Dear Ms. Belladonna...

When I was growing up I couldn't understand what people found so attractive about poetry. Most of it seemed too fanciful, too abstract, to hold my attention. I thought it was boring.

But all that changed when I started composing songs. Slowly but surely, it became apparent to me that music could be a kind of translating tool that helped to unveil ideas, meanings and emotions hidden below the surface of lyrics.

Now, I seek out poetry for musical inspiration, and I'm finding a great deal of it listening to your quietly powerful songs. As delivered through calmly expressive singing voice, your songs have a quality of stillness and meditation. You seem to find spaces in our collective, chaotic existence that are far, far away from the proverbial "roaring crowd" of cities. You create worlds in your songs that are the emotional equivalents of standing by a stream running through the woods, experiencing the solitude of a cave in the hills, or watching the wind clearing clouds from a night sky through which we see the vastness of the Universe.

"Your Christmas Cards" is yet another of your finely felt and observant stories about the infinite layers in our lives, how they blend, clash, mirror, obscure and reveal things about ourselves and others that keep us searching for answers in the past, always surprised by the present, and curious and hopeful about the future.

Thank you, Ms. Belladonna.

LOREN

"Music is what feelings sound like."-- borrowed from a Cakewalk Music Creator forum member, "Mamabear".