sarah masen

The Dreamlife Of Angels

Album Sleeve

To avoid some possible misconstruals, I’d like to begin by suggesting that
it’s not quite right to assume that this newest collection of songs is about
angels. What is rumored to be their passion, though, the longing that
apparently keeps them going IS a notion that deeply informs these attempts
at stories (the songs). Word is that the angels are crazy about us; that our
miraculously mundane lives (to the most graphic and minute detail) amount to
something into which the angels, in fact, long to look. Or, to borrow from
Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” we are such stuff as angels’ dreams
are made of.

On June 26th, 1999 I found myself pushing (like a woman possessed) a
soulful, squealing little girl called Dorothy Day into the hope-ridden wreck
of a brand new world. My husband and I were amazed by what a frail and
violent process birth is, yet it is happening all the time…even now. Some
old guy with an amazing smile is feeding squirrels somewhere while a child
is forming words for the first time and a man is watching his wife sleep. Is
anyone taking notice? Shouldn’t somebody be bearing witness and writing it
all down?

On June 27th, 1999, while getting acquainted with our new resident alien,
my husband David and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I think
Shakespeare also said something about brevity being the soul of wit. We
certainly enjoyed the new life, AND found ourselves laughing at the memory
of close friends suggesting on our wedding day that they would see a new
little one in nine months time. David and I are not much for planning.

When Dorothy was a very mature two months old, we started traveling again,
performing solo acoustic concerts a few times a month. Though it has been
nearly three years since my last album, the music has continued to be a very
big part of my life. I feel as though I’ve been able to step back in order
to bear witness to the miracle happening around our everyday lives.

This new album contains songs that are born out of some of these everyday
observations, a taking note of preciousness and trouble and many a moment of
encouragement in my own life and all the wonderfully strange lives around me
as we begin to learn how to value one another properly. They generally
surfaced in the context of home-based songwriting, put together in response
to whatever was happening or being talked over around the house. “Love is
Breathing”, for instance, began as (and remained) a meditation/prayer
concerning the life growing inside me. But the life and Dorothy herself come
to represent the breaking-in of beauty all around us and what we?re looking
to do about it. “We Are a Beginning” has a similar story. I wrote the song
for my wedding as a kind of determined hope statement, but it was performed
during the ceremony by a motley crew of chums from our assorted community.
My husband and I (and now Dorothy) are a beginning certainly, but they are
too. As U2 put it, “We get to carry each other.”

Very happy to report that the studio experience was a natural extension of
what this collection of songs seemed to nurture. I met producer John
Jennings through a mutual friend and found in him a benefactor-angel of the
music. he rounded up angel friend musicians, time lauer, Harry stinson, and
glenn worf and we recorded the basic tracks of “dreamlife…” in a week. This
required a good deal of relaxation and observation on behalf of the band.
and in the spirit of the album, the poetry of everyday life was there, and
in my opinion, captured in the music.

We are A Beginning, Hope, The Valley, and Give a little bit are songs
for the community to sing. They are new folk-song prayers of blessing and
release, meant to be caroled in four part melody-harmony-rhapsody-everybody
sing spirit.

Girl on Fire, Hit-n-run, home, She stumbles through the door, and midnight,
are stories of love and loss, hope and despair, chance and providence. These
are meant to be listened to with compassionate affinity-mercy ears. I hold
the suspicion that our troubled existence is the soil (the only soil) out of
which grace and joy and mirth can break through. The trembly, embarrassing
bits are part of the plot, a crucial part I?d say, and often in need of an
affectionate glance.

I expect the music to fall into the hands of people, like myself, who are
frustrated with the popular outlets of faith and community, and longing for
lives of integrity and beauty as a result of being haunted by the fact that
we?re made for better community, friendship, and neighbor-love than most of
us are settling for.

If the rumors are true, and angels, throughout our history, have been about
the business of finding our levity and struggles staggeringly beautiful,
maybe we can start looking at ourselves (each other) that way too. Maybe we
should. Maybe this is what it means to be really realistic.

We get to listen to such stuff as angels’ dreams are made of. Imagine that.