A frigid and dreary night.
The sidewalks were layered in ice that kept dumping from the sky. As my wife and I made our way to the car, I noticed a homeless man shivering for warmth amidst his tattered belongings. As we settled into our seats, Mary’s phone rang.
It was New Year’s Eve, 2006. As she reached for her cell, I reached into her purse. Rummaging around, my wife’s eyes growing with concern as she negotiated the voice on the other end of the line and the reality that her husband was relieving her of a $20 bill, I stepped back into the cold.
Approaching this homeless man, who was seeking protection from a torn plastic sheet, his disheveled beard caked with chunks of ice that had formed over the course of the evening, I stepped closer and leaned in.
“Here you go, I hope this helps.”
Extending his hand to receive my offering, he looked skyward and muttered.
“God, let him have his dreams.”
In less than two years, I would be working at a homeless shelter humbly serving hundreds of men (and some women) like this lonely soul who was crouched before me - no home, no food, no - nothing. An aimless wanderer, abandoned long ago by the comforts of life that had slipped through his grasp.
Nine years later I would find myself living in Kingston, developing my skills as an artist, vocalist and filmmaker. I began working on an album with Ryan Lewis at Elevation Music Studio, a collection of songs I had begun writing while living in South Korea in 2004/05.
My first music video would seek to honour the homeless man I had met on that night, a nameless wonder who petitioned God on my behalf for the actualization of my dreams, a pursuit unlikely to take shape in his life given the odds and statistics.
Within a year, I would be thrust into the torments of pursuing a dream - the highs, the lows, the confusion, the frustration, the expansion, the self-doubt, the beauty, the rejection. I began to withdraw, to question what is was all for. The rejection was all-consuming. It’s funny how we can receive heaps of praise and love, but the deafening silence from those we thought we could count on - it eats us alive if we let it.
I spent considerable time reflecting on voice - what it means to have a voice, how we are to use our voice responsibly, how we can find the courage to express through our voice in powerful and magnificent ways, in wisdom and not anger or fear.
Eventually, I would emerge. I would begin to take steps again. To stay on the path, to keep going no matter what. The process was revealing so much about myself to myself. The darkness within. The light that so many others had reflected back to me, for me, about me.
ForgivenessG had begun to amass resentments and bitterness too numerous to catalogue. I was being tested, and challenged, and provided an opportunity to transmute all the gunk. To mature. To find humility. To navel-gaze less. To be less expectant of others. To let life breathe. To trust. To forgive myself. To forgive others. To be less obsessed with perfection. To be more gentle with myself.
Shortly after One Day was released, a composer whose music I had encountered online commented on my video.
“There is so much inside you.”
It feels so wonderful to truly be seen, without prompting or coaxing or pressuring. Effortless, flowing acknowledgement, neither solicited nor expected. Just there. All of a sudden. But I turned off comments eventually. I’m still not sure why.
Then during a brief email exchange with this composer, who was from Czechia, we discussed doing a collaboration about forgiveness. On a sunny day in September of 2018, I sat down at the keyboard and wrote a song. I did one rough recording and sent it off to him. I never heard back. His life must have gotten busy, as he was growing rapidly with his composing and meeting some high level folks.
I put that song about forgiveness in the vault. And then, five years later, in December of 2023, I would be going through some old computer files only to discover the forgiveness song. The more I spent time listening, the more I fell in love with that one single take. I could have re-recorded it to make it more polished. But something was beckoning, from within, or from somewhere:
“Leave it as it is.”
Not making it perfect and polished would open me to the possibility for rejection. That gross, debilitating sludge that doesn’t easily wipe away.
It has taken a lot of time and soul-searching, but I’ve learned, polished or not, ‘perfect’ or not, there will always be many who will heap rejection. It has taken me decades to stop expecting the world to change - to not reject me. I just wanted to be understood. I wanted to be loved.
My past trauma with attachment and abandonment issues had relegated me from a young age to seek to please everyone around me. If I kept everyone happy, I would be valued and they wouldn’t reject me. I would avoid repeating the pain. But I was just creating pain in another way - the exhaustion that comes from wanting, needing, to be liked by everyone. What an impossible task.
And so I began to change. I went inward and worked on things. I began to see how parts of my sense of humour were mean-spirited. I didn’t like that about myself. I began to reach out to people whom I felt I had wronged or placed expectations in their direction that they hadn’t ask for nor signed up for. I had to shift my dependencies.
And so, in the interests of allowing life, my work, to remain imperfect - an exercise that has been a challenge to permit - I kept the only original recording of the forgiveness song. Perfectly imperfect. I recently added some background vocals, again, keeping the first and only recording of those as well. Layering in a few sound effects, I stepped away to assess my work.
Rough. Raw. Deep. A call to action. In my own life. And to a grieving and fearful world. There is so much beauty out there. In here. It reminds me of that scene from American Beauty with the two young characters who are watching the plastic bag dance in the wind.
And so, I bring you the forgiveness song, now called Mercy Came (below).
It’s perfectly imperfect.
I hope it touches you in some way.
Only Love,
ForgivenessG