Watchfire Music: Why have you chosen music as your instrument of communication?

Lew Doty: I don’t think I chose it; it chose me. I expected to make music my career, but in my twenties I lost my passion for it, and totally gave up playing and writing, even sold the guitar, and pursued another career.

Twelve years ago when I became involved in the New Thought movement, God, disguised as an aging hippie musician, entered my life and handed me a guitar and told me to start playing and writing again.

Soon music became the means by which I could process the information I was learning and express my own understanding of it. Suddenly there was no way I could stop writing and playing. The passion had returned.

WFM: What central idea is most important to you in your communication with your audience?

LD: Oneness; there is no difference between any of us. If I could help everyone to see that there is nothing that exists outside them, that they create their reality, their entire life and thus the life of the planet, I believe the world would come to know itself as the Planet of Love that I believe it is.

WFM: Give us your own truly original definition of God.

LD: All that is. God is the medium that holds all consciousness and allows us, as that beloved consciousness, to choose.

WFM: What is your musical objective in this endeavor?

LD: My objective is to bring the ideas of universal love and law to the world community. My intention is for everyone who hears me to find and connect with their own feelings of love, life, laughter, and peace. I want to remind them that they already have everything they will ever need within them.

For me personally, I am brought to a place of higher and deeper consciousness when I’m playing and singing about these ideas upon which I base my life; I am transported. Any small doubt I’ve held disappears and I am completely assured that there is no separation. It is when I am totally myself.

WFM: What song that you’ve written most clearly defines who you are?

LD: I Am an Instrument most closely defines me. This very personal song affirms everything I believe about myself.

“It came to me one morning;
I was sitting quite still.
It said, tell them that I love them.
I always have, I always will.
I am an instrument.
I am the instrument of
I am an instrument of God’s love.
I am God’s instrument.”

WFM: Who are your mentors and why?

LD: Philosophically, Deepak Chopra is a mentor because he brings deep spirituality, science and logic together, and helps me to understand the enormity of the Universe and my personal place in it.

Daniel Quinn has had great influence in my life with his originality of thought, and has encouraged me to think deeply and to analyze everything.

Lennon and McCartney with their musical diversity have probably influenced my song writing more than any other artists. And finally, author and workshop facilitator, Alan Cohen, is one man I try to emulate because he walks the talk in every moment of his life.

WFM: What makes you choose the grooves, harmonies, styles and melodies of your songs. Describe the process.

LD: Again, they choose me. I will usually get a lick, a phrase, lyrically and/or musically, that comes into my mind and sticks. The process can take hours to well over a year, but I will keep repeating that certain phrase until it clicks and seems to marry with other phrases rattling around in my brain.

The song is born in steps. Although, I have had those epiphanies where, as if by automatic writing, the song simply spilled from my mind, but those are rare.

To me the real challenge is to know when the song is done, when to stop and let it be.

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please visit us at Watchfire Music.com.
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