Caitlin Jane's Corner: August 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

The story behind Coming Season...

One early morning last fall, I was driving to work, lost in my usual routine. As I approached a major intersection, where I usually get stuck in traffic in the left turning lane, I looked over to my left and was so moved by the beauty of the dawn's glistening field. There's an old farm house that's been fixed up and an impressive, gnarly aging sycamore tree near the corner. The scene quieted my heart and I began jotting down lyrics in my phone as the red light seemed to last forever. Something about that moment stirred my soul and I felt like God was giving me inspiration for a new song, a new season, something coming...

Probably about two months later in mid November, I was leaving Philadelphia after a Brooke Fraser concert (cheers for Brooke, her concert was phenomenal!). I was in the back seat of a friend's car and as we were turning onto this street and that street, getting ourselves lost on the way out of Philly, the inspiration hit again. There were sparkling blue lights on a skyscraper, while a daunting dragon statue glared at me through the window from one street corner. We ended up near an isolated area with train tracks and we had some laughs. Earlier that day I had heard news from a friend that had ignited a hope in my heart. Life in that moment was filled with expectation for the future, grace for the past, and peace for the present.

A few days later I took the collage of words from my phone and began piecing together a song. (Anyone who knows me knows I have quite an attachment with my old palm centro phone. I can jot down lyrics in the memo area with a breeze and record audio song ideas into the phone to create little mp3s for myself to go back to...so handy when inspiration strikes while driving or doing another task and I don't have time to sit at the piano and write! Now, thanks to my friend Eric from New Mexico, I have his old palm centro that he sent me since mine was dying. My world of songwriting and keeping a clear calendar shall go on!) As I organized the jumbled up lyric ideas, I sat down at the beautiful baby grand at the kids' house where I nanny (I'm so grateful they love music! They sit on the piano bench with me or love to dance as I test out new tunes...) The song "Coming Season" was beginning to flow...but I let it rest for about another month, until the night before I went into Morningstar Studios to do the initial recording of songs. I scrambled and went through old journals and notes, piecing about three final songs together so I could go in and have a lot of songs to choose from for the final recording (we chose 14 songs out of 29! Hope you enjoy the 14 which made the cut!) “Coming Season” was one of those songs I finished writing that night!

So...to tie all these strings together and paint a picture of what the song is all about...it is a song of hope. A cheerful inkling of hope. The beautiful promise the Lord gave to the prophet Isaiah, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." (Chapter 43:18-19) Whatever is in your past, whatever you are going through right now, there remains hope for the future and a God who is there, fighting for you, making streams in the desert to refresh you.

There are days when sometimes I think there is nothing new to write about, to sing about...but that morning with the fog and mist over the farm field, I had a fresh inspiration after a dry period. The Lord breathed hope into my spirit and a vision of great expectations for the glory to come. There will be beautiful, new seasons in this life. Laughter. Getting back up after falling down. Smiles after tears. Surprises. Turns. Wins after the losses. Above all, there will be a day when death will truly stare in the face of grace, and all the tears will be dried, and the victory will be ours who are in Christ Jesus. The wisest man who ever lived remarked about our Great God, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). So I urge you, my friend, to hold onto hope for tomorrow and to hold on to the everlasting hope of the life that is to come. May the fears of your heart be settled when you come to know Jesus in an intimate way. He is the Savior who hung on the cross for you and arose from the tomb, conquering sin, death, and heartache, so that He may freely offer us forgiveness, life, and joy.

Please do not miss this truth… we were not made for here alone, we were made to live in a better country, a land that seems far off, but it is only a split second away...for in the twinkling of an eye, we will be changed and we will find ourselves beyond the curtain of this toilsome life...and only one thing will determine if we spend eternity in grace, stunning union with Christ, and fellowship with those we love, or if we will be alone, death will have the final say, and we will be void of any joy, light, or goodness...that one determining factor seems so small...but it is paramount. It is belief. I ask you, do you believe? Believe in the Living God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Believe today and you have the hope of paradise. Believe now and these light and momentary troubles will fade in comparison to the glory that awaits you.
There is a beautiful account of the coming season of victory in Revelation 12. Be ready to read a wild and vivid tale...a tale that seems far too strange to be true, but it is true. There is a dragon. There is a woman. There are dark chains and there is Liberty hanging on the hinges of prophecy yet to be fulfilled. See for yourself and enjoy the snapshot of the story, of the season, that is to come.

