The name “GrailHeart” came to me maybe a decade ago. And as much as it has resonated with me over the years, I’ve been foundering with what to do with it. Lately, I’ve felt like I was closing in. Then, any doubts I may have had were blasted out of my brain by a vivid dream whose almost physical impact woke me with a start. (It was a really simple dream. I’m not ready to share it.) The end result is that I’ll be dedicating GrailHeart to wisdom stories, and music to go with them. Something like a “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” for grownups. Lord knows these feel like dark days, and a sanctuary from all that serves a real need. (This is the short version. There’s much more to it, but all in due time.)
Meanwhile. GrailHeart.com as it stands today represents my confused wanderings over the last decade, trying all sorts of things. Many of those efforts still have merit, but don’t fit with the newly clear GrailHeart vision. It’s going to take me a while to sort all this out. But basically, I’ll be gradually removing past efforts that don’t fit the ‘New GrailHeart,” while creating new stories and music for GrailHeart that align with its new vision.
By the way, wisdom stories are all well and good. But they want to be roughly 700 words or so. That’s not enough for a story to sink in. So I had the idea of ‘wrapper stories’ — a fictional person sharing a life experience in which they applied the wisdom story, and they share the wisdom story itself in the course of their tale. This literary device — having a ‘fictional writer’ share their ‘fictional story’ — gives me boundless latitude for creating the kind of content I’m envisioning. And it’s plain-old multi-layered fun! So all my ‘guest writers’ are fictional. (I love the oxymoron of ‘Wanderer in Residence’!)
— William
October, 2024
When I was 16, my family experienced a horrible tragedy. Which launched me on a desperate quest to make sense of it. In the course of that Journey to the Underworld, I learned Greek and translated the New Testament for myself. And studied voraciously — Western Philosophy, the Great Religions, and mathematics. And Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. And I’ve been a harpsichord builder, a college mathematics instructor, and a computer programmer (including several years at Microsoft on the C++ team).
As a musician, I’m an organist, pianist, and composer. I’ve composed film scores for documentaries — including one airing on the Portuguese equivalent of PBS, and another for the European Space Agency.
And in my travels, I chanced upon the glass armonica — a musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin, which works on the wet-finger-around-the-wineglass idea. Mozart and Beethoven composed for it. I’ve played my glass armonica at the Kennedy Center, with the Blue Man Group, and my hands playing the glass armonica were a clue on Jeopardy. And my YouTube video playing Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy has over six million views.
Now I’m hoping that in some small way I can share what I’ve learned on my own Quest, and encourage others on theirs.
