Collaborating has not generally been “my thing.” I have had a few good collaborating experiences, primarily with a friend of mine in my mid-twenties when we worked together on an EP, as well as a recent collaboration with a pair of friends from church on a new powerful song that my pastor recently called a “declaration.” But in those cases, the ropes and responsibilities were clearly divided. In the case of my friend from my mid-twenties, he had already written the words, and it was up to me to decide which sets of text to set to music. In the case of my more recent friends, I had already written the text and decided to enlist their help in writing parts of the music; and even then, the collaboration was still seamless even without as clear a division of roles or responsibilities. In either case, my collaborator(s) had no ego, no selfish agenda, no drama attached.
I then contrast that against so many other collaboration experiences, most notably with a former friend, a drummer who saw himself as a bandleader, a conductor, and someone who thought he could write melodies and chords despite no serious experience with singing or playing pitched instruments (whether guitar, keyboard, or bass). He was also naturally very controlling, and selectively self-unaware, to the point of calling other people controlling if they dared to speak anything they wanted that contradicted his own edicts. And as if that wasn’t hard enough, he was so scatterbrained to the point of needing others to form his structure for him and keep him in line according to his previously stated desires, which of course often got reversed because he would push back and say that he wanted to go this new direction now. (Only later when debriefing, he would realize that he was wrong and agree to do it differently the next time, only for the same pattern to repeat itself all over again.)
That is the most glaring example, but I have others: one was a different type of controlling musician-leader who was far more organized but freaked out if reality worked out even so slightly from his expectations (and of course blame his co-workers); another was yet a different type of controlling person who was organized and quite competent at leading, but whose controlling and manipulative behaviors showed up when certain individuals would suggest other ideas (but wouldn’t when other certain individuals did); and yet another was clearly opinionated but expected others to handle all the difficulties for them. The thing is, I was in a position of looking up to these people (after all, “respect your elders,” which, although never said, was still implied), knowing full well my vulnerability and lack of knowledge about how life worked, how adulthood worked, and how the world worked. I leaned on them to teach me. And it’s not that they didn’t; it’s that they oftentimes taught incorrectly, and even when they taught well, they still impeded my learning process because even the slightest independence of thought was quickly (and sometimes harshly) discouraged.
Meanwhile, in my more formative years, I had the opportunity to experience how collaboration worked (or didn’t). I had two very important choir directors who encouraged me to do more, one of whom even had put me to work transcribing a piece that we had done a few years prior but then lost the manuscript. In the latter case, I was of an even younger age, to where real “collaboration” wouldn’t have applied the same way; nonetheless, he still encouraged me to write an actual piece, gave feedback (another teacher who also writes music was more hands-on in the music-editing process), and made one or two final executive edits to suit what he was looking for (to this day, I have incorporated it all into the piece’s current version).
And then, there’s collaborating with God. Here is a conversation with ChatGPT about the matter:
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I had decided to combine the question of God allowing pain and suffering with the question of God wanting us to collaborate with Him, due to the common thread of God allowing us to have some power, despite the fact that He Himself is Almighty. In honesty, this is a concept that has taken me forever to understand and reconcile, due to the fact that a majority of my failures in this life was due to a lack of ability and knowledge, and no discernable way to have gotten that ability or knowledge when I would’ve needed it to have made the right decision then.
In 2009, when I was trying (and failing) to find work in Minnesota after finishing up with AmeriCorps, one prayer I repeatedly found myself screaming (I wasn’t saved yet) was something along the lines of: “God, I need you to tell me what to do!” And I fully expected Him to answer immediately and with a booming voice a command from on high, like He had done with Moses. I very clearly understood that He was (and is) Sovereign, Omnipotent, and Almighty. And I understood that getting a job out of college and working my way up was a good and important practical life step. It was one of the main reasons I decided against going to graduate school. So I couldn’t understand, for the life of me, why it wasn’t working out seamlessly like I expected it to. After all, these were two basic truths of life and reality. It was supposed to work. And it didn’t.
