Music in the Matrix of Relationship

How does a song live?

Songs live through the people we know who sing them.

We know songs through the relationships with our intimates.

Many of the songs I love came to me through people I love singing the songs they love.

Carl Jung has famously said we have 2 obligations in life: we have to leave some form of a legacy, be it children, or creative work, or evolving consciousness. And we have to come to terms with how we understand what happens in death and life after death.

In my vision of heaven is everyone I love singing music that we love together.

THAT’S what I think heaven is.

Music comes through a matrix of relationship

I don't know you

But I want you

All the more for that

Words fall through me

And always fool me

And I can't react

~ Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová

On the night of July 29, I came home through torrential flooding after celebrating my beloved’s father’s 99th birthday, struck by life’s capacity to endure and the poignancy of love.

Arriving home, I saw through an Instagram post of my close friend Laura Hitt (herself a deep lover/performer/teacher of voice) that Glen Hansard, co-composer of Falling Slowly, died at age 56 in a motorcycle accident that very night.

And games that never amount

To more than they're meant

Will play themselves out

I did not know who Glen was. That melody, that song has lived in me profoundly because my deep friend and colleague Adam Pearce introduced it to me at his debut cabaret in 2018 (click on the image below for a video clip of that performance).

Now, being a lover and producer of events and music, my IG feed is like an archive.

I don’t know about you, but for me sometimes certain songs live in a kind of obsessive psychic realm. I have watched this clip of Adam’s version of this song countless times over the years. Maybe more than any other clip in my feed!

Why?

Moving in Life’s Eddies

Falling slowly

Eyes that know me

And I can't go back

And moods that take me

And erase me

And I'm painted black

Sometimes when I am in a dark moment, I watch Adam singing this song. I knew where he was in his life at that moment, at his debut cabaret. And I was with him!

And yes, this song, birthed and brought to life by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, had this HUGE public life. With millions of people throughout the world knowing it and loving it!

So maybe when I am caught in a eddy of self-doubt about the value of what my little ego is dwelling upon, I can be reminded that whatever I do, whatever we all do, and create, and express, and offer, may not even have our name on it! But somehow it HAS impacted not only the people that we love and know in our lives, but also people we have never met.

Can we remember this, everbody?

From everything I have now read about Glen and his work, he sang for the pure passion and pleasure that he experienced, and to share those same gifts with others. This was the very essence of his musical generosity. And THAT is the witness we need now in the world.

Well, you have suffered enough

And warred with yourself

It's time that you won

Legacy

So, here is a love letter to all of us, inspired by Glen Hansard.

Here’s to doing what we do simply for the love of doing it.

As my deep colleague and collaborator McCadden of Honey Sweet Harmony continues to remind me, songs have lineages: composers, catchers, carriers, archivists. And how important it is to remember lineage in many forms. What exists in and through their contexts and history.

And as I enter my 72nd year, I am inspired to voice how I am in service to the power of music and its lineages to take our hearts.

There is a web of interrelationships around any particular song that are personal and specific.

As Glen and Marketá’s song reminds us,

Take this sinking boat

And point it home

We've still got time

Raise your hopeful voice

You have a choice

You've made it now

Falling slowly

Sing your melody

I'll sing it loud

Loud

A final note

As a priest & holder of the sacred in community, I offer this truth-

In death, the power of love is exponentialized.

One’s legacy & witness in life is amplified & held.

This is a great mystery.

Resurrection is not just a spiritual concept living in the abstract.

SO… Turn towards whatever and whomever you love… held by the ephemeral poignancy of life. Know the memory of this great turning never dies.

Love never dies

🎶

🐣🐤🐥 C’mon Peeps!

Sounding The Field: Music and Constellations

an immersive day integrating Kaleidoscopic Constellations & Sound-based practices

Saturday, August 8, 2026 | 10:30am - 5:30pm at SoundWell Barn Marlboro, NY

Facilitated by Kathleen Mandeville and Katie Down, Sounding The Field brings together their expertise and wisdom, rooted in Music Therapy and Family Constellations.

Sounding The Field invites participants into a deeper relationship with themselves, their ancestry, and the living web of human connection. As a group, we will explore how sound can reveal what has been silenced, restore connection across generations, and weave a sonic container for grief, belonging, reconciliation, and transformation.

This will be a hands-on, participatory experience with the opportunity to engage with a variety of instruments and their dimensional, sonically archetypal energies.

Space is Limited / Advance Registration Required

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