As a child of 12 I began having waking dreams of great cities empty of people. Whether these were mere fantasies, or visions of a possible future, they made a big enough impression to create a fascination for study and to become a theme that showed up regularly in my songwriting. The Seventh Arrow refers to a time foretold by numerous philosophies and religions when the Earth and her inhabitants would undergo great changes and tribulations. That prophesied upheaval is this album's theme, as is personal healing and the eventual healing of the Earth.
I've been taught that the future does not exist, is not written in stone. Rather, we have a choice. Our Now is like the palm of a hand where each finger represents a possible future. One of the fingers usually seems to be sucking the life out of the now. That finger represents the probable future. The purpose of prophecy is not so much to foretell the future as it is to give warning so that we can choose a different finger, a more desirable future, by making the choice to do so. It is because of this choice that hope exists.
Thus, The Seventh Arrow contains liberal amounts of hope, of Peace, Love, Joy and Purpose intertwined with warnings of what seems to be a dark probable future.
Children Of The Earth
Tom Brown Jr. has written in several of his books about the effect that our modern industrial world is having on the environment. Quoting Stalking Wolf, an Apache scout and shaman who taught him for 11 years, he has also spoken of holes tearing open in the sky - holes in the ozone layer - saying that only the Children Of The Earth would survive the earth upheavals, diseases, and wars in the future which these holes mark as being imminent. When I first read those words many years ago, I felt them in my heart as truth.
Who then, are The Children Of The Earth? Are they the ones who can survive naked in the wilderness needing no tools other than those which they fashion themselves? Are they the people who recognize the sacredness of this gift called "Earth" and give themselves fully to saving, protecting, and healing it? Or are they simply the ones who've dedicated themselves to acts of kindness and healing towards humans even in the depths of our largest cities?
I don't know the answer to those questions, and I've become less concerned about it in recent years; the Earth and the Creator can decide. I simply hope to dedicate myself to caretaking and healing the Earth, and to learning the skills it takes to fully understand the gift we've been given called Earth.
Future and Past Concentric Rings
A voice calls from a mile away across a still evening lake. It ripples out like the concentric rings from a pebble dropped into a quiet pond, and arrives on your ears a few seconds later. Does the energy of that sound stop when your ears can't hear it anymore? Over the millennia, thoughts and events have been recorded in written words. Centuries later, we can feel the echoes of those thoughts when we read the words. When we learn from those words and respond accordingly, do we send ripples back which are then felt by the originator of the thought? Ancient writers certainly affected the future with their writings, and it seems many of them did it out of concern for our well being. What if they hadn't sensed us here? Things would be quite different. Are we responsible for doing the same for future generations?
Do sounds and events travel from the possible future into our now? If they do, can we hear them? We are not schooled in it, yet this mysterious subject permeates the oldest records of many cultures. The ending of the Mayan calendar or the biblical "Armageddon" refer to predictions of specific times of upheaval. Movies and literature are replete with the subject. It holds a riveting fascination for us, and it seems a paradox that such a pervasive story line in religion, literature, and entertainment somehow escapes educational acceptance and exploration. The Seventh Arrow is a term writer and teacher Tom Brown Jr. used at a class in 1986 in referring to these current prophetic times of apocalyptic upheaval. I felt at the time that his use of the term resounded perfectly with the feeling of a piano song I had written in 1981, and thus it was named, "Seventh Arrow".
Lacking physical evidence, how could the prophets of old have known of these future Armageddon-like upheavals? Perhaps they sensed the energetic ripples caused by probable events in the future, and so sent a ripple forward with their writings. People sometimes dream of a topic unknown to them, only to see that event come to pass. Experience tells me that sounds and events travel, like concentric ripples on a pond, from the possible future to the now, and back again from now into the future.
Sometimes I hear future children calling, feel them thinking of us several generations from now, about what we had done or didn't do. I feel their thoughts and, like a wave that hits the shore of a pond and then ripples back toward its origin, I envision a positive future, or I write words or music. Music, literature, and art are some of the vehicles on which these ripples, these voices, travel back and forth. Voices and thoughts splash and eventually ripple to a lake shore - the painters canvas - and the painter's finished piece reflects it back to the origin with the added energy of those changed by that art. Thus a voice from the future changes its eventual now. We all create the future. If we listen to the voices from the possible future, we take more care in our creations. Much more care.
The music called The Seventh Arrow is a canvas, a shoreline, on which I've placed interpretations of voices I've heard. If the message touches people, it will ripple back to its origins with added energy. Communication is the vehicle of change. We can use this superhighway called art to communicate through time and affect the future. We are all artists with masterpieces inside us. When we respond to voices calling from the future and the past, we cannot help but reflect them with our art, our creations. Doing so adds purpose to life.