To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 12 Born Free and Wise Innocence
I am grateful fo have arrived at Day 12 of this series. It has been so fun to share these songs with you and enlightening to remember and tell some stories I hadn’t thought of for a while.
Wise Innocence was recorded in 2015 at Brick Hill Studios in Orleans, produced by Jon Evans. It was a leap for me at the time to work with Jon and I am so grateful for that experience and recording that many have heard and use often in their meditation or yoga practice.
I was also blessed to make an official video for this track and so enjoyed the process with Kevin Lasit directing.
I partner this song with Born Free because they both have a kind of rock out vibe and include the chord Bm – which is one of my all time favorite chords.
Both Born Free and Wise Innocence are about reflecting on one’s childhood from the wiser perspective of the adult now. They also encourage each of us to remember our purest and truest essence.
There is great joy and healing in both songs and I invite you to sit back, roll your windows down and soak in all the vibration.
Thanks again for tuning into my 12 Days of Sweet September. If you have a certain day or song you really enjoy, I encourage you to share it vie email or social media.
And be sure to check out Creative Play with Viv and Alicia. I will be sharing a full moon chant this Saturday recorded at Creacon Wellness Retreat.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 8 Moments of Bliss, Back Porch Drunk and Breath in Breath Out
Here I am again breaking the rules. I am breaking the rules I made up for myself. Pretty funny!
Track 8 of 12 Rebirth is Moments of Bliss and to help tell the story of this song, I want to reference two of my older songs instead of only one.
First, Breathe in Breath out. This song has become one of my most popular songs and is often used in yoga classes. it was recorded on my 2012: Isn’t it Amazing record and was also one of the songs that Vivienne Gerard used as a sound healing integration in her first book One Day: My Soul Journey in the Gaia Tribe.
It was this book that Vivienne sent me in June 2017 that first introduced her to me. We then ended up chatting and I gave my first concert in her living room on 11/11/17. That first meeting in person was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The vibration created when we were together transcended all categories of relationship. It was that pure joy and opening of my heart that led to the song Moments of Bliss and our new Patreon page Creative Play with Viv and Alicia.
I believe we are all capable of these new kinds of friendships and connections. When souls recognize each other beyond categories of human limitation so much expansion, service and fun can be created. Enjoy the vibration of this song and really let it sink in to every cell of your Being.
The other song I wanted to mention is called Back Porch Drunk. Besides being the favorite song of both my father and Viv’s husband – shout out to the men – it reminds me of the same joy I access in Moments of Bliss. I wrote Back Porch Drunk right at the beginning of a spiritual awakening I was having and just months before my mom passed away. I was so connected to Source, following trips to both Egypt and Ireland and it was an incredible time to be alive in my body. I love that I wrote and recorded this song and it forever marks that moment in my particular Soul/Human journey.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 7 Be Creative and Be The Light
Day 7 is all about Being. What is the difference between doing and being? Perhaps you have heard that witty quip, “We are human beings not human doings.” I have spent a lot of the last 15 years unlearning many patterns of mind, so that I might BE more and do less. This is an ongoing process and the writing of songs is a crucial part of my growth and healing.
In my creative process, I often write poems or channeled words that have no music. Sometimes I write in my journal. Sometimes I record directly into my phone.
“Be Creative” I wrote first and then recorded it as a spoken word, which led to some editing. I included it in some sound files that I shared with my producer just so she would have a sense of my overall vision for the project and I had no intention of including it as a track on 12 Rebirth.
Allison, my producer loved the track and actually wanted me to do more spoken word. It has surprised me how much people have responded to this this piece, letting me know it really moved or inspired them. I purposely placed it right in the middle of the experience of the album, as the journey through the songs shifts here and starts to deepen even further.
I do believe that it is creativity and my willingness to express it through music and writing that helps keep me happy, healthy, evolving and thriving.
Enjoy!
I wrote Be the Light in December of 2008. Wow that seems like a long time ago!
I had just left Brooklyn, NY after almost 12 years in the city and was staying on Cape Cod, curious about what was next. I did not record the song until 2015 and made it the title track of that album. I love playing it around the holidays in the sacred month of December and have a few fans that want to hear it no matter what month it is.
I am loving this process of sharing with you through these blogs. Whether you have been reading all of them or are just tuning into this one, I would love to hear any feedback you may have.
Do you have a favorite song from the ones I am sharing? Has it been fun hearing some of the back story to my process? Feel free to respond below.
