Glue's Artist Statement

Outward action (sometimes called love!) is the sword that will slay today’s dragons of despair. I have the courage to act. I sing, play guitar, and record my music. I run the streets, paint the skies, and write my stories.

Fear confronts me. I act anyway. I love anyway, turning my attention to the hopes and dreams of others. Outward action brings inspiration, vigor, and newness. The newness helps me to experience art, nature, and people around me with the curiosity of a traveler.

I schedule recording sessions and performances on the calendar. I don’t need a large audience. If a song reaches a single individual, then it has touched someone of infinite worth.

I work on original song arrangements, but I remember that no matter how much I practice, aging will keep me from becoming a virtuoso. Knowing this helps me to avoid the curses of overplaying and comparison. The important thing is to inhabit each song with personal experience. When I transmit sincere feeling, a song becomes a social ligament, a thread of emotional connective tissue.

Some of the songs I sing are sad. I accept sadness and all of life’s other emotions. Despair, not sadness, spawns the dragons. Despair will lead me to see myself and others through the dark lenses of fear and judgment. A despair for the future will keep me from serving others, eating healthy, exercising, practicing music, and filling notebooks with original stories and songs.

Emotions, like sadness and joy, can coexist. But hope and despair are perspectives, not emotions. The one will exclude the other. By drawing closer to Jesus Christ, I anchor my soul with a hope for a better world, a world where I will reunite with the ones I love — a world filled with glorious music!