Thanks for visiting this page, friend!
On this page, I collected all the stories behind the songs from Out Of The Blue.
It’s great to have the full picture of the process behind the music.
If you want to read the stories while listening to the music, you can do so with the video on top of this page.
It’s the artist commentary version of the tracks.
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Thanks again!!
#1 Into The Rabbit Hole
On this page, I’m thrilled to take you deep into the rabbit hole I stumbled in.
Just like Alice discovered when she followed the white rabbit in Alice In Wonderland, I found that nothing is what it seems.
When I started writing the album, little did I know I was embarking on a journey.
A journey that would take me to the center of the soul.
It made me better understand the world around me and how everything is connected.
To be honest, I had little to no regard for the soul at the start of this journey.
Like most people, I was just living my life and trying not to overthink things.
But then the inevitable happened…
The blues came around.
It’s the loss of identity that we as humans are all confronted with at some point…
You lose your job, your body no longer works, you die, you end up in a divorce, you are depressed, etc.
No matter where you live or what you do, it seems that sooner or later it’s going to strike.
I’ll share what happened to me later on, but I found that this loss of identity that suddenly hit me was exactly what I needed to grow.
The hole I stumbled into appeared to be a gateway…
A pathway to enlightenment.
Enlightenment may sound like an ambitious word, but I found it to be the exact opposite of having the blues.
It's about transcending heaviness and dread and turning these into higher vibrations.
The feeling of putting your coat in the closet after a long winter.
I believe that the hurt we’re experiencing acts as stepping stones to enlightenment.
That’s why I titled the album ‘Out Of The Blue’.
It’s about the transformative power of the blues.
On a musical level, the first composition ‘Into The Rabbit Hole’ sounds adventurous, as if you’re ready for a new quest but still a bit in the unknown of where the journey will take you.
I found music to be another gateway, but I’ll tell you what I discovered about the power of music in the rest of the story.
Thanks for joining me on my journey beautiful soul!
I feel honored and extremely grateful to have you with me on my journey!!
#2 Reformation
This composition has a special connection to me as it has guided me through an inner transformation…
Call it a ‘Reformation’ if you want (hence the name of the track).
I’m thrilled to lay out what I discovered…
It made me better understand ‘where we are’ as humans in the world today.
I came to understand that the suffering we’re going through as humans has a profound meaning.
While writing this album, I got an injury on my hands.
My fingers were unable to play the guitar without pain.
And since my job is to teach guitar, it was not only painful on a physical level…
… but also on an emotional level.
Because my whole identity was tied to this…
The loss of identity is something we all experience in this lifetime sooner or later.
But as painful as this is, I now believe it shouldn’t be feared…
Because our hurt is what guides our transformation…
It becomes a pathway to enlightenment.
And I know enlightenment sounds like a snobby word.
Artists call it ‘flow’ and athletes call it being in the ‘zone’.
You can call it whatever you want, but for me, it’s a state of transcendence.
Where you’ve lost the thing that was holding you back.
And are living in pure bliss and harmony.
I believe now that life is constantly giving us clues.
As if life is constantly nodding you in the direction you should go…
Because it wants you to transcend.
Before writing the album, I went through life like the majority of people…
I was constantly filling the void and covering up my hurt with ego outings.
Every time I felt that existential void nagging at me, I covered it up with thinking, working, buying, scrolling…
What I realized by taking the plunge into the rabbit hole of my psyche is that this nagging feeling is a gateway to go deeper.
It’s an invitation to transform the hurt and live in the now.
But first I needed to slay some more dragons…
#3 Daddy Is Turning His Hurt Into Love, Honey
The title of this composition leaves little to the imagination.
When I set out on this journey, I wanted to live in the moment…
But I just couldn’t do it yet…
It was too painful…
Because first I needed to clear myself of transgenerational trauma.
The transgenerational trauma that is being passed on between generations until dealt with.
I came to believe it’s important to heal this cycle of trauma if it runs in your family.
Because if you are burdened with trauma, grief, or anger…
It’s hard to listen to your soul…
My life reflected this…
It was reflected in ego outings (buying, scrolling, overworking, overeating, etc.).
I believe ego and hurt to be two sides of the same medal.
Ego wraps around your hurt to protect it from itself.
I found it to be nearly impossible to live in the moment when sitting on a pile of ‘dirt’.
And you surely can’t listen to your soul if you focus on anything but the present moment.
