Sean’s Artist Statement
The Power of Music
When I think about music and the power it has, the word that comes to mind is longing. It is the feeling I get when I am moved by a song…my deep sense of longing inside. Longing for love. Longing for safety. Longing for a moment in the past. Longing for the present moment to never end. Longing for hope for the future. Longing. It is a longing for home really. That place where I make sense, where I fit, where there is peace. Music, more than anything else in my life, enables me to touch that place where I belong.
When a lyric captures where you are in a particular moment or gives voice to what you so desperately want to say, but don’t know how. When a melody seems to permeate through you to the marrow in your bones…harmonic vibrations that convey the tension and desperation of this life, that build to indescribable crescendos and bring resolution. Music can do this with words or without. In just a few minutes volumes have been spoken and understood. It can be as complex as a symphony or as simple as a four-chord melody…it doesn’t matter, as long as it penetrates through the noise and, by God’s grace, even if for just a moment, makes sense of the world.
Beethoven said, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” Plato said, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” Martin Luther said, “Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent gifts God has given us.”
It is a great gift indeed. A language God has given us to communicate with him and ourselves. When I write or play music most of the time there is no plan, there is only desperation. I need to connect, to feel, to express the longing in my soul. I cannot describe it other than an ache inside my chest. I have to get it out, and if I do not it feels as if that part of me will simply die, fade away in all of the noise of life, lost in the mix of distractions. A part of me will be gone, or at least will go on unknown. But a song can bring color and definition to that place, life and expression. In short, music connects me to home.
Make a donation.
Our goal is to raise $250,000 by July 2021 to start this ministry.
We need your help.