Category: Recteur Schmitt

I put the embedded song together as a “Get Well Card” of sorts to my friend David Spangler, he of the Lorian Association. David has been a major source of personal & professional inspiration and support for more than half my life. He and the entire Spangler family helped Melinda and me start PSCS back in 1994. Since then, David and I have had regular lunches, email back & forths, and many other ways to stay connected.

The central part of David’s work is about what he calls “Incarnational Spirituality,” which revolves around the idea that being human, with our unique physical bodies, is a sacred experience. It emphasizes the importance of appreciating our physical selves and our connection to the Earth. Instead of simply aiming for oneness with everything, this approach sees our individuality as a strength that allows us to express love and make the world a better place through acts of service and kindness towards others.

I’ve long been a subscriber to David’s newsletter and a few years back he shared how a number of people associated with Lorian individually described incarnational spirituality. I was taken by their descriptions and as an exercise designed to increase my understanding, I worked to make each individual’s description into a haiku. If you’re interested in them, I’ve pasted them below.

Earlier this year, I discovered Suno, an AI music generator that allow you to quite easily create songs. Having enjoyed poetry- and lyric-writing for all of my adult life, I started playing around with Suno, learning how to best use prompts, extend songs, etc, and have really enjoyed the results. Knowing David hasn’t been feeling great and remembering my haikus, I thought I’d work on adapting them into a pop song. Today, I made the accompanying music video that allows the listener/viewer to follow along with my lyrics.

If you’re interested, here’s the music genre prompt I entered into Suno to get it to create this sound: Eastern European, gypsy punk ballad, accordion, trumpet, male vocal

I actually created an album’s worth of songs with a similar sound, many of them adapted from other things I’ve written over the years — poems, essays, memoirs. The album is called “Rediscover Play” and the band is called “Recteur Schmitt,” a tribute to Nantes, France, where my family lived for a year in 2010-11, specifically Line 2 of the tramway there (Recteur Schmitt is the name of a tram stop). Listen to the album (and/or pay $1 to download it) on Bandcamp.

Get well, David! I hope you get a kick out of this, my “get well card.”

THE HAIKUS THAT INSPIRED THIS SONG:

Souls walking on ground
enable a partnership.
To be a blessing.

We are each sacred.
An intimate universe.
Pre and post mortem.

Live a human life.
An inherent act of love.
Ourselves being here.

To work as partners.
Physical and spirit worlds.
In joy, love, and will.

The unfolding spark
is linked through relationships.
Unique and vital.

Metaphysical.
Practical simplicity.
Heart-wise renewal.

Go inwards with heart.
Unexpected hope rising.
Life, weaving its way.

Physical, subtle.
Interconnected wholeness
of co-creation.