open source agape union vol. i part i | workman song

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2023 Remaster Reissue. Original release 2015.

"Open Source Agape Union Vol. I" was collaged together in a couple of days in Carlsbad, CA at the home of the Sitaras clan while I was on a road trip with my brother Griffin. I wanted something that sounded like scanning through the radio, as we were doing every day that month across the great American landscape. Actually, it was a low point in my life, a valley after a peak: the road trip was unintentional on my part, in fact what turned out to be its prelude was quite the climax: we played a killer show with Sean Lennon at Brooklyn Bowl sponsored by Cutty Sark. The biggest opportunity of my life at that time, and we (Griffin, Ted MacInnes, Daniel Tortoledo, and myself) crushed it -- we also crushed the free whiskey Cutty Sark gave us.

Griff woke me up the next morning asking if I wanted to go on the road trip I hadn't noticed he'd been telling me about for weeks -- "Where to?" I asked. California. "How long?" Open-ended. "When you leaving?" Five minutes. "Let me shower and I'll think about it." I don't know why, but I figured, "What the hell?" And I got in a Honda CRV with Griff and "the Highwayman" Mr. Jay McQuaid. A decision I'll never regret.

Nonetheless, I was a mess in those days -- if you're in your 20's, you're most likely a mess -- and that trip is when it started coming to light for me. As the days passed, the buzz of the Brooklyn Bowl show wore off. What was my next move? And how the hell was I going to make it blowing what little starving artist money I had on this impulsive road trip? I had nothing to follow up with. What about my barback job? What about my girlfriend? I spent the next month gazing at the landscape outside the window.

When we got to Carlsbad, I was reacquainted with my Massachusetts friend Niko -- also my music student -- and his father, Fr. Michael -- not just a priest but a painter and artistic mentor of mine. It occurs to me only now for the first time that Fr. Michael was the holy bookends of my Brooklyn era. In crisis, I sought out his guidance, and he helped me discern a path to New York City. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was in crisis again by the time I showed up at his family's doorstep in Carlsbad -- and once again he, and his family, played a role in me finding my path -- this time, out of the big city.

I collaged "Open Source Agape Union Vol. I" from unfinished or previously unwanted musical pieces that were stored away. I had to save them from being lost. This is what we are all challenged to do with the pieces of our souls that fit those categories: unfinished or unwanted. By the grace of God, we will stand in His light whole and holy.

-Sean