We gathered for a band meeting in our new green room. I shared how I envision the album, from its spiritual themes, its musical incarnation, and the creative stream I wanted to dwell on. It was great to talk from the heart, spirit, and soul, especially as being together was usually more in the likes of a boring and empirical business board meeting. You can have the best master plan ever established, but when there’s no emotional involvement, there’s no difference between creating songs and any other supply-chain type of job. It might be more glamorous to hold a guitar, but it’s the same affective emptiness involved, and I have never been into living my life like one paints by numbers.

I also addressed the fact that I still didn’t know about the band’s configuration. Momoka will take a little more space than she usually does, and with Sef’s ongoing solo projects, I saw that as an opportunity to change the creative dynamic. The Long Shadows being a living organism in evolution has always been the whole idea for me, and it all goes back to what serves the nature of our next project. That’s the wonderful aspect of being a family; there are no fractures or messy breakups. We have a determination for everyone’s projects to be equally important. There’s no rivalry in art, it defies the whole essence of creation for me. When art is the focus, there’s no ego involved. When one becomes “bigger” than the sum of our parts, we are no longer at the service of said “art” but we use “art” to serve our own agenda and to feed our need for purpose. If it works for some, I don’t want any of that in what I do… 

Tomorrow will be the beginning of the intense process of diving into the songs we have crafted over the years to collect some of the colors I am looking for before we start daubing on the communal canvas that, if we are able to go as deep as necessary, will become enough of a spark for that living painting to evolve on its own.