Up until writing this album, I never asked myself “What does my soul want?”.
And it was becoming clear to me that to tap into the soul, you should journey through the dirt.
My dad was unable to tap into his real emotions, and so was his dad, and so was his dad…
So we were all sitting on a pile of dirt.
That manifested itself in toxic behavior.
Pretty much what humankind is going through now.
You could say that collectively we are going through a ‘reformation’.
The pile of dirt is coming to the surface.
As a result of allowing myself to roam in this toxic behavior, I was forming relationships in my life that were toxic.
It was killing me a bit more each day.
A lot of having trouble forming healthy relationships comes from not wanting to be seen as vulnerable.
There used to be no space for this.
Telling children “You don’t have to be shy” or “You don’t have to be afraid” teaches them to tune out from their feelings.
To show no emotion.
But now I believe that to live a full life we must go on this brave journey inside.
#4 Prelude
It's called this track ‘Prelude’ because it comes right before the title track of the album.
On a deeper level, I believe the time we’re living in right now functions as a ‘prelude’…
Where we are now is a prelude to transcendence as humans.
I believe humanity is transcending out of the fear…
Out of the hurt…
Out of the blue.
For me, not being able to use my fingers anymore was a strong signal to do a 180.
I used to believe in the law of attraction.
That you can attract anything you put your mind to.
And some of this I still believe to be true.
A focused, positive mind has a higher chance of achieving the things you want.
Because thoughts are vibrations that can attract other vibrations (like things, people, etc.).
But I found you can’t escape your life’s mission unless you want to pay with your health…
Sometimes life itself takes over your narrative and forces you to go inside.
I always shied away from digging into my past.
So it was a catch-22 I found myself in:
Do you need to dig into your past to heal yourself?
I came to believe the answer is “yes”.
Do we need to collectively dig into the past to heal humanity?
I believe so…
If I continued to sit on my hurt, this would lead me to arrested development emotionally speaking.
If we continue to sit on our collective hurt, this would lead us to arrested development in our shared journey.
But, we need optimism and positivity as well.
It’s not a paradox.
One comes right after the other, or they go hand in hand.
I believe what we are experiencing in the world now is the liberation of our traumas.
And it’s a wonderful positive movement!
We’re using hurt as a catalyst for spiritual growth and radical change.
It’s the realization that ‘hurt is the key’.
So I set out on a journey inside.
If these things don’t sound like fun at all, it’s because they are like staring into the mouth of a demon.
It’s pretty scary, to be honest.
That’s why I resisted.
At first, I didn’t want to look at my hurt.
But then I found a way to make the scary become a bit more fun.
Express myself through music.
Music (as well as all other art) has the power to bring our inner world into the outer world.
I believe this is what we’re seeing in the world right now.
Both on an individual as well as a collective level we’re liberating our hurt…
We’re quite literally bringing out our inner world into the outer world.
So it can transform.
We’re transcending old karma into higher vibrations.
If all of this sounds a bit new-age, you are right.
That’s exactly what the world is heading towards in my opinion: a new age.
We are massively putting our hurt into the light as we speak.
Because the world is giving us signals that we won’t survive if we don’t.
Climate change, wars, disease, etc.
Things that frankly are all preventable if we listen to what our collective body (Mother Earth) wants to tell us.
And it’s not that we are powerless as individuals.
We can tap into our bodies, feel our hurt, and liberate it (before life slaps us in the face).
Because a liberated soul doesn’t need to buy stuff to feel good or kill people in wars for their survival.
If we transcend on an individual level, it doesn’t matter what the rest of humanity does.
Because life is going to slap them in the face sooner or later anyway.
It used to be that we needed to conquer nature to survive…
Now to survive we will need to conquer ourselves.
And use our collective hurt as a catalyst for spiritual healing.
#5 Out Of The Blue
If the blues hits me, my first tendency is always to walk away…
To hide my tears behind a fake smile…
I start cursing trauma and suffering in all its forms…
While really all this is, is the ‘key’.
The key that opens the gate.
What’s behind that gate?
The secret garden…
Where the soul flourishes and is free.
I believe now that a lot of suffering and grief is more bearable by seeing it as what it is:
The key to the gate.
But instead of embracing the key, we often throw it away.
Instead of reaching inward, we run away.
We run away by overconsuming, toxic behavior, amassing money to feel ‘safe’,…
We make stones of our hearts, so we don’t have to feel.
I believe our inability to deal with grief and suffering has stifled us in our collective growth.