Also, be sure to check out the Patreon Page. I will be uploading the full moon chant a week from today and it will be recorded at my spiritual home Creacon Wellness Retreat in Ireland.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 6 Resurrection and Now is My Time
Whew! Day 6 – Half way through. This process of writing each day has been so rich for me and also has required a lot of focus, love and discipline. It’s been fun and illuminating to revisit my process both as a songwriter and a recording artist/producer.
By the way, are you aware of Queen City Records and the vision I am birthing? 12 Rebirth was its first project and in October I will be in Nashville participating in a week-long workshop called “Empowering Women in Audio.” I am super excited to hang in Nashville for the first time (WHAT?) and develop my skills as a recording artist and producer.
On to the songs…….
I wrote Resurrection in July of 2018. It was actually more like a channeled rant/rap into my iphone at a moment when I was really struggling emotionally. I knew I had to make some big changes in my life and I wasn’t totally sure how I was going to do it or how it would end up. The energy of this song came through almost like a rallying cry from my soul. It was in the creation of this song that I recommitted again to being musical, being in my body and being the best that I could be. It would be almost 6 months before I really fleshed the song out fully and had the awesome experience of recording it with a great band.
The true joy of this song for me is that I finally made a track you can dance to. Wouldn’t a remix be fun? Enjoy!
I chose to partner this song with Now is My Time from my 2015 album Wise Innocence. It was written in June of 2014 after singing at a friend of mine’s summer solstice yoga retreat. I visited with my Aunt and Uncle Nina and Jason Bacon in New Haven VT, soaked in all that healing green and again wrote a song about emerging from darkness and depression into an energy of hope and possibility.
I am often inspired by nature and traveling and this song was a result of that trip in Vermont and a particular glorious stretch of driving along Rte 7 between Burlington and Middlebury, VT.
What I love about this song a few years later is that it feels timeless to me in the sense that we are always living in the now. And so, Now is ALWAYS our time.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 4 I am the Ocean and Sweet September
ahhhhh, finally the song that this whole series is named after, Sweet September.
You can listen and/or watch the video I made around its release in 2012 filled with pictures of nature. My phone has been upgraded since I made this video, so I am tempted to make a new video with even better pics…..Let me know in the comments below if you would like that.
I wrote Sweet September in the fall of 2011 after I had sung 40 chants in 40 days. You may recognize the chant Ong Namo that opens it. I sang it in the style of Snatam Kaur as a way of honoring her vibration on the planet and being in Union with it.
It truly was a Sweet September for me that year, as it was the first September I had been on Cape Cod as an adult in a very long time and it was a coming home – literally and spiritually.
I had just moved through a difficult spiritual expansion and experienced both depression and anxiety as a result. I had let go of my life in NYC and recent teaching job in Beirut, Lebanon and knew I was creating a new life, but wasn’t exactly sure how and when it would all arrive. It was a time of deep meditation, contemplation and ultimately self-healing and trust.
This time I am in now is related to that time in 2011. Again, I have let go of a teaching job and other ways I had been living my life and I am birthing something new. I am so grateful to again be on Cape Cod, enjoying the extraordinary nature and ocean all around me, reminding me All is Well.
Here’s a picture of me from 1972 – my first summer on the Cape. As you can see the Ocean and I were friends right from the beginning.
I wrote I am the Ocean in December of 2018 in a beautiful coastal town in New Hampshire. I was there supporting and enjoying a friend who had recently lost her Dad. We were in between Christmas and New Years and it was unseasonably warm. The time at this ocean with my friend and her family was magical. I have learned that when a parent (or anyone passes), magic happens. To get to be present with the one who is passing or those who are watching their loved ones pass is one of the greatest gifts of being human.
This was the sunrise the morning after my friend’s father’s service and it felt like a direct blessing to all of us.
Right before I went into the studio to record 12 rebirth I first heard the Algonquin Water Song. It is a beautiful video of the Grandmothers passing the song down to the Granddaughters. I was so moved by this song I chose to open the track with it. This vibration holds the love and strength of a Spiritual Father with the wisdom and power of the Grandmothers.
You can also hear it in Our Prayer for the Earth that Vivienne Gerard and I recorded spontaneously at Dreamland. The joyful experience Viv and I had creating the Earth Prayer has led to the launch of a brand new Patreon page, where you are invited to support us, our work in the world and our vision for Gaia’s Love Festival.
What do you get? Peace, laughter, joy, music and inspiration for your unique journey as a Soul/Human, as well as an insider view to our creative process.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 3 Harmony and Isn’t it Amazing?
