I am inspired by my work. For the past year writing this blog, I have gotten up nearly every night and sat here and thought and wrote about what inspires people, what inspires me and just what Inspiration is. I’ve mentioned before that the root definition of the word “Inspiration” is ‘to inspire, to breathe life into”. I’ve learned during the course of this that this is oh so true.

The building and development of Watchfire Music over these past 3 years has been extremely time consuming, to say the least. We’ve all worked our tails off to bring this idea to fruition. For me, it’s been a hugely creative process and I’ve learned more these past 3 years about business than in the previous total years of my life.

But the process has short-changed me as a composer – especially in the last 6 months. I’ve looked down that hallway in my apartment here into my dark and lonely studio and wondered if I’d ever get back in there again. In the course of the last year, until last week, I had written just one song all year. That’s the first time that has happened in many decades.

It’s not a fact that makes me happy. In fact, for me, it makes living very hollow sometimes and I wake up wondering what’s going on in my life that makes me a little dead inside or gives me this subtle empty feeling that I have carried around with me.

Then I realize that I’ve lost that life-long joy of creativity in the daily rush of details. My partner, Jim Birch, likes to say, “The devil’s in the details.” Well, perhaps I’ve just spent too much time with the devil.

So last week, out of pure necessity, we started to realign our company. New hires, necessary changeovers, and great progress on the marketing front have necessitated a re-thinking of the work force of the company.  It’s all been done with progress in mind. So I took advantage of the situation and re-aligned my life as well.

I’ve committed to get back to my creative roots and begin writing again and get myself back in that studio on a daily basis and re-find my bottle of creative juices. And so the lights have been on in my studio again and the light has poured into my soul once again. I am at peace for the first time in months. I wake up with anticipation on my brain and hope in my heart and charge through the morning getting the office stuff out of the way so that I can spend the afternoon and evening in the studio.

I go to bed weary, but content. I’m getting more done overall and moving through things faster and more efficiently all because I am creative once again. I am also happy, less angry at life’s bothers and well, just happy.

Does all this have anything to do with the fact that I’ve been working on a song called “Heaven”?  I’m sure it does. Contemplating the mysteries of this imaginary place and the many variations of the world’s concepts of the word has been a quiet and joyful search through the possibilities.

It strikes me most that “Heaven, like Earth, is what we make it.” This idea that became a central lyric to the song struck me the other day as I was contemplating the multifarious definitions by the many world’s religions.  It seems that the word and its concepts crops up in nearly every religion and though the idea is basically the same, as in all religions, the language around the ideas makes it appear that we all disagree on the concept.

So I was looking through all the various concepts and trying to discern the central truths of each and I suddenly realized that these concepts were developed in the other imaginations of human beings just like me. We have no proof of heaven here on this plane of existence.  There is, of course, heaven on earth, which makes total sense to me, but as far as a place where we go in the afterlife goes, it’s clearly a figment of the imagination for all of us – a grand leap of the imagination.

This is not to say that heaven is not real. I believe now that heaven will be as real as I choose to make it. I believe that because, looking at life on this plane of existence, I’ve learned that life is as real as I make it. The illusion of matter is pretty wondrous.  I believe heaven could be the same.

I’ve been thinking of it as a return to a more spiritual form, but not the same as ascension. Ascension seems to me to be the final dropping of mortality – for once and for all. Heaven, achieved by death, should not be that. It strikes me that we carry the essences of our problems on with us because we still have things to work out. Death does not let us off scot-free.

We clearly drop the material body when we die and move on, so heaven is a mental experience, or an experience of conscious mind.  Heaven is a state of mind.

This is, of course, purely hypothetical on my part. I have no experience there to back me up. Or if I do, I don’t presently remember it.  Perhaps I’m back here for the 7^th time to keep on trying to figure it all out. I dunno.

But it’s been fun thinking about it all and especially rewarding to write about. It has brought joy back into my life – both the subject matter and the doing of it – the creativity. All I can do as an artist is lay it out there and see how you respond.

Will it jog your thinking? Will it inspire you? Will you think I’m some kind of a nut-case and violently disagree? Will you just like the music and pay no attention to the words as so many people do? Will you listen to the song the first time while you’re on the phone talking with your mother? Will you listen to it with headphones on and totally get into every nuance and tear up with the inspiration of it all? Will you play it over and over again as you too try to figure out the meaning of life? Will you play the CD once and then let it collect dust, or worst, use it as an ash tray? Will it move you?

Probably all of the above.

But it’s all right because, for me, it’s all about the process. By the time it’s out there, I’m on to something else. I’ve had my experience with it; now it’s your turn.

For me, it’s all about the creativity.

I’m glad to be back.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music – the trusted destination for inspirational music.