Cicada Sounds

Wendi is a coach and guide who inspires and empow­ers peo­ple to live pow­er­fully, authen­ti­cally and pur­pose­fully. She is an author, speaker, designer and vision­ary whose work is based around dis­ci­plines that will give a clear-cut path to those that are striv­ing to live their best life.

After writ­ing her first book, “Your Life Your Des­tiny” Wendi had visions of putting some of her most impor­tant work onto audio disc.  She first brought this up in April, when we were help­ing out at the Well­ness Retreat she hosted, in Hutchin­son Island, Florida.  Soon after she came up to Sebas­t­ian and we talked about record­ing her project. That moment was when she told us, “I’m doing it! I am going to get it done by July 17^th.”

Sarah and I were very excited to be part of this project and to assist her in her vision. I espe­cially enjoy work­ing with speak­ers like Wendi. I like co-creating the dance so to speak. That is where I take Wendi’s spo­ken words and weave the right music in the right place to cre­ate this beau­ti­ful dance of music and words. I like to think that we are cre­at­ing art for the ears and mind.

So get­ting back to the box, start­ing last week Wendi has been com­ing up to Sebas­t­ian and putting in her time. What is the box you ask? Well the box is an old cedar wood sauna that we con­verted into a sound­proof record­ing booth by using a layer of foam padding and a layer of sound dead­en­ing blan­ket. My hus­band helped me drill a hole at the bot­tom to feed cables through, and the floor is some old scrap from my husband’s padded floor­ing in his mar­tial arts dojo.

Don’t laugh… it works very well. The clean sound is well worth being sent to the box. And it does have a nice lit­tle win­dow in the door so you do not feel like you are in a cof­fin. So les­son for the day, never throw out an old sauna if you plan on build­ing you own record­ing studio.

And Wendi has been a real trooper, she has been record­ing up to twenty-minute at a time and she has stuck it out! Boy what drive and ambi­tion she has. I have no doubt that what ever she puts her mind to she will be suc­cess­ful. And from what I have been lis­ten­ing to, she defi­antly has it going on.

That is one of the perks of my job. I get to enjoy all the pos­i­tive teach­ings and lessons that we record for all these wound­ful teach­ers. And I hon­estly think it is chang­ing the way I see things for the better.

“Music is a defin­ing ele­ment of char­ac­ter.” 
~ Plato

Lend an ear to my dream states, singer and key­boardist Sarah Hale might be say­ing. Her song cycle “Dolma” intro­duces a vocal style that som­nam­bu­lis­ti­cally wan­ders through half-heard lyrics los­ing them­selves into word­less bluesy, sul­try moans.

Where have we heard this before? Never, to my knowl­edge. Maybe we’ve heard hints of it in the momen­tary slurred notes of torch singers, or in the more unhinged offer­ings of clas­sic thrushes Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day, Bil­lie Hol­i­day. Do I hear Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith? Bend­ing notes is occa­sional for any singer. But Hale has cut loose into a new world, a new tech­nique of micro­tonal mean­der­ing inspired by the ini­tial “alap” sec­tion of the Indian raga.

There are times when her mini-dramas of long­ing and rem­i­nis­cence slip dan­ger­ously into chaotic dis­so­nance. We fear for her. She recov­ers from her derange­ment, but still her voice stretches like a lazy leop­ard around ten­ta­tive tunes in a twi­light jun­gle of yearn­ing. I find it dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate one song from another in “Dolma.” They flow together into a sin­gle jour­ney, as dreams morph together through a night’s sleep. Her accom­pa­nists play the role of elu­sive fig­ures in those dreams, shift­ing modes accord­ing to her moods. Hale gives us a new dimen­sion of song, a new domain where deep emo­tions call the shots and sub­or­di­nate struc­ture and lyrics to their almost abstract hunger. Beyond the post-modern frag­men­ta­tion of Bjork or Annie Clark, we find the uni­form, dar­ing style of Sarah Hale inhab­it­ing a region of unfet­tered spir­i­tual desire.

–Daniel Clark