It wasn’t until after I had moved back and started attending the Evanston Vineyard, and I heard the phrase “God can’t steer the boat if isn’t moving. You still have to paddle” that I heard the concept of divine collaboration for the first time ever. And it has been slow learning ever since. As bad as it was, I was used to being controlled. It may have helped that while in this “controlling” there appeared to be a critical mass of instances where it ended up being good for me, and as such, being controlled was more comforting than having freedom, at least in certain areas and certain ways. One example that wasn’t actually controlling but had some of the same machinations (and was in fact very age-appropriate) was how I thrived in the super-precise 24/7 schedule that my boarding school in New York had. Not a minute was wasted or unaccounted for. Our study halls were scheduled, and it was always, without exception, enough time for us to get all our homework done. Once I returned home for high school, I was thrown into a world of freedom (and responsibility) of my schedule outside of school. It was a bear to try to allocate time for my own homework. I ultimately did more than well enough to graduate, but the drop in my overall grades compared to my previous school was an indicator of this. The bottom line was, I was never* really taught at an age-appropriate level how to handle freedom and responsibility, because I was used to the allocated time for it being micro-managed; and because I had generally a good experience with that, I found the micro-managing to be comforting rather than an irritation.
One other note from the above as it relates to collaboration is that I got through high school, with this “all of a sudden” boatload of freedom and responsibility, because I did what I’ve generally done in life: do my own thing. In elementary school I often tagged along with my parents to events, whether at work or at church or at their friends’ homes. At these instances, I got sequestered in a different room, away from them, with pencil and paper to occupy myself. I spent the time drawing. I enjoyed it. I remember those being positive experiences. But, it also taught me that the world didn’t want to collaborate with me (which I quickly became ok with), and that collaborating with others really wasn’t a priority in life, nor did it need to be so.
[*I feel I should clarify something from a couple paragraphs up. The word “never” is not 100% accurate; I did eventually get taught various life skills and was given different responsibilities. I did go to driver’s ed at age 16 and got my license at age 17. I was 19 when I participated in my first cross-country driving trip, and 21 when I was given full responsibility of a vehicle as well as my first cell phone. Yes, I remember feeling scared when first learning to drive, but because of my comfort level with maps and road directions, I was able to overcome early fears. There were several areas of life where I did get to learn and learn reasonably quickly. The reason why I nonetheless use the word “never” has to do with understanding the function and purpose of collaboration, both in my relationship with God and for living life.]
So, in 2019 when I was at one of the lowest points in my entire life, with the focus being on how I sinned against God in the music area of my life (along with others), one of the things I prayed to Him that turned things around was: “I miss it when it was just You and me.” In 2013 and 2014 I had written original praise and worship songs, but sometime around 2015 or so, that stopped. I focused more on secular songs. I was performing or teaching all manner of secular songs in all areas of work, whether with my band or at my recurring accompanist gigs at nursing homes, or teaching music lessons, or any other random musical endeavors. Further, I had ungodly people influencing me in all areas of life but especially in music-making and music-writing, writing songs and then changing them to suit others’ preferences, irrespective of what I had wanted. And I had drifted from God, ever so gradually, to the point where even though I claimed faith and salvation when I had gotten baptized at the end of 2013, I sure wasn’t living like I believed it. This disobedience and rebellion even got me to the point where I couldn’t compose a piece or write a song if my life depended on it, which had not really happened before.
It’s why, upon repentance, and upon Him giving the gift back to me (and me doing good works by composing and writing all the music since then!) I always try to make a point of remembering and honoring Him in the music itself. That firstly meant no more secular songs. I even went back through old songs I had written and agreed to destroy the original lyrics and rewrite those songs with Biblical lyrics. Secondly, it meant writing some form of “To God Be The Glory” on virtually every piece ever written, including past compositions. Thirdly, as I felt prompted, occasionally I would put Bible verses on certain pages of compositions, or other statements of faith that took truths from the Bible. I have been very blessed to realize this form of collaboration with God. I truly believe that when I do sit down to write, I am taking dictation. I write down what I hear, and transcribe it to the best of my knowledge and ability. But that means that the music I hear in my ear has to come from somewhere. And it does; it comes from God Himself. But only as long as I continue to honor Him with it, and use it to spread His kingdom. I know full well that the devil himself has inspired countless musicians over the centuries, and that there are a great many tunes that unfortunately are demonically inspired.
