Thundering Silence Records

Exciting news!: We're starting a record label at Deer Park!

When I first came to the monastery in April 2023, one of my aspirations was to leave my comfort zone of writing songs in solitude and find some likeminded collaborators to make music with. On the lazy day of that retreat, I ended up in the tea room with a friend to jam and as soon as we got in tune, a crew of half a dozen wake-uppers came in to join us. We got to know each other over a few different chord progressions, started a singing dialogue across the room, and suddenly we were deep into one of the most organic songwriting sessions I've ever been a part of.

We started writing just for fun about Deer Park and the amazing week we were having. We sang about the beautiful landscape, the joys of turning off our phones, and paraphrased some beautiful dharma talks given by our teachers. The title, "I'll be your echo" started out as an idea Morgan sang about how we might echo each other in the chorus; that later evolved into a whole narrative on echoes. After incorporating that line into the verse, I started noticing in group meditations, if someone took a deep cleansing breath, often the person next to them would hear it and do the same, consciously or unconsciously accepting the reminder to breathe deeply and relax. Long after we recorded it, Thay Phap Luu shared that that was his favorite line because Thay Nhat Hahn often talked about the Plum Village students living as an echo of their teachers.

In the spirit of keeping that echo alive, here's a link to the Official Lyric Video for "I'll Be Your Echo," the first release from The Deer Park Collective (please follow us on Spotify or Apple Music too!) 🙏 I hope you'll enjoy it enough to share it with someone who might also enjoy it. And come do a retreat!

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On a more personal note, I've decided to stay at the monastery through the spring! I've savored every moment here practicing mindfulness with the sangha, cooking and enjoying delicious foods and great music... I'm really enjoying myself here. And now that we've started Thundering Silence Records together, I'm pretty excited about the monastic music projects we'll get into between now and the music festival in May.

Aaaaaaand VERY special news!... I'll be able to start teaching music lessons again in mid-February! I'm super excited to see you all again for some lessons and check-ins! 😁🤗🎹🎸🎺🎶🎵🎤🥁

9 more days of the Rains Retreat 🤯🌦️ - I can hardly believe it!