In 2021, while transitioning out of my old life as a cybersecurity executive, I stared working on my first large collection of ambient music pieces. This album, Finally Coming Home, was something of a journeyman experience for me, as I had a solid theoretical understanding of what I wanted to create, but didn’t then have the “muscle memory” that I needed to pull it together. Music software turns out to be quite persnickety, and hard to master!

While all of these pieces can generally be described as ambient music, several of them are also reminiscent of classical tone poems. (You can more or less work out which tracks based on their titles.) Something about the sounds I was using seemed to want to tell a story, and I followed my intuition wherever it led. It seems to be a consistent one about humanity’s impact on the world. This is the story that we’re all living now, and it’s our destiny to understand what we’re doing collectively – and hopefully adjust our behavior. I personally find that that one word that describes these feelings is wistful.

James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis said in 2021: “But my fellow humans must learn to live in partnership with the Earth, otherwise the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, unconsciously move the Earth to a new state in which humans may no longer be welcome. The virus, Covid-19, may well have been one negative feedback. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier.”

My wife told me recently that she had seen a great quote from Paul Hawken, and perhaps it lets us end on a high note: “Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or a conservative activity; it is a sacred act. It is a massive enterprise undertaken by ordinary citizens everywhere, not by self-appointed governments or oligarchies.”

The album was published on March 20th, 2022, the spring equinox.