappear...a record... oh that is why they make recordings of the music !!!" So I had about 18 songs I wanted to record and hired a recording studio in town and prepared and recorded those songs. What an experience that was. The creating continued in expressing them while recording and then as I worked with the sound engineer in mix-down.
What a very rewarding time this explosion of a new grace has been. Praise Yahweh! Apparently Yahweh decided in that moment in the parking lot, some 20 years after the moment in my room, to open that very creative door in my heart that I didn't even know had shut. It certainly is His good pleasure to give us His Kingdom. What a pleasure to receive words and music from Yahweh's Heart and Mind and get to create them into song form and share Him through them with other people. But I am not the only one - He has given graces (gifts) to everyone and anyone who will can cultivate their grace, by the Holy Spirit, and share Yahweh with other people through these gifts:
https://www.wellspring-contemporary-art.com/blog
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darney+willis&spfreload=5
Darnéy
Once in my late teens or early twenties - let's say 1969?) I was practicing a song in my bedroom and my father walked by my closed door and said "Your flat." When I heard that I didn't reject him for saying that, but I didn't just thank him and correct the pitch, either. Somehow, unknowingly, I internalized what he said in a way that shut some kind of emotional door deep inside my soul. I continued to develop songs by other people and occasionally presented them in public places over the years that followed, but never really could seem to write my own songs. I would comment that I was a visual artist and as far as composing songs I didn't understand where the music came from and didn't seem to have lyrics occurring to me- but never the less I loved playing the guitar and working up arrangements and singing/playing in public (but I never sang privately in front of my parents)
One day around 1989? I was sitting in my car in the Barnett's Dairyette parking lot waiting for my order and the Holy Spirit placed in my mind the memory of that moment in my bedroom when I heard my dad say "I was flat". As far as I remember I hadn't thought about that during all those years since the moment it happened. Now as it came to my mind, I began to weep uncontrollably for several minutes. When that passed by, I 'looked at myself" and wondered where did that come from and why did it come from. The Holy Spirit didn't say anything about this moment ,my order was ready, I picked it up, ate it and went on my way.
About two years later in the late spring/early summer I was working for DaySpring Card Company mowing grass. For about 6 - 8 months I had been preparing a music special for the church we were part of. At the beginning of that preparing time, in the fall, I had started "writing a song". Lyrics had come to me and I was searching for the music but it just wasn't coming - it was really bad so I stopped working on it. Now as I was sitting on the mower, mowing, those lyrics came back to me only music came to me that started to work and kept working until the song was truly born! I had written a song. Then more songs began to pour out of me over the following weeks at a pace that I exclaimed"Woah, this is too much" and they stopped coming and I said "No, sorry, let them flow." And they continued fairly heavily for two or three years and I still write occasionally, but I know I can write a lot if I choose to.
During that amazing summer when this started up, I was thinking about the "special" I was still preparing for coming up in the fall. I realized that once I presented the songs in the special, then they would evaporate (except in people's memory) but as a visual artist when I show paintings in a show and the show is over the paintings are still there to see. So I said "there must be a way to have a record of these songs so they don't disappear...a record... oh that is why they make recordings of the music !!!" So I had about 18 songs I wanted to record and hired a recording studio in town and prepared and recorded those songs. What an experience that was. The creating continued in expressing them while recording and then as I worked with the sound engineer in mix-down.
What a very rewarding time this explosion of a new grace has been. Praise Yahweh! Apparently Yahweh decided in that moment in the parking lot, some 20 years after the moment in my room, to open that very creative door in my heart that I didn't even know had shut. It certainly is His good pleasure to give us His Kingdom. What a pleasure to receive words and music from Yahweh's Heart and Mind and get to create them into song form and share Him through them with other people. But I am not the only one - He has given graces (gifts) to everyone and anyone who will can cultivate their grace, by the Holy Spirit, and share Yahweh with other people through these gifts:
https://www.wellspring-contemporary-art.com/blog
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darney+willis&spfreload=5
Darnéy