Description
So much of this album was written during the Corona Virus Pandemic. But a few months before Covid hit, I wrote May 24, 42 years ago, for my Mother, the day she died. The number reversal would never happen again. I also wrote One Last October, which was the last time I saw my Father alive, our last visit together, before he passed on November 27, 2019. That began a new chapter in my life, that of “Orphan”.
Now, with both my parents gone and being an only child, it creates a strange feeling: on one level, like I’m no longer connected, adrift without an anchor, while on another, feeling both of them all around me on a spiritual plane. The piece, What My Eyes Can’t See, reflects my faith that our physical manifestation on this Earth is merely a chapter in our spiritual journey. In life, if you pay attention, the many coincidences that seem to occur, are messages from God, from loved ones having crossed over: The Universe is talking, one just needs to listen and realize these, so-called coincidences, are full of meaning!
While Covid-19 ravaged the world, I continued to compose. There is something in this album that feels different, something in my writing that I haven’t felt for some time. I have lived through some extremely difficult and trying times in my years, emotionally, physically and psychologically. Through my music, I have sought to heal myself and in doing so, have found that I am healing others, which again gives me certainty about my mission in earthly garb.
Yet this album, Change is in the Wind, is just that, change. This time, and not for a long time, my music is coming from a place of Peace. It’s been kind of surreal actually, as if the heartaches of the past have been freed and I am floating in an aura of completeness, of understanding and release, Turning the Page, as it were.
During the pandemic, we had an April Snow, not entirely impossible for New England, yet significantly unusual, which brought forth What Blooms Beneath the Snow. So many, many people around the world succumbed to this staggering disease and yet, I was able to find a Silver Lining; something my Mother always encouraged me to look for when the Clouds were darkest.
For many, during the Lockdown and the stay-at-home mandates, with no work or school schedules, any sense of routine began to disappear, and one day seemed to bleed into the next, life slowed, and it became Forever Sunday. It’s not a bad thing that life slowed down. The Human race goes about at a torrid pace – this is bound to bring about pain: so perhaps a lesson learned in the ‘silver lining’.
As I wrote these notes, sitting in my garden amidst Nature’s beauty, a Monarch Butterfly and a Hummingbird chose to visit: magnificent creatures of God’s amazing artistry and I felt blessed; they , too, are messengers of all that ‘my eyes can’t see’. My album, Change is in the Wind, represents a glance in the rearview mirror of my life, but, with an Emergence into the light and peace of the Present. If it be only fleeting, I embrace it wholeheartedly – the “Now” – for that is what we have and we must live it to the fullest.
Carpe Diem!
Ann Sweeten