There was one other factor that, as I look back, was an illustration of God helping me in terms of how to music-write, during the several months in the middle of 2019 after I realized I could no longer compose, and before the gift started coming back. I had for a season turned to a different art: drawing and coloring. As a child, I drew maps, comics, traffic light intersections, and other similar things, all with a No. 2 pencil (no coloring, as I didn’t have color pencils readily available). As an adult in 2019, I had a set of color pencils, up to ten different colors. That was enough, because what I understood about my gift of drawing and coloring was that it paled (pun intended) in comparison to my music-writing gift. I needed to learn to work within my limitations. And so I did. I really enjoyed the pictures I drew and colored during this time, first because I was pleased with the outcome, but also because I focused on drawing only what I saw, and not trying too hard to make it look perfect. And I felt that having too many colors (i.e., besides the standard red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, and white) would be too overwhelming for the simple purpose of drawing and coloring what I saw.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that desire for simplicity in both approach and execution has carried over into my music-making since 2019. I’ve eschewed trying to force a certain style on a piece, and instead letting it present itself as God reveals it to me during those “listening and transcription” sessions. There are several reasons I like Classical music best (jazz comes in second): all melodies are tonal and have a clear sense of direction; the harmonies always follow some kind of logical progression, supporting the melodies; the keys are always either major or minor; and there is almost always some sort of organized structure (my favorite being Sonata form, especially for instrumental compositions). It frees me from having an endless number of options and helps give me focus.
Additionally, as a child on Sundays after church, I would jam on the choir piano while others were taking off their vestments before leaving for the day, regurgitating the music from that morning’s service (and other pieces from church and choir that I loved). My dad noticed and loved it. And years later, during an Immanuel Approach retreat, it was revealed that Jesus did, too, even though I never saw Him until then. The point is, my current approach with composition also included a form of what I had done while improvising on the piano all those years ago: yes, I would take inspiration from other sacred music composers, because after all, they had written great music themselves, but according to my dad, I would transform it into something a little more modern. Looking back, I believe God’s fingerprints were all over that as well, forming and shaping me into the vessel He wanted to use for not only current music-making but also future music-making.
So, I’ve had good experiences with collaboration, primarily with God, but also with a few occasional friends on super-occasional bases. But, outside of those parameters, collaboration doesn’t come naturally. As a modern Classical composer/songwriter, I don’t favor the “rock band” approach of collaboration where one person may come up with the verses, and another the chorus, and a third the bridge. I never felt right composing one part of a piece, only for another person to write another part and have it be something completely different from how I might have done it. Additionally, in certain situations my collaborators would keep changing it because they all of a sudden realized that it didn’t “sound” or “feel” right to them (but they didn’t understand let alone articulate why). I trust God to give me corrections if I get something wrong in my transcription, and I happily fix it, because I want the piece to sound as good as it possibly can. And who better to trust than the One Who gives the inspiration? (I also trust my dad, to a lesser degree, because he too has copious amounts of experience with Classical repertoire as well as church choir music.) But I don’t trust rock-band people in the same way, for multiple reasons: 1.) I don’t trust that they know what they’re doing (usually they’re just guessing; they don’t like something in the song but they don’t know why); 2.) I don’t trust that the change they want to make in the song will actually make it better; and 3.) I don’t trust that they themselves are collaborating with God like I am, because, in most cases, they aren’t. I honestly believe I know better how to write music than the vast majority of people I’ve come across, and I believe the evidence bears witness to it. But, I still need to be careful that I don’t get arrogant, because I know God doesn’t put up with arrogance forever. He humbled me last decade to the point that I was in danger of losing the gift for life.
There’s more to collaboration than just music, of course. But because even to this point, I’ve been used to (due to circumstances and survival) “doing my own thing,” it makes it hard for me to want to collaborate with others. I have a lifetime’s worth of experiences of not understanding how to communicate with people and reaping the consequences which I’ve only begun to understand over the last couple years. It’s good to know that I’ve sinned so I can repent. But it otherwise really doesn’t do much for making me want to try again. I have a few friends I spend time with regularly, some over the phone, some over video chat, and some in person. I praise God I can do those things well. But regarding other situations, I know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know, which seems to be one of the roots of the challenges I have had. Time and time again, people expect me to know things I don’t (and are surprised when they find out I don’t know), and when I demonstrate what I do know, it doesn’t seem to take. At least, that has been the case in many, if not most, collaborative settings. As such, collaboration, outside of what I do with God, plus the few rare occasions where it has worked out, just isn’t “my thing.” The question I need to therefore ask is: does it need to be?