Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Chasing Canaan

I'm taking a break from subjects of loss and life today to post a link to a MySpace page. My youngest son is the acoustic guitar player and one of the vocalists for the music group Chasing Canaan, and they've just put up five songs on their MySpace page that they recorded in December. The website is http://www.myspace.com/chasingcanaan. Their group has five vocalists, some that also play instruments, an electric guitar player, a bass guitarist, and a drummer. Most of them have been students at Centenary College in Shreveport, and have sung together in Centenary College choirs.

Years ago, I was part of a similar group, Marturion. We had five vocalists and about 20 instrumentalists, including string players, brass, woodwinds, piano, percussion, and guitars. Most of us were music students or recent graduates of Bowling Green State University. We recorded a few cassette tapes and an LP, and did concerts mostly in northern Ohio. That was before there were contemporary Christian music radio stations or an industry, and the LP was never widely distributed. I still look to that recording as the best work I've ever recorded. Members of our church wrote and arranged all the songs we performed, and some of my songs were included on the LP. I've been thinking lately that maybe part of my reluctance to record my songs comes from comparing anything I could do now with the quality of that old recording. It's probably time to let that go and create something new,

It's so nice to see my son loving music as I did, having fun and making a difference in a group that's doing their own original music. They're really good, too! I wish Chasing Canaan much success. The songs sound great!

5 comments:

  1. Hi Sue!
    Yes they do - I listen to Psalm 67 and I like the sound and the guitar -
    So I send you some greatings from our cold region - with some snow and heavy winds.
    Best regards
    Aiko

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  2. That's my son singing on Psalm 67, and he and another person wrote the music. I've been looking at your blog, too, and can get most of what it says with the translator. Aiko seems like a great dog! I really like the pictures, too. Very nice!

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  3. Hi Sue, thank you for answering on Aiko´s Blog, but sorry it´s gone - my fault - so I come back on your blog to let you know why it disapeared.

    Yes Aiko is a Hovawart - blackmarked - an great. I´m writing about him in his name, but put in sometimes my own sentence over living here, music, choirs, our little cottage at the seaside in Netherland and our garden around our house. I´m catholic and I lost my father in the second world war, just after my birth in 1944. Never my mother get any message what´s happened in his last days, they never found him - so after ten years he was declared dead from the goverment. Sorry for my english. My mother married a second time a man ten years younger than her and lutherian christ - he was my dad - my beloved daddy - a very good man. I was on a high shool with catholic nonnes - there the also said to me often: Your father is only a stepfather and perhaps one day your real father will coming back from prison in russia and such bad stories to. But I was very strong and I love to make jokes about them, because I like to have such a good new father. He died after a short - but very hart battle with thiriod (?)cancer in 1995 at the age of 71. My mother five years later on christmas evening 24.12.1999 in the age of 85 after a heartattack.
    So I hope that was not to much for you. I like to read your blog - he is so special. Have a nice weekend - so long
    Annemarie and a big bark wuff wuff from Aiko

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  4. Annemarie,

    Thanks for commenting! No, it's not too much. Those kinds of losses, where a person is missing and thought dead but no one can be absolutely sure, are really hard. Those are called ambiguous losses. The family can hope for a long time that the person is still alive, although when a war is going on, people do die without their bodies ever being found. Another ambiguous loss would be when a plane crashes and people can't be identified, or the September 11 World Trad Center tragedy in New York City. There is grief that the person is gone, but you don't have absolute certainty that the person will never come back. After a while you have to accept it. When you're so young like you were, you grow up with a feeling of someone always being missing, wishing you could know someone you will never know. One writer called it a feeling of absence more than grief.

    I'm glad your stepfather was such a good father to you. And these things do make you strong.

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  5. He Sue, thank you for your words and sentences - I´m so glad to found your blog - he is so special and wonderful. I understand the most of it and I agree.
    So long and we will keep in touch.
    Annemarie

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