You're Not a Ghost Anymore (Limited Print)

The Fear of Faith

The artistic spark loves to provoke. It challenges. It blossoms where controversy and misunderstanding live.

I could have led with music that did not divide. Music more in line with what I have done before. The 36 songs I am releasing this year under the moniker You're Not a Ghost Anymore, divided into three sections — Faith, Heart, and Fight — have plenty of those.

But I wanted this body of work to tell a story of survival. Artistic survival. And actual survival. For me that story starts with faith.

When we are at the bottom of life, when money and friends are nowhere to be seen, we have only faith. That is where I wanted the story to begin. Heart and fight were found only after digging through the avenues of faith.

Blessed are the meek in spirit. The meek in spirit are forced to find rejuvenation in the ethereal, in avenues outside the physical world. For me faith is not about preaching a worldview. It is about telling the story of my own journey out of darkness and into strength.

I suppose the fear now comes from the fact that, happily, my world has come onboard enough to almost forget what that faith required. I could let go of the beginning. I could move forward as if nothing significant happened.

And I think that is where the regret creeps in. To begin this reemergence with something as challenging and potentially provocative as Faith. I see the fear. I am living in it now. Writing this as a response to it.

Joseph Campbell said that where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The artistic spirit loves danger, even when the man behind the artist prefers safety. But safety does not have the oxygen. Or the energy.

This is why artists are drawn to controversy like moths to light. So we begin where I am stumbling. And here is where I will dig with you to find the gold.