2004

As I'm sure you noticed, I did not post any news during 2004. Many people wrote to me asking if this meant that something BIG was about to be revealed. You know, like the fact that I was secretly working on a new CD for Metropolis Records!

Unfortunately, this is only a fantasy.

In truth, 2004 was one of the most difficult and, apparently, important years of my life. It was a year of extraordinary transformation and, dare I say, death. Although I have absolutely no desire to burden anyone with the vast emotional content of my experience, I realize that you might appreciate a few objective details.

First, although I was spiritually compelled to move to Seattle, Washington (USA) and leave my beautiful home in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, I was ultimately obligated to sell it at an enormous financial loss. In the end, I was left with just enough money to cover my debts. Of course, being debt free is something that I do appreciate! But my appreciation doesn't stop there. I also found myself fortunate enough to have plenty of musical equipment to sell while I waited for my house to sell. This kept my bills paid!

As some of you may know, I originally imagined that I was moving to Seattle in order to more actively nurture my musical career. However, I soon began to feel that universal (and/or inner?) support for that was waning; so, I decided to harmonize with that cycle by allowing my philosophical philanthropic interests to wax a bit. To that end, I decided to apply for entry into The University of Washington, with the intention of majoring in philosophy and minoring in psychology and physics. Amazingly, I was accepted!

But even more amazing, is the fact that even after several months of very intense and very laborious life-altering preparation, I decided to drop out of school on the very first day! I wanted SO BAD for it to feel right; but, instead, it felt SO WRONG.

Naturally, I honored my intuition and immediately thanked the God of Spiritual Atheism for giving me an opportunity to realize that, that which I thought would nurture my philosophical philanthropic interests would, in fact, most likely destroy them!

At this point I still owned an acoustic guitar (and four track) and could feel its seductive pull on my soul; so I decided to give my musical voice one last chance to sing out and be heard before consciously repressing it. To this end, I rented a small studio and began working. After one day I knew the truth, but it took several days to accept it.

Finally, I moved out of the studio and sold the rest of my instruments and other musical equipment. Again, I thanked the God of Spiritual Atheism; but this time for giving me an opportunity to realize that, although I deeply enjoy creating music and hope to one day have an opportunity to create more of it, there is presently an even deeper desire (the desire to help create a better world) that is driving my existence.

Of course, there is always more to the story; but this is a pretty accurate and optimistic overview of 2004. I don't even dare speculate about what 2005 will be like! :-)

Love and Dreams..

-Soren.