Discography: Simplicity
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Description
Loren's first release, Simplicity was recorded in a mansion in the hills high above the city of Los Angeles. Engineered with Gil Morales (Little Feat, Linda Ronstadt, Bad English, Lyle Lovett). Simplicity is a melodic, hypnotic, memorable, mysterious and powerful musical journey that features 13 songs that document a search for lasting and true intimacy and redemption. Songs heard frequently in the acoustic clubs of Hollywood, Sunset and Fairfax. A classic.
The Simplicity Story
I once idolized James Bond. I wanted to be illusive, mysterious, sophisticated, a romantic, an object of female desire, to keep my heart well hidden. Not that I wanted Bond's job, just the trappings of 'success' and the emotional anonymity of a 'secret' agent. At the same time I was conflicted...I sensed that I was created for a different purpose.
I traced it back to years earlier, when a simple act of faith, a very innocent 'yes I believe', had set something much larger than my limited perception into motion. Nevertheless, I knew what I wanted and I pursued it with a stealth like determination.
I soon discovered that living 'undercover' takes a great deal of effort and that duplicity is a demanding mistress. And yet I held on to my own desire to control my destiny and to create my own world of love, success and intimacy. I was comfortable there... I seemed to excel at it. Slowly, in shades of gray, I became the very thing I idolized...self-centered, conflicted, hardened, deceptive, destructive, and afraid of true intimacy.
I succeeded at concealing my true identity, even from myself. Unexpectedly, there came a reckoning, a moment of truth in which I reached what I realized was the point of no return. I had a choice to make. I could continue to perpetuate the facade, forever assuming the identity of my well crafted disguise or I could call out for an exposing... a 'revealing' of the truth. Perhaps it was the weight of the deception, perhaps the conviction that I had become a hypocrite (which I always despised in others, but refused to see in myself), perhaps it was the recognition of a promise spoken by a nearly forgotten 'still small voice' the One that said 'I have made you, I have a purpose for you, I know who you really are, will you trust me'? At that moment, with all the strength that I could muster, I fell to my knees and responded with a faint 'yes' whispered through clenched teeth. I wanted to believe in simplicity. Suddenly, completely, my well constructed life fell like a clay pot onto a busy street from a second story window.
How can anyone find wholeness and completeness through utter brokeness, be lifted up through humility, find life in death, find hope in the midst of complete despair, reconciliation through estrangement, restoration of intimacy through separation from everything that seemed to represent it? This is the mystery of love.
These are love songs and love letters. They are living canvasses that reflect a life that is broken yet being made complete, humbled yet being lifted, dead yet reborn, estranged yet restored, a captive bought with a price and then set free...a life that has been forever transformed by a love beyond comprehension. You see there came for me an acceptance of my acceptance. I didn't have to become something to get love, I simply was loved and only needed to accept it. And now I am simply a witness to the majestic strokes of color, brilliance, patience, grace, discipline, consistency, fashioned with loving hands, outstretched arms, with joy unspeakable, peace that passes understanding, and love that cannot be measured. This is an adventure far greater than any I could conjure up in my imagination. I am a new vessel fashioned by an artist whose name is Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty King, El Shaddai, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you Abba for your majesty...for your simplicity...for it all changed when I stopped singing about you and started singing to you, stopped singing about love and what I hoped it would be and started experiencing your love and all the glory that it is.
"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity"
- Longfellow.
"Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copied." - Steele
"If love were but more simple, we would take Him at His word and our lives would be all sunshine in the sweetness of the Lord." - Faber
