Josh Garrels remains one of my favorite musicians of all time. An unlikely and unassuming man with the most beautiful wife, he professes the name of our Savior with bold subtleties that will blow your mind. Starting as a grassroots Portland, Oregon local back in 2002, he was just "my art teacher's friend." Fulfilling my visual arts requirement in high school meant taking art class. So I first heard his music played from the chalk-dust-clogged speakers of a boom box in room 208 nearly every day for a year. I was hooked. My brain categorized his music with my own dabbling in the arts via sketchbook assignments and art fair entries. My love affair with the richness of his layered verses and nuanced choruses has yet to wane, just as my love for art has blossomed into a small business of what I like to call "ruining canvases." To this day I go on month-long Josh Garrels stints, occupying his playlist on my iTunes for hours at a time. That same art teacher of mine, who updates his own piece of the blogosphere, did the cover art for his third studio album, Over Oceans. Until my frugality was broken, I would stream his music online here. Articulating a relationship I had with the same Man in a profound way, sparing no superfluity, Jacaranda, his next album, was full of sweet sounds. It was a couple years before Lost Animals was produced and soon thereafter worn out, just in time for my current obsession, his sixth album in 2011, Love & War & The Sea in Between. If I haven't convinced you into fan-dom, check him out for yourself.

Love & War & The Sea in Between, his most recent album, is available on Noisetrade. Decide for yourself, but flying airplanes for a hobby and soon-to-be career, I happen to love Pilot Me.

While I'm sure he would hate the title "vocational ministry" -- it's not a job description he would ever claim -- the story of the life he has with his wife and two precious kids is all on their blog. You can also find all the lyrics to his music there if you go to Archives on the right-hand side and drop down to 2008.

Now, for the reason I even embarked on this little post: Mason Jar Music. "Josh's belief in his own voice," a gift given and empowered by the Spirit, has overflowed into a musician/fan-based project to produce and inspire others. Simply put, vague in nature, but specific in goal: may the Lord be lifted Higher. Quite frankly, it makes me look forward to heaven.

And for Pete's sake, please click on all the hyperlinks. I put them there for a reason! Garrel's is a cool chum and is worthy of your attention, I promise!

Here's just a flavor of the content they're producing:

 

Twins like Ireland

Limit to your love

James Blake, like a wa-uh fall.

 

Alms

What I would say to his heart, if I could: I cried on you today. Not for you and not about you and not with you and not to you and not over you but on you. I cried topically. As if to offer alms to that wedge of my heart that had not divulged emotion in a long time. Healed, perhaps, but not hardened. Like sponge dried out on the windowsill of the time I’ve spent being busy around you but easily wet with pensiveness and easily wrung out. Sorrow’s not quite the word, but something like it. Sorrow that never found rest and won’t “on this side of heaven.” Wishing my heart’s demands were voided and blank anew. Yet just as undertaken by the mystery if they would be for you. If you could go back and erase everything you said and did, chances are you would write the same thing you did the first time. Maybe cause that’s what you’re used to OR maybe it’s because something inside scribbled for you. But this heretofore you shall never know and so garbled up, crunched afoot frustrations covalently bond with the indwelling oxygen my reminiscing craves and my tears begin to flow. Hot because I think tears just couldn’t be cold.

*My first attempt at spoken word. The rooms seemed to like it.

Spray

It is a wonder foam is so beautiful. A wave bursts in anger on a rock, broken up in wild white sibilant spray and falls back, drawing in its breath with rage, with frustration how beautiful! Pansies, D.H. Lawrence

A view: rich like maple

Sail

The Old Man and the Sea: stop motion illustration. Evocation of artistic emotion, with angular autonomy, put to the sound of AWOLNATION, achieve a new tale.

the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo.

Concavity

Suspension in the troposphere.

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

Florence

Each moment brings it nigh

Not many years their rounds shall roll

And all your glories stand revealed

To our admiring eye

You wills of nature speed your course,

You mortal powers decay

Fast as you bring the night of death

You bring eternal day

You weary heavy-laden souls

Who are oppressed sore

You travelers through the wilderness

To Canaan's peaceful shore
Through beating winds and chilly rains,

And waters deep and cold

And enemies surrounding you

Have courage and be bold

The storms and hurricanes arise

The desert all around

And fiery serpents oft appear

Through the enchanted ground

Dark night and clouds and gloomy fear

And dragons often roar

But when the gospel trump we hear

We'll press for Canaan's shore

-Crooked Still

Musing

Hands

Their touching was like lace: the spaces where it wasn't were just as beautiful as where it was, and there was nothing commonplace about it. Interlocking fingers with him still made her tingle.

tangerine inspired

Imagine time measured by baths. Like chronological tick marks of steamy, soapy, salted, scented contemplation.

aqua + aquiesce + essence = aquaescence