It Is Written

We all better recognize…

the omens. (If you’ve read “The Alchemist,” then you know what I’m talking about).

Check this out:

For the last two weeks I’ve been seriously out of rhythm. By that I mean all the things that help me maintain a certain ebb and flow to my life have been somewhat topsy-turvy. To be sure, I’ve been almost entirely disconnected from my current obsession, which as my closest friends know, is eating, breathing, and sleeping anything that is Earth Wind & Fire. After working 10 to 12 hours a day, studying for mid term exams, dental implant surgery, and all the other various mundane affairs of everyday living, I’ve had very little time to do anything, let alone read & write for pleasure. What I have been able to do, however, is listen. Everyday I’ve listened to one EW&F record, the same song over and over and over again. But I’ll come back to that in a minute.

I was having one of those sleepless nights, which for me is extremely rare. Generally, I never have a hard time sleeping but for one particular night this week after some very, very long days, I just couldn’t drift off. I’d been feeling a little neglectful of a few things, but mainly I was regretting that I hadn’t spent much time on my EW&F projects. So around 1:30 am, I’m tossing & turning; I get up, walk around, get back in bed and toss & turn some more. I turn the TV on, channel surf, nothing, turn it off. Pick up a book, lose interest. Flip through this week’s Time Magazine, boring. (This is rare for me so I really don’t quite know what to do.) I turn the TV on again (as if I wanna give it one last chance), channel surf and land on VH1 Soul, the channel that runs black music videos all day and all night long. It’s 2:00 now and I hear the familiar little jingle for the show “Soul Story” which is an hour-long string of videos by one artist or group. What I saw next literally made me jump out of bed! A concert video of Earth Wind & Fire singing “After the Love is Gone” from 1979. (Gasp! Could it be that EW&F are the featured act on this episode of "Soul Story?" We'll see with the next video. Then...BAM!) From the 1987 album “Touch the World” was the video from a song which featured the Emotions singing background vocals “Thinking of You.” The rest were songs from rather late in the band’s career since music videos weren’t yet a common media in the 1970s, and by the mid 80s EW&F’s popularity was also beginning to wane. Interestingly, as far back as 1977, the band had done what were then called “Promotional Videos,” which were usually un-elaborate performance presentations shot by the record companies to showcase album releases. But despite all that, I immediately knew the videos were a sign. It was a most profound omen that instantly registered a powerful message: get back to the Elements of the Universe!

So a few hours later, just as I’m about to head to work, I get in my car, turn on the engine, and hear the following:

Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?

People of the world all doubt the same.

Bringing questions of their own,

Truth is written in the stone.

Truth is written in the stone. This is the song I’d been playing over and over and over again. Between hearing that and considering those music videos from a few hours earlier as an omen, there is no greater affirmation to finish what has taken me 44 years to start.

A little more about the song:

When the album “I Am” was released in 1979, EW&F was becoming disco/pop oriented but “In the Stone” is a record that although it has pop elements, remains true to the EW&F ethos. Maurice White even said that this album was difficult to record because it followed the multi platinum “All-N-All” (which is arguably the best R&B album ever made—right up there with Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life”) and the band was trying to toe the line between art & commerce. The 50 second introduction, with its rhythmic instrumentation, horns, bass, guitar, and percussion, is used to this day as background music to television news, sports, and entertainment show segments and is a staple performance piece of every major marching band at Historically Black Colleges throughout the country. There’s absolutely no way you can hear it without standing, lifting your head up, and feeling like a champion. As the lyrics exclaim, love, truth, and strength are written in the stone.

In The Stone - Earth, Wind & Fire