Month: May 2026

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Planting Seeds

Now and then throughout my life, and I imagine now and then throughout your life, we wonder, “Why are we here?”

I recently came out with a new album of songs entitled Much Too Beautiful and while I was working on the album I felt I was here to create the album. Now that the album has been born, I’m sending out copies to community radio stations around the country hoping to convince DJs to play some of my tunes for their listeners. So apparently I’m here to do that, too.

Put another way, we’re here to do what we’re doing. The question is, or a question is, can we generalize about why we are here? And the answer is, or an answer is, yes, of course. We can say we are here to plant seeds. We can say other things, too, but for right now I’m going with: we’re here to plants seeds.

What kinds of seeds? Seeds of love, seeds of generosity, seeds of kindness, seeds of mercy, and vegetable seeds, corn seeds, rice seeds, bean seeds, animal seeds, tree seeds.

I like to think of my songs and music and stories and books as seeds and also as fruit that come from flowers blossoming on vines of inspiration and love that come from seeds.

You can listen to my new songs and my older songs on myriad streaming platforms. You can also download the songs and albums if you want to contribute a little seed money to my seeding adventures.

Thanks!

Talk About Love from Todd’s new album Much Too Beautiful

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Much Too Beautiful

My twentieth album of music Much Too Beautiful is now downloadable and streamable from myriad digital music platforms including Apple, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon, and more.

There are twenty-six tracks on Much Too Beautiful including eight delightful a cappella songs featuring the marvelous Sarah Ryan and the fabulous Sarah Larkin singing with me, and everything mixed masterfully by the inestimable Peter Temple.

Also on the album are four narrative poems narrated by yours truly accompanied by my piano playing, thirteen intriguing piano solos, and one funny touching short story. I think of the album as an hour-long concert full of fun and beauty and surprises.

I hope you enjoy the tunes!

Blessings and Thanks!

Todd

Through the Fire from Todd’s album Much Too Beautiful

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Warriors of Love

So our country has been taken over by criminals manipulating crazy people, and these criminals and crazy people have brought our country into a catastrophic war that will, at the very least, cause terrible harm to billions of people. And there is the very real possibility of a global economic collapse and even nuclear weapons being used with unimaginable horrors to follow.

I don’t mean to be alarmist, but that is the consensus of the brilliant and knowledgeable people I listen to. And as I’ve written before, there is almost nothing, practically speaking, that I or anyone I know can do about the situation except hope and pray for a better scenario to unfold.

So I’ve been feeling sad and worried about this for many weeks now while carrying on with gardening, shopping, cooking, walking, communicating with friends, chopping kindling, meditating, writing a novel, playing piano, and recording new songs.

I recently completed an album of songs entitled Much Too Beautiful. I’m now waiting for copies of the CD to arrive, after which I will arrange for the tunes to be available from various digital platforms so you’ll be able to hear them. In the meantime I’ve been listening to the album, 26 tracks, and loving the collection of piano solos, songs, and poems accompanied by piano music.

One of the tunes is a piano improvisation entitled The Golden Light. I recorded this improvisation to be the musical accompaniment to my story The Golden Light that appears on the audio book I just made of my book Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories, available from Apple and Audible and Amazon. The story is about two young men, soldiers, lost in a tropical jungle in the aftermath of a battle that left one of them, Kersh, badly wounded, and the other, Moony, trying to keep Kersh alive.

Kersh has no conscious understanding of the spiritual aspects of reality or any knowledge of the natural world, whereas Moony is a thoroughly spiritual being deeply connected to animals and plants and the forces of nature. In the course of their odyssey, Moony tries to teach Kersh about the golden light, an ethereal light capable of healing and transforming us. I improvised a piano piece to go with the audio version of the story and to be on the album Much Too Beautiful. 

I find listening to the piano solo The Golden Light wonderfully trance-inducing and I’ve been listening to it every night before I go to bed. Last night as I was listening to the piece I found myself thinking about the terrible war and feeling at a loss about what to do, and in the music I heard be a warrior of love.

I take this to mean that along with hoping and praying for peace we can be warriors of love, whatever that means to you.

Fin

Mystery Love piano/bass duet from Todd’s album Mystery Inventions