01 · Out of time
Prelude
An instrumental doorway into the album. A short spoken line about memory and dreams sets the mood before the first letter is opened.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
Album II · March 1, 2027
Letters
Love letters from ancient Sumer to the current era. Each chapter is a real letter, poem or song that made it across the centuries, plus one from the future.
unsealing soon.
02 · Sumer · c. 2000 BC
The Lion
The Love Song for Shu-Sin, the oldest known written love song, is from a spring festival where the king ritually wed the goddess Inanna. Sung by featured artist Mercedes Diamond.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
03 · Jerusalem · c. 600 BC
Overwhelmed
From the Song of Songs. It opens with a woman speaking the Hebrew of chapter 1 (“I am dark but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem”) before the king answers as he considers her beauty.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
04 · Rome · c. 7 BC
Turia
The Laudatio Turiae: a Roman husband’s eulogy for his wife, the woman known as Turia. She persevered after her family was killed and saved her husband from execution during the triumviral proscriptions at great risk to herself.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
05 · Córdoba · c. 1040 AD
Ruins of al Zahra
After the Caliphate of Córdoba fell in civil war, the poet Ibn Zaydūn looked over the ruined palace city of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ and thought of Wallāda, the love he had lost.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
06 · Medieval Europe · c. 1300 AD
The Traveler
Middle Ages: a man who must leave behind the one he loves and go where duty compels him.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
07 · Italy to Paris · 1796
Black Forest
In April 1796, days after their wedding, Napoleon was commanding the Army of Italy while Joséphine stayed in Paris. He wrote to her imagining their conjugal reunion and longing to be home.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
08 · Passchendaele · 1917
Over the Top
Private Albert Ford wrote to his wife Edith the night before going over the top of the trenches at Passchendaele. He asked her to speak of him to their six young children who would never remember him. He was killed in action on October 26, 1917.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
09 · New York · 1946
Address
Sixteen months after his wife Arline died, the great physicist Richard Feynman wrote her a letter about spending time alone with her memory. He ended by apologizing that he couldn’t mail it: he didn’t know her new address.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
10 · Earth · 2126
Earth Girl
The one letter from the future, and the one we made up: a visitor from far away who fell in love with an Earth girl, the one who keeps him grounded.
Lyrics: unsealing soon
The album From the Ashes dealt with struggle and the need for connection. Letters answers the call with hands connected to hearts.