Heather Frahn
// Singer-SongwriterHEATHER FRAHN is a singer-songwriter, instrument inventor, sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, and community workshop facilitator from Adelaide, Australia. Heather’s lyrical and musical heart aspires to promote a global community as part of the Conscious Music Movement. Creatively prolific, her music has travelled around Australia and internationally. She also presents workshops connecting community with creativity and skills development, including hand drumming, singing, choirs, writing songs, recording and sound healing. She has produced events which engage and unite the community cross culturally through song and performance. Heather has received several awards including Young Citizen of the Year, listing in Who’s Who of Australian Women publication, and Most Outstanding Female Solo Artist Award.
Website: www.heatherfrahn.com
Photo: Andrew Correll
Interview:
“FORGIVENESS AND LOVE IN MUSIC AND ART”
I can barely remember my life without music. Over the years I’ve been engaged with songwriting, it has become obvious that the power of music is immense and can be positive or negative depending on the spin. Most of the time, what we think is essentially what we become. What songs we listen to is no exception.
Songs can have a subconscious and conscious effect! If I am around people that constantly complain or put me down then I sure don’t stick around. It’s the same with music. I want songs to be like a friend and create the feeling I get when I’m with positive, loving people. I create songs with positive meaningful lyrics to share, like the giving of a gift to a friend.
Life presents everyone their share of hard knocks. Even though I choose to write positive songs, it doesn’t mean I think life is all positivity and rainbows, however, what is important is how we respond to this present moment. It might take years to work out, but the more we choose to engage with forgiveness and love, the more these qualities grow.
Life’s journey can throw challenges that are difficult to forgive, don’t make sense, or leave you angry. One of the only things that heals this is forgiveness and love. An important distinction is that forgiveness doesn’t mean ‘condone or excuse’, but to accept, from which point we can bring in forgiveness and love consciously and transform the negativity. Do you want to carry around baggage your whole life? Each moment is new, and all we have is the Now. When we let go of