Music from Brian Dyer Stewart

    The tune this cycle is One Last Dance, which I wrote a few years ago now on the last morning of our song writers' retreat - a celebration of our connection and partings. Such poignant sweetness lies just behind each moment as we live and love, work and play together.  I have been blessed in my life with a loving, enduring partner; strong, honest and caring children; friends and companions who have traversed the thick and thin of it all.  I bow to each of you who I've had the good fortune to accompany, witness, travel with, share the burden with, find the joy with, share the silence with, stand before the beauty with.  In this moment and for all those moments yet to come, much love.

    The tune this cycle is Anthem, which I wrote this morning and just recorded.  Such times we are in.  There seems to be such a penchant for cruelty and excessive force in the immigration policies currently being followed.  I cannot see that what ICE is currently doing is law enforcement but something much darker.  If you're interested in thoughts I recently shared with our Senators and tried to get into an op ed locally, read here.

    The tune this cycle is Hold on O Tender Heart, recorded yesterday at a Boxer's Day musical gathering at our friends', Maurie and Patricia's, house.  It's a sort of sea shanty for these turbulent times. 

    One of Gandhi's sorrows in living in modern times was the "hardness of heart of the educated class", particularly cruel in India in his times but the observation certainly speaks to the great dilemma we face as humans, how to keep our absolute innate tenderness amidst the trials, triumphs, blur and ennui of day to day life. 

    Pammy and I were recently remembering the day our eldest was born.  After the harrowing earthquake of birth, here was new life among us, and, for a few days, the lifting of the veil to see life's powerful channel through mothers bringing Love into being.  Looking out the window as people passed on the street, all we could see was God amongst us, the Great Spirit and Source manifest in each and every.  It still comes back in sudden waves.

    The tune this cycle is Little Sparrow, brought back from the archives, July 2019.  There was a large sorrow in my life at the time.  At songwriters' retreat I had been out early in the morning, just as the sun rose and had gone down to the shore where I was serenaded at some length by a song sparrow in a nearby pine.  Somehow there seemed to be a perfect circle formed by that song and my heart was soothed and this song was the result.  A little song from that little sparrow to you all.

Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,

    The tune this cycle is Winter Trees, which I wrote this week while down visiting my eldest son and his family in the DC area, where I also grew up.  I'm blessed on these visits to be able to see dear friends from my very earliest days who still live here.  There's no place quite as deeply etched in the heart as friendships that were so formative and have continued over the years with ebbs and flows but always returning.  I am ever grateful for their friendship.  

Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,

    The tune this cycle is Push, which I wrote a couple weeks ago and recorded this morning. Straightforward blues, straightforward call to come together and Push toward a just, compaswsionate and inclusive country and world.

    Love and Courage

    Brian

Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,

    The tune this cycle is Jenny Hold On, a small song that came out of a jam session with Leonore Hildebrandt.  She plays percussion and sings on the recording we made after a little polishing up.

   The tune this cycle is I'm a Chicken, a song I wrote a number of years ago when visiting our oldest grandchild (now 9) and her family on their farm.  She loved the chickens and this song developed while we were feeding them.  I finally got around to recording it today...

    On the wall in the kitchen, above the sink, Pammy pasted a quote, many years ago now, from Howard Thurman:
   “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." 

    It's such a part of every day chores that many days I fail to notice it...but then I do.  In the song this cycle, the chicken is living that life.  It's up to us now.

   The tune this cycle is Fine and Dandy, a piano improv from a couple years ago.  I had a more sombre tune in mind, more reflective of the angst the world scene keeps bringing on for me but thought Hey, let's just enjoy a summer day for a moment.  So much exists at the same time, such love, beauty and joy, such sorrow, tragedy and cruelty.  I know that has always been true but the dissonance seems so amplified in these times.  Nonetheless, a moment just to explore a Fine and Dandy day - also a part of this life and hopefully one that will give us some renewed joy for going into those harder moments.

Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,

    The tune this cycle is Song of the Sea, written a few years ago and somehow lost in the shuffle.  I think of the Wendell Berry poem, The Peace of Wild Things, about the juxtaposition of despair and peace that we humans seem to carry as our burden, our gift.  I recorded the song yesterday.