We recently shared the news of Monastic Love Songs, the new solo album from David John Morris (out on 21 May 2021 – available to pre-order now) in which he continues the tradition he established over the course of five albums with Red River Dialect of his use of a song cycle to articulate a relationship with inner and outer landscapes, inspired by the Taoist approach of observing the movement of the heavens in order to understand the cosmos within, and vice versa.
Below, you can watch the video for his latest single Inner Smile, the joyful closing track which was initially written as a poem of thanks to his Tai Chi teacher Hollis and takes its name from a Taoist practice.
The songs on the album were written during the final weeks of a nine-month retreat at Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia where David took ordination as a Buddhist monk. The album title is sincere, with a little tongue-in-cheek.
David John Morris on ‘Inner Smile’
“Inner Smile was taught to me by my tai chi teacher Hollis who lives at the end of Red River road, Cape Breton, surrounded by chipmunks, goldfinches and stacks of firewood. Hollis is very humble, she wouldn’t even let us call her a teacher and always reflected back any thanks we gave her for the way she showed us how to soften and move the outer and inner being. I wrote this song as gratitude to her, which is about experiencing the basic goodness of our being, including the baby turtles and the jackals. Learning to “Welcome the Unwelcome” like the title of Pema Chodron’s latest book.”
Timothy Breen (filmmaker) on Inner Smile video
“I enjoy spending time by large bodies of water. Infinite and reflective spaces with no structure or land in sight are great stages to watch the drama of Earth’s atmosphere. Where the sun and the moon are able to really show off what they can do and the images in your mind can stretch out and blend with the absolute.
An afterimage is an occurrence that happens when the eyes photoreceptors are overstimulated, essentially burning an image into your vision that lingers after the source has moved on. An exposure taken with the eye, hangs then rolls back into the darkness. I often think about the eye as a camera and I wonder how much it can retain. If it’s possible to consciously remember and catalog seeing. Staring out at the water I try to follow as images roll into my senses and mingle with the thoughts and emotions I’m carrying, becoming distorted as they reverberate further away from the moment. This happens again and again and again, until I’ve had enough of the game and give in to the mess of thoughts and emotions.
“I was listening to David’s song and thinking about him standing out by the ocean, receiving and communing through the eyes, making time to not force things. I thought about how much practice it must take not get in the way of your own experience and I let the words and images bounce around and distort until they settled into the infinite.”
Monastic Love Songs is released on May 21st 2021 via Hinterground Recordings.
Pre-Order Monastic Love Songs: https://davidjohnmorris.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Kunga Yudron