Jan Garrett & JD Martin-I Believe This Belongs To You

I Believe This Belongs To You

Words and Music by Jan Garrett, JD Martin, and Ester Nicholson, © 2009

Click here to listen to "I Believe This Belongs To You"

You are welcome to listen here to our song “I Believe This Belongs to You,” the first cut on our newest CD, “Inside the Songwriters’ Studio.” You may download any of our albums, or purchase CDs by clicking on Music Store, above.

We would love your help in getting this music out to the world. If you know of any radio stations, civic organizations, spiritual centers, high school or community choirs, or other venues where this song might be played or used in an uplifting way, please let us know. THANKS.

info@Garrett-Martin.com

In the meantime, best wishes to you all, and much love as you bring your gifts & talents and highest dreams into this world. Happy New Year!

The Story Behind The Song

This is a song about forgiveness, generosity of the heart, and grace. It's about what happens when we're so tuned into true love that we can take responsibility for our own lives, and give others the freedom to do the same.

JD and I met with our dear friend, Ester Nicholson, in the summer of 2009 to write some tunes for her new album. She told us a story she had heard about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Era. Ester had no idea if it was true or just an urban legend, but it resonated profoundly with all of us. As the music and lyrics began to unfold, we each found ourselves in the middle of our own personal histories. This was Big Stuff. We felt individually the ways we had played all the parts in this familiar human drama. It was sticky and uncomfortable......and by the time we rode the song out to the end, it was also immensely liberating.

In spiritual practice there's a lot of emphasis on remembering that we are all one with the source of creation. It's maybe harder to come down to earth simultaneously, and love and accept each other's quirky and imperfect humanity, with the sneaking suspicion that we're all in cahoots here. Once again we get tricked by the deep wisdom of the heart to wake up and engage in our own evolution, and release everybody else to do the same. It's a tender trap that ends up setting us all free.

The story doesn't end there. JD and Ester and I found out that if you write a song like this, you put yourself in a position of having to live it out in real life, in real time. You can't get away with just touching on the ideas intellectually and then trotting off as if that's enough. There's always this intense mirroring going on. So we've all had to let the story run through our own systems, getting it again on a higher and more conscious level. It continues to be a fierce integration, a magnificent love dance requiring much courage and compassion. And of course, it always helps to have a seasoned sense of humor.

We are extending this invitation to anyone who hears this song. Can you imagine what might happen if leaders in the political and financial worlds, for example, were to take these realizations to heart?

The pay-off is that there is no end to how much love we can feel when all the disguises melt away. We see God everywhere, looking back at us.....not as a distant concept, but infinitely familiar, poignantly personal, fallible, brilliant, homely, unrepeatably perfect, breathtakingly beautiful, hilarious, impermanent. It fills us to overflowing, and brings us to our knees. How unspeakably lucky we are to all be in this together.

The string arrangement on this song, for two cellos and viola, was written by our good friend Derek Nakamoto (www.DerekNakamoto.com) and performed by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

And please STAY TUNED!