And led us to overconsumption, killing our mother (nature).
So I found that the only way ‘Out Of The Blue’, is to embrace the blues when it comes.
There’s one funny thing that I observed…
What I need to learn seems to be the exact lessons that humanity needs to learn.
We are all connected.
It’s our moral obligation to clean up the shit we are carrying with us, both individually and collectively.
I believe this is why we all came to this planet.
Our dark sides are what make us into what we are.
With darkness, there’s no light.
Without cleaning up the dirt we are unable to tap into our real emotions.
When my daughter was 2 years old, I remember feeling absent when I played with her.
I tried, but couldn’t really enjoy the moment.
It was too hard, because I carried around a thick layer of hurt and trauma, that I tried to cover up with my ego.
I believe that collectively, what got us here today, is exactly this.
We’ve built everything to serve our ego.
We fill that existential void by buying, scrolling, binging, etc. so we don’t have to look at our hurt.
So we don’t have to feel.
Out Of The Blue is not only the title of the album but also the title track.
It represents the hopeful notion that “ego got us here, hurt will liberate us”.
It’s a welcome invitation to look at both our individual as well as collective depression and burnout as a gateway to liberation and positive change instead of only seeing the negatives.
Also, the track brings me back to the piano.
About 6 weeks before recording the album I was home alone, listening to Max Richter while I started crying.
I cried because I had spent 23 years of my life trying to master an instrument that looks like a giant phallic symbol.
I started playing piano for the love of music…
But the guitar I played because of ego-driven reasons.
Because I didn’t believe I could get people to like me for who I was.
So this musical phallic symbol attracted me.
Moreover, the guitar became a way of expressing the hurt that I felt as a teenager.
So that instrument stuck with me because of that.
I got back to the piano weeks before recording Out Of The Blue.
The title track was supposed to be driven by guitar, but when we recorded it, it kind of felt wrong.
Peter, the producer, told me my guitar playing sounded like Eddie Hazel.
Not knowing I didn’t want to sound like a Hendrix clone, it stang.
I came home that night and recomposed the title track for piano.
For some strange reason, I feel like when I play piano, it sounds like me.
My piano teacher didn’t allow me to hold down the reverb pedal as a kid (I LOVED IT!!), so I pressed it hard.
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#6 Canvas
This track is called ‘Canvas’.
I called it that because when we arrived at the recording studio, I wanted to have a blank slate.
So we didn’t have the faintest idea what we were going to do…
In the bigger context of the album, Out Of The Blue as the title track is the tipping point from ‘blues’ to liberation.
The C-chord in the previous track serves as the tipping point.
I believe there’s a big connection between trauma, depression and being creatively blocked.
I think creativity can serve as a gateway.
Art and music are like medicine for the soul.
I think it’s one of the noblest things you can do with your time.
Instead of feeling desperate, I started realizing that the blues hits you for a profound reason.
Life wants you to acquire mastery over complex emotions.
That’s why it’s throwing you challenges so you learn new things and transcend.
The hole I stumbled into appeared to be a gateway.
A gateway out of the blues.
With ‘Canvas’ I felt the need to prove to myself that I could color outside the lines.
The cover of the album is testimony of my newfound freedom to color outside of the lines.
There’s a famous Miles Davis quote that I love:
“Do not fear mistakes – there are none”
- Miles Davis
During my classical training on the piano, I learned many good things.
But I also felt inhibited from fully embracing my artistic freedom.
Because I was instructed to play ‘the right notes’.
I believe students should be encouraged to make ‘mistakes’, break rules, be creative, and…
Improvise (that’s how children learn).
Rebellion should be embraced by teachers as it leads to critical thinking.
I believe using extrinsic motivation is not the way to go.
It can lead to unhealthy student-teacher relationships because there is no ‘question for help’.
It can lead to powerplays and unhealthy dynamics.
So I’m really happy to see a whole new generation growing up now.
The new generation of kids carries a new energy.
They’re still a blank canvas.
I believe we need to step down as the oppressor in our kid’s lives.
And let them teach us.
I believe them to be a special kind of angel.
And I’m so grateful they are inhabiting the earth with so many of them.
#7 Meditations (On Energy Conservation)
This track is a meditation I needed to do on a personal level.
I believe there’s a big connection between what we’re experiencing as a whole and our individual lives.
My mom raised me and my sister on a steady diet of spiritual wisdom.