Love & Hope!
~Caitlin Jane

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Song Journal..."Coming Season"

Hello my dear blog readers. Blogs are a funny thing...it's like taking one of my dozens of journals...those journals that are piled up in my wooden chest upstairs...the wooden chest that is missing its hinges ever since I painted it black...and did a poor job at painting it black according to my dad... it's like taking one of those journals and opening it up to the great unknown world of cyberspace and allowing countless eyeballs to read my inner thoughts and feelings. What insanity has gotten into me?! I wish I could sit down with each of you over coffee or tea or pink lemonade and chat about things instead of leaving it to computer screens for our mode of communication, but that is the age we live in, and sometimes we have to settle a little with this type of thing. Well at least I kind of have my own little bubble of friends who read this and the entire world isn't following me on twitter or something...

Now to address the twitter issue...sorry folks~ I'm not a tweeting kind of girl at this point...you may sway me if you try, but I haven't been swayed yet...The whole twit thing seems too comfortable and cozy with the vast world of strangers out there. I'd rather not tweet y'all and tell you when I'm painting my toes or taking a nap or laughing with my family about something. And honestly, I'd rather not know when you are getting coffee or you were late to work or you just took a walk. I'd like to leave a little personal space for you to enjoy your life without telling me every incident and idiosyncrasy you may have. Everyone's telling me to tweet. I just read a book that told me to tweet. My producer tells me to tweet. Friends on the east coast and west coast and in between tell me to tweet, but I smile and say something polite...and at the end of the day I've never twittered or twattled or tweetled or twangled except for maybe feeling twitterpated by someone special.

So I'm sticking to blogging, and this alone is challenging enough for me, because I love writing, but I'd rather just write a book or a song or a little paragraph in my journal or a note to a friend, or an idea on a napkin, or honestly, sometimes writing a research paper seems more normal than writing a blog, but I'm getting used to the thing, and I'm telling myself that blogging is fun and I should discipline myself! But then I update my internet and my blog gets mad at me and it freezes for days and then there's the times I write paragraph after paragraph and somehow logout without posting or saving and I lose the whole emotional entry and then sometimes I write and it won't let me change my font, which really annoys me because fonts always express the mood I'm in. In fact, I like to change my handwriting depending on my mood, or my pen, or the color of my pen, or the size and feel of the paper I'm writing on...

So all this is to say that I'm blogging, not tweeting. I "facebook" when I can. I despise myspace (ouch, sorry myspace lovers...if there are any out there) Youtube confuses me. iphones confuse me and I don't understand why everyone is going to data plans. I think they complicate life (I'll probably chew those words when I cave and get on a plan one of these days) ipods confuse me and cheers to you if you are a kind person and get my songs off of itunes and play them on your ipod~ I've never owned such an interesting little electronic device before or experienced such a personal phenomenon myself. I sometimes buy songs from itunes and make myself mix CDs that get scratched in my car as they roll back and forth in the door pocket next to my sunglasses and other little things... Speaking of i-this and i-that, the kids I take care of try to get me to play on ipads, but they scare me too! What century was I born in? I kind of feel like I don't belong!

You know what else, if I'm going to really open up here and be honest with you folks...I'm totally out of touch with pop culture too...it hits home when I am practicing with my band or recording in the studio and someone says "let's play it with this vibe" or "remember such and such song?" or "did you hear so and so's song on the radio, what do you think about their new style?" and I look at them with a blank face and smile (smiling is always a good thing to do when nothing else seems to work). Sometimes I silently nod and kind of go along with it, or sometimes I just say upfront "I don't know what you are talking about, sorry!" I'm not sure how people stay up to date with technology and popular culture! It's kind of like a full time job or more!

These tangents have gone on for far too long. I'm exposing my stream-of-consciousness thought process. I jump ALL over the place ALL day long.

Conclusion: I started out this blog to say that I am going to do a series of 14 blogs over 14 weeks to share with you the stories behind the 14 songs on my new album "Coming Season". I wanted to give you, my friend, a little sneak peak into the inspiration behind the album. That's it. That's what I wanted to say. I'll catch you soon with the first entry! =)

I hope your day is filled with joy!
Caitlin