Love Survives the Gale

A Tribute to Heroes

Dear friends,

I’m happy to release the video for “Light the Load” today!

I wrote the song for doctors and nurses during the pandemic. With the human compulsion to politicize, we are quick to forget those who step up when everything collapses. Who could have known, that society could break itself over a mask?

This song is about saying:

I will not forget, I do not forget.

I remember, at the heart of my own isolation, feeling so utterly useless.

You wrestle with the very isolation that you are so protected by. But that, perhaps, is part of the lesson. Sometimes, let heroes be heroes.

"I wanted to lend a hand,
But I never really knew what a hand meant
Till I saw the work you do

I wanted to understand
But I never really knew what love meant
Till I saw the work you do

How can I light the load?"

And so this is a song, in a way, of marvelling. At the courage of the human spirit. Of seeing the pictures emerging of mothers, waving tearfully at their own kids, saying:

“Mum is fighting monsters. I will be back home once the virus is beaten."

"I draw a heart in vapour trails
Love survives the Gale
You blew a kiss it lights the way
Countless lives you save"

We are quick to forget our heroes.

And also, how our closeness to the heart of life was revolutionised, even for a moment, by the ubiquity of the darkest shadow.

I will not forget, I do not forget.

What do we do when we feel we have no part to play? It was something I meditated on during the pandemic.

Then it struck me, if all I can do is write a song, then let it be a song.

Before, I had been resistant. Similar to when I lost my mother as a teenager, I wondered, what is an idea in the face of mortality?

And in the depth of the question, I remembered the answer.

That this is how we consecrate our response to things. In the face of all that is transitory, all that is fading, all that is broken and mortal, we call upon the eternal.

Perhaps that’s the thing about a really good melody.

The sense that you’ve pinched it from the stars.

Even when an asteroid hits the planet, it will still be there, just somewhere else. But for now, you’ve managed to capture it.

And you were allowed to pinch it because that’s what fluttered in your heart watching someone else’s tears. They became not just your own, but the whole world’s.

I will not forget, I do not forget.

So I wrote the song, teary and wondering why it sounded so dam upbeat. But that is the effect of heroes, to lift the spirit in the darkest hour, not pull it down. A hero reminds us what is potential in life, even at the frontier of hell itself.

"Under your mask the skin is bruised
Scars that go to prove
That love gives life when all is lost
Despite the growing cost..."

So, dear friends, today marks the closing of a little circle. From busking this song out at home, sending the files to my great friend and producer Jonathan Kluth and then finally getting it out to the world on “The Isolation Diaries - Volume 1”

If you know a doctor or nurse, please forward this mail to them if you are moved to do so.

We will not forget, we do not forget.

It may be the smallest thing, but sometimes the whole world is represented in the smallest things…

How can I light the load?

Love, Jim

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For Subscribers below:

1. Project Update

2. Creative takeaways from writing “Light the Load”

3. Lyrics