Ahhhh, Day 3 – one of my favorite numbers. 3 is the number of manifestation and both of the songs I highlight in this post are about manifestation.
What does manifestation mean to you? I have been using this word now for over a decade and am sometimes mocked a little by my siblings when I do. You see, they are all very medically and scientifically trained, and so the word manifestation or at least the way I use it, conjures up an image of me living in a kind of magical thinking reality.
They may be right.
I have lived much of my life from a place of magical thinking. This has led me to both success and failure, both peace and anxiety, both love and fear. An amazing journey overall, if you ask me.
I am so grateful for my family of origin for the way they love me and hold this incredibly grounded, educated and “based in reason” energy for me. And there are huge parts of who I am that exist in a much more mystical and magical way.
Because of this, I choose to practice manifestation through my consciousness and actions and….the writing of my songs. It’s as much scientific as it is spiritual. I can’t explain it all here (that’s another blog), but there are many teachers and writers exploring these practices. One of the big ones right now that many are tuning into is Joe Dispenza. Much of what Joe writes about and practices is in alignment with the teachings I practice though Derek O’Neill – you know that guy I like to go hang out with in Ireland. I will be with him and a community at Creacon Wellness Retreatthis month and I am beyond grateful.
Ok, back to the songs. Harmony is track 3 on my album 12 Rebirth and one of my favorite tracks (I might say that about every track). In order to play this track I use a capo on the first fret, bringing the home vibration to 528hz. It makes for a heart opening and healing experience while listening.
The inspiration for this song came from an Energy session I was blessed to have with Vivienne Gerard, the first time I visited her home in Cincinnati, OH. It was 11/11/17 and during that visit she also experienced the Rising Star Healing System through me for the first time. It was like a coming home for both of us and I will never forget the magic of that first reunion of our souls.
The first and second verses are inspired by our session and in the third verse I talk about playing the drum, inspired by the memory of this picture.
It’s only fitting that Isn’t it Amazing? be partnered with Harmony. It was January of 2012 and I began writing it when a friend of mine went into labor to have her first child. It was a powerful experience for me as the song came through and I chose it as the title track of my 2012 record. This was the album that Vivienne first heard me singing on and subsequently used in her book One Day: My Soul Journey in the Gaia Tribe.
I remember creating the songs for 2012 so vividly. I felt this urgency to make it, not unlike 12 Rebirth, like the creativity and vibration that was coming out was deeply important for my own healing and the healing of Earth (Gaia). When this kind of creation doesn’t lead to material or financial success right away, it is easy for us to think, “we must have been imagining that urge” or “my family is right, I am just a magical thinker who can’t afford her own house”.
Connecting with Viv exactly when I did, 5 years after I recorded Isn’t it Amazing?, helped me remember my Highest Path. It helped me remember, I AM ON A PATH- a unique and powerful journey and it is only my self-doubt and fear that gets in the way of full realization, embodiment and manifestation.
What a liberating thing to remember. Want more of the joy that is Viv and Alicia? Join us on Patreon.
And so here we are again today, remenbering to say YES!
Yes, It is amazing. All of it. Wherever you are. Whatever you are experiencing and however you are perceiving IT.
We can all be a part of creating the new HARMONY – inside and out.
That is my commitment going forward, Each action I take and thought I have is in service of creating more harmony in my own spirit, mind, body and in the spirit, mind, body of my family, community and planet.
Each of us can commit to this in our own way and it will look different for everyone. This is the great gift of Humanity, We are One and we don’t have to look like One.
meditate on that.
So much love to all of you, especially those that are heading back to school – teachers and students. Thanks for listening and following along on this journey with me.
Let me know if I can be of service to you in anyway though my offerings of energy healing.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doings this at Day 1.
Day 2 Six and Three
It’s only day 2 and I feel like I am already breaking the rules. I love breaking rules even when they are the rules that I made up as I way to give structure to my often wild and ever moving creative flow. I had intended to share a song from 12 Rebirth and from one of my other older records, but today I am sharing a song I never even officially recorded.
I woke up this morning listening to many many cars driving by on Rte 6A. I thought oh, it’s Labor Day, I bet a bunch of people are leaving the Cape. Even though this “end of summer” marker seems less and less real each year because so many are back to school much earlier, I still feel that Labor Day is a big marker of time and the end of a season.
