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Down Along the Lines of Joy… That’s the name of an album I released in 2012 and this is the title track.
I based it off of the notion that JOY is something beyond happiness, something deeper than that. I had read C.S. Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy” and went on a hunt for this supposed “joy” he wrote about….I felt like I could use some of that!
I was going through a rough breakup at the time - it was a year before I met Nora and I felt…alone. For the first time in years.
So I looked for joy in music - in composition. That’s always at least been a solace for me; songwriting, creativity.
And I don’t know if I found it there or not. I don’t know if I found “joy” underneath the loneliness and depression.
But I found this album.
And I really put my heart into it, and I’m still proud of it.
And now, eleven years later, after playing these songs countless times, building a career prior to the pandemic, crashing said career and shattering the identity of all the stuff I thought I was…
Yeah, I think I found it.
And for myself it IS in music.
For you, it might be somewhere else.
But I’m pretty sure that JOY lies in being who you are.
Being yourself, being the most authentic version of YOU.
And loving yourself for it.
Because there will always be difficult times. There will always be times when it’s hard to be HAPPY.
But being YOU…being true to who you are and what you believe, doing the things you truly want to do with life, creating the things you want to create, being around the people you want to be with...allowing those things for yourself…
To be YOU…Even in the midst of adversity. Even when things are falling apart.
That’s Joy.
Love y’all