Beliefs and Art: Kickstarters and Startkickers.

After a few months in the cocoon of creative angst, I am emerging with a new album and the chance to promote it! The album is entitled “Believable Lies.” It is a short album, comprised of seven songs, all wrestling with the ideas of belief and lies and their conflict with reality at the intersection of faith and loss.

A personal theme permeates the album –  the notion of wandering off into ourselves. Sometimes I feel that the most hopelessly lost a person can become is when they turn inward and focus only on themselves and the depth of their own need and desire. We seem to do this all too often. In fact, it seems like an entire generation and society have done this.

There is a certain association for me between the words “loss” and “lost,” as so often the one leads to the other. The loss of friends, family, occupation, or even your grip on reality seem to cause a soul to become hopelessly lost. This lostness seems to be located inside, and so I call it being lost in yourself.

I think we expect to find truth in there. We imagine a world tucked deep beneath our skin that is the “true” one, that in there we will find ourselves. And we continually look for ideas and movements beyond us that reinforce this sense of internal reality. If those external forces resonate with our internal world then we go along with them. I call this the system of belief. I’ve written some academic stuff on the subject; in fact, it was my master’s thesis.

But my imagination does not end with what is. Instead, I dream of a world where we are not lost in ourselves but present and aware of the world around us; of the colors, the smells, the feeling of being alive. I imagine a world where it is not my ideas and beliefs at the expense of all others but instead in conversation with others. Where being right individually or otherwise does not equal righteousness. Where instead of my beliefs about God in need of defense we can rest in the assurance that God defends us from our own beliefs.

I hope to one day turn these thoughts into a book on the subject, but for now, I am staying with my primary medium: rock music. I would desperately love to have the chance to share these ideas with a much larger audience, because I think these ideas need to be heard. And so I have decided to do a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for this album’s release. My goal is to have $2500 raised by November 7th, and I would love it if you would consider backing this project. $10 gets you a digital download of the album, and while it seems like not much money, it helps me immensely! Will you support me and my art in exchange for this work that I am passionate about? Will you come along with me on this adventure and see if we can live more connected to God and each other?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/631063502/believable-lies-the-album