This got me thinking about marking time and how one of the ways I mark time is through my songs. If you have seen me live over the last few months, you may have heard me talk about how each year at the anniversary of my mom’s death, I would write a song, as a way of marking that moment in my life, honoring her and honoring my journey with the grief and awareness that comes from losing a mother.
Me with 4 of the 6 nieces and nephews on Labor Day 2011
I tell a funny story about how some years, I skipped it completely or other years the song just wasn’t that good. Year Six finally made it on my recent album 12 Rebirth, which seems kind of perfect. It is the oldest song on the record and yet is a great honoring of my family and my 6 nieces and nephews. I have no children of my own and so my nieces and nephews are also how I mark time. I look at them and think, how did you become 22? Or right after you were born, I was living in Egypt and now you’re 10. Whoa!
As I was thinking of which old song to partner with Six, I got stuck until I remembered a song I wrote and recorded called Three. I never recorded it officially but I made a youtube video of it. It was Mother’s Day of 2010 and I was living in Egypt. I remember creating it in my little apartment in New Cairo in between teaching kids music. What a journey that was!
How do you mark time? Do you see value in marking time? Last night I watched Interstellar (again) and I was thrilled by how it raises so many questions about time and space and the power of science and love. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
If you enjoy songs like Six and Three, consider joining me over at Creative Play with Viv and Alicia, a patreon page we just launched that helps support my creative process towards my next record and the larger vision of Gaia’s Love Festival.
Happy Monday. Happy Labor Day. Happy Day 2 of Sweet September.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine.
Why am I doing this?
8 years ago it was August on Cape Cod and I was approaching my 40th birthday. I had arrived at a moment in life where I wanted to do something different or more specifically, I didn’t want to do anything anymore that didn’t feel in complete alignment with why I was here.
Over the last 8 years of living and making music on Cape Cod I have grown so much – as a person and as a musician. I have taught many many children and served many families. This was an incredible gift and one I carry with me always.
Now, I am ready to expand.
After releasing my 5th album 12 Rebirth, I am shifting gears again. I am allowing my passion for creating music, awakening, healing and education to expand and I am re-committing to developing my career as a recording artist/producer and sound healer.
This is leading to two new projects Sounds of Alicia and Queen City Records. Both of these are in the beginning stages of fully manifesting and yet I could not be more excited to be on the journey towards their full realization.
In the meantime, I am first and foremost a songwriter and singer and I could not be more proud of the creation of 12 Rebirth. And so, as a way of encouraging folks to tune into it, I am creating this series.
And now off to Day 1………
Day 1 A New Earth and Better Me
I first read Eckart Tolle’s book, A New Earth in December of 2008. That experience and the new year of 2009 inspired my song Better Me which was then recorded on my album 2012: Isn’t It Amazing?
The thing I love about this song is that no matter how many years I live, it always resonates. Often in my journey I have periods where all I want to do is lay on the couch and “check out” or rest. I have learned that this is a part of my process and I have developed great compassion towards myself and my need to do this. And, when I feel like I have been resting enough, a good song is all I need to get back up and create anew.
A New Earth on 12 Rebirth was born out of one of those “laying on the couch” times. I was still struggling with why I have these periods where I feel so inert and the more I thought about it and experienced it, the angrier I got. This anger fueled this song and yet it was my expressing of that anger that helped release it from my body in a productive way.
Some say depression is anger turned inward. In my experience, that resonates as true and I have come to realize that if depression or anger is present, it has a message for me and when I choose not to listen and act with wisdom, the anger or grief or depression becomes more overwhelming and destructive.
I wrote this song very quickly when I wasn’t feeling so good and then revisited it almost 6 months later and realized It was a great song and might speak to a lot of us right now as we are going through so much collective change as Americans and as human beings.
It was Better Me at a whole new level and with a lot more wisdom and humor. Not to mention a kick-ass band in the recording studio.
Many have told me, they have found this track healing and inspiring as they have moved through their own anger. Anger, like love is an energy. It does not need to be judged or shamed or denied. We only need bring our awareness to its presence and ask what it is here to show us.
Through our awareness, we can be with any energy and bring our love and compassion to it.
It was such a gift to record this record with a group of amazing musicians and Allison Leyton-Brown as pianist and producer. If you listen to both tracks, you can hear how much my sound has developed over the years.
Here’s to a whole new expansion in 2020!
Want to be on the inside and support me as I write towards a new record in 2020, join me over at my new Patreon page, created in collaboration with my good friend Viv. This record in 2020 is all about JOY and I can’t wait to share it – both the process and the final product.
Alicia Mathewson 