This song is a song of defiance … the last of the songs I wrote in this prolific spell as I was coming back to myself and determining not to stay down on the canvas after what I’d been through.

In the chorus I sing ‘In the arena till the end’; specifically this line and I guess the larger concept of the song was Inspired by another, very famous

This song is a song of defiance … the last of the songs I wrote in this prolific spell as I was coming back to myself and determining not to stay down on the canvas after what I’d been through.

In the chorus I sing ‘In the arena till the end’; specifically this line and I guess the larger concept of the song was Inspired by another, very famous quote… The Man In The Arena by Theodore Roosevelt. (Brené Brown references this a lot, especially in her work Daring Greatly, but I have been aware of it for many years before reading that and used to carry it around with me as an encouragement in my creative journey - which has often in my life been met with scepticism, and barely hidden incredulity, dismissiveness or at the very least disinterest.) It is a suitable last single of the summer as it kind of sums up Brave New Broken Hearts Club, which came out of me being facedown and daring to pick myself up and ‘go again’ it would have been safer just to go quietly after the charity stopped, but I chose to pick myself up and recover by putting my creative efforts out into the world!

Inherent in this song is the idea that anything worth doing is risky, that if you live only to not get hurt, to never fail, to never lose, you will never really live. It speaks to the very idea that to be vulnerable is to be courageous, to live wholeheartedly despite the sure fact that you will get your hurt is to truly live . There is a fabulous quote by C.S Lewis that inspired the middle eight lyric :’To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.’ I was simply applying it to all things - correlating love with all things - to try anything, to be creative, to be ambitious, to be kind - to try anything ‘life-giving’ or valuable to the world is to make yourself vulnerable - but to not be, has an even worse fate!

The title is simply a line that leapt out at me as I listened to The Power Of Vulnerability a collection of teachings by Brené Brown. The teachings are not especially about this idea, it was a slightly incidental comment, but there’s a lot of this kind of idea that is inherent in what Brené talks about regarding curiosity, and the power of

The title is simply a line that leapt out at me as I listened to The Power Of Vulnerability a collection of teachings by Brené Brown. The teachings are not especially about this idea, it was a slightly incidental comment, but there’s a lot of this kind of idea that is inherent in what Brené talks about regarding curiosity, and the power of paradoxes and the ways of knowing - ourselves, others and the world. This lyric also contains references to a couple of notable quotes, ‘Uncertainty is an uncomfortable place to be, but certainty is an absurd one’ by Voltaire and also a paraphrasing of a quote I have seen attributed to different sources over time but most commonly Mark Twain ‘It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so’

Love Remains

This came out or my own reflections on the nature of love and suffering. The greatest argument, surely, against a divine benevolent power/intelligence/being is the presence of pain and suffering. How, if divine love exists, could such things be ‘allowed’? Love and suffering, in this context are often set up as being paradoxical…

Love Remains

This came out or my own reflections on the nature of love and suffering. The greatest argument, surely, against a divine benevolent power/intelligence/being is the presence of pain and suffering. How, if divine love exists, could such things be ‘allowed’? Love and suffering, in this context are often set up as being paradoxical… binary opposites… the argument seems to assume that pain and suffering is not only contrary to love but also that the greatness of it, knocks out, defeats, destroys, love. How can love stand in the face of suffering? My reflections took me to wondering on how love and suffering could coexist (a central Buddhist philosophy I have since learned). As with all these concepts I can only say ‘I don’t know’… but for my part I have come to think of ‘Love’, divine Love, as not only capable of standing up, existing, in the face of immeasurable suffering, but actually so much greater than the suffering as to actually contain it… not paradoxical, not binary opposites at all but rather somehow mysteriously and inextricably linked: ‘When all is dark… Still Love remains’.

This started with the title, which I thought sounded clever. Of course I have no idea what love is ‘meant to be’… but all these songs are more concerned with the questions than the answers…

‘I have often wondered if love’s not about monogamy’ was kind of the starting point for this song… it is actually something I have wondered about a lot.. isn’

This started with the title, which I thought sounded clever. Of course I have no idea what love is ‘meant to be’… but all these songs are more concerned with the questions than the answers…

‘I have often wondered if love’s not about monogamy’ was kind of the starting point for this song… it is actually something I have wondered about a lot.. isn’t love so much more? Our society's obsession is with only one kind of love - romantic love, and the idolisation of it, and the damaging and misleading deluded representation of even that kind of love seems to obscure any other potentially greater perspective. What if by only focusing on, and being obsessed with a entirely ‘false’ and imaginary version of love - I am denying myself an understanding of something infinitely richer and more rewarding, something that could serve the world so much much better … an understanding of ‘Love Like Love Is Meant To be’?