Songs marked as 'Field Recordings' are songs that have been recorded on site at SW:S retreats. They capture a performance just hours after being written, like the song taking its first breath.
My first SongWriting:Soldiers retreat was back in 2016, and a few hundred songs later, saying it’s changed my life doesn’t feel like nearly enough.
Songwriting with—rather than for or about—has taught me what it truly means to be fully present with another human being. That kind of connection has always been hard to put into words, so I was grateful to come across this passage in Eckhart Tolle’s Silence Speaks, which captures it perfectly:
“Far more important than what you are listening to is the act of listening itself, the space of conscious presence that arises as you listen. That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer ‘other.’ In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness.”
It has been a privilege to work with and get to know the women and men of the veteran community. They’ve shown me what bravery, vulnerability, honesty, service, and love look like—and now I look for it everywhere and in everyone.
Thank you for your support of SW:S. It’s a gift for people on both sides of the guitar.
