For me in life there’s nothing more exciting than starting the production of a new album.  It means an immersion into Inspirational music and the ideas surrounding the project.  It is always a time of inspiration, for if I don’t get inspired, neither will you when you hear the CD.

It’s also always a time when I have a great excuse to pull away from the craziness of this world into a higher minded process of thought.  It’s a time of great creativity and consequently, a time of great satisfaction.

It is what I live for.

Now is such a time.  Why not?  It’s spring!  Time for the buds to blossom.  Time to grow.  Each experience holds within it the possibility and the opportunity to grow, to get better, to dig deeper, to flower.

And so we begin Julia Wade’s sixth CD, a departure of sorts, an expansion really.  I like the word “expansion” because it implies maintaining the old while exploring the new.  This CD will mark Julia’s foray into songs of issue, a deeper consideration of the world around her, its problems and the healing of the kinds of issues that we hear on the news every day.

Julia, a woman who spends 8 hours a week commuting to Boston to sing on the weekends, gets in a lot of reading as you can well imagine.  And she’s an avid reader of books dealing with our world’s problems and their solutions – books like Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. It’s her fascination and her life ambition to do something to make this a better world – to take a small part in the healing of our world’s problems.

With already a world-wide following, I think Julia would be happiest if she could go on tour singing in the villages of Africa.  If she could, she’d be in Japan right now trying to inspire the tsunami victims with her music.  So an album is the next best thing.

She’s constantly throwing ideas at me and keeping my mind focused on these world issues.  We talk about this stuff nearly every night over dinner.  (We’re married.)  And we are now planning our creativity around the healing of these world issues.

About six weeks ago I woke up one night with a song in my brain.  I had plucked the title from an article I had read and was exploring the ramifications of it secretly in my brain and consciousness, looking for a metaphor with which to explore the subject.

I like to start with a quest in my songs – a quest and an obstacle – that way I have drama and I want to always write songs that have great drama.  For whatever reason the image of a tsunami popped into my mind and the words “rising tide of fear” flashed into my consciousness.  I did not know why, but I knew immediately that this was the image I was looking for.

So I wrote this next song over that ensuing weekend for Julia’s new CD.  At the time I felt that it was a more general approach to the world and its problems, but less than two weeks after that weekend of creativity, the tsunami hit Japan.

Suddenly the song became timely on a level never imagined or anticipated.  It told us both that it was time to start the new album.  Since then I’ve written three more songs and I have another 3 in the mental incubator.

Here’s the lyric of the first and the prescient beginning of expanded direction for Ms Wade.

Love Is The Reason For Living

Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

We dwell in the arena
Of immense conflicting forces
Our lives are swayed by counsel
From a million diff’rent sources

As we near each troubled crossroad
With a rising tide of fear
And wonder what becomes of us
When the tidal waves appear

We cannot help but turn to God
To summon His defense
To stir instead the floodtides of love
His sustenance
His deliverance

And so we strip away the falsehood
From the truth of who we are
And commit our lives
To innocence once again

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God forgiving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living

We long to stand the summit
In the pinnacles of spirit
Where death no longer finds us
No and we no longer fear it

And the light of life surrounds us
With its infinite embrace
And love pervades our consciousness
And evokes its change of base

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God life-giving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living