Dear World,
Dad had a business trip in North Carolina this week, so we took his perfectly clean CRV (as opposed to my less than perfectly clean CRV) and drove down to Burlington together to record the last four songs of my new album. I always feel fifteen when I am driving shot gun with my dad like I should be wearing soccer cleats.
The road to Burlington always begins as one of the most beautiful drives I know. It leads you through Charlottesville, Virginia, a place I love more than most.
As I looked out my window at the bare and brown world, it looked very similar to when I began this musical journey almost a year ago. I was in a fragile place, tired and worn and afraid and not much of a believer even in my little dream. So I wrote songs through it and hoped that I could make some sense of it all. Maybe I am still trying to make sense of it all.
But I am learning that the artist and the saint have one thing in common. They can enter into the mystery of suffering and make something beautiful.
And I think how much more could a Divine Artist make Beauty out of the mess of this suffering world?
The Divine enters into our unspeakable sadness and creates color and light and music like a host of angels breaking into the cold and the darkness to light an entire sky with best news we have ever heard.
And no matter where I go, Beauty finds me somehow.
So, I can promise you no happily ever after songs in this album (maybe next time!), but I have seen through the asking, the wandering, the suffering Beauty intertwined like a Lover’s embrace.
Yours,
Marie