After the divorce, she collected a group of awakened friends who often came into our house.
One of the lessons most valuable lessons we learned, stemming from Buddhism, was this:
Life is a mirror…
Nothing is what it seems…
Sometimes the outside world is a representation of your inside world…
Sometimes your inside world represents the outside world…
But the two are connected.
So in Meditations (On Energy Conservation) I sat with the idea that Europe’s energy crisis might have a message for us individually.
At least for me, the message was loud and clear:
Stop wasting your energy chasing things that don’t matter
Stop giving away your energy to others by letting them fuck with your borders
I believe life is giving us clues on an ongoing basis:
The appliance you’re using says “Don’t disconnect the power”… (meaning: don’t stop whatever you’re doing on your journey now).
Or “computer can't update due to disk space…” (meaning you’re ready to transcend but you first need to give yourself room to do so).
Or your car breaks down… (the car is the metaphor for yourself, so if it breaks down it usually means you’re pushing yourself too hard and should give yourself rest).
Or you lose your ability to use your fingers as in my case (probably because I was ignoring too many of the 'subtler' clues).
I believe all of these clues are leading us to transcendence as humans.
I think it’s one of the biggest lessons I needed to learn: to stop inflating my value, and giving away my energy.
It’s a fact that Europe could’ve done a better job of not being so reliant on energy from outside of the continent before the energy crisis.
Maybe we need to learn to not be so reliant on others too for our energy on an individual level.
Maybe we need to go inside the rabbit hole and search for our true value, instead of letting others dictate what we are worth.
To go on a journey to the center of the soul and find our true bliss and harmony.
And yes it’s painful.
But I believe awakening needs to happen on both an individual and collective level.
I believe the clues we’re getting from the angels shouldn’t be ignored.
#8 When Autumn Leaves Start To Bloom
This track is called ‘When Autumn Leaves Start To Bloom’.
It’s about how it’s never too late for your soul to bloom
When writing my Out Of The Blue record, I realized that my life up until this point was based on a simple formula:
Grief…
Turned into anger…
Taken into workaholism.
Oh, the joys of self-knowledge.
So the title refers to the idea that when you put down your mantle of ego, you make way for good things.
I believe it’s our moral obligation to clean up the shit we are carrying with us, individually and collectively.
This is where we are as humanity I think.
Our dark sides are what make us into what we are.
Without darkness, there’s no light.
Without cleaning up that dirt, we aren’t able to tap into our real emotions.
That’s why the role of artists is so needed in our society.
It’s not petty or trivial, it’s necessary.
Because as an artist you are forced to look within and deal with the dirt you carry around.
And hopefully, you inspire others to do so themselves.
So I’m all for raising kids like artists.
To make them carry forward as much of their excitement in the world as they become adults.
In a bigger context, ‘When Autumn Leaves Start To Bloom’ is about humanity.
Because no matter how faded we are, we can start to bloom again.
I composed this piece for solo piano, as an act to celebrate the rekindling of the musical garden I carry within.
I believe we all carry this musical garden within, but it’s hard to tap into it if you are instructed to ‘play the right notes’.
Whenever I touch the piano now I feel like I’m guided.
Or maybe the 25 years in my dessert of oppression, trauma, and ego was necessary to lose my fear of playing the wrong notes.
Maybe the blues is a tool to transform.
Maybe the collective lessons we get from the blues (trauma, oppression, etc.) are just what we need.
Maybe we need to start listening more to what the world wants to tell us, so we can bloom like never before.
#9 Forever Part II
The last track of the album has a particular double meaning.
First, it’s my attempt to immortalize a personal friend, who I feel never left.
I will write about the importance of this friendship in my work in the future.
Secondly, it relates to the escape from oppression and trauma, thus liberation.
Even though it’s an ambitious word, I like the name that spiritual people use: ‘enlightenment’.
Athletes refer to this state as ‘into the zone’ or artists use ‘flow’.
I see enlightenment as the exact opposite of having the blues.
The feeling of putting your coat in the closet after a long winter.
I look forward to seeing where we’ll end up as humanity as we overcome our collective state of depression and burn-out.
I think depression can hold tremendous value.
In the words of Jim Carrey:
Depressed = Deep rest. Your body needs deep rest
Our collective body (Mother Earth) needs rest.
Because it doesn’t want to live this fake life anymore…
Where the ego rules.
I hope I get to live the day we get there…
Out of our collective hurt…
Out of slavery…
Out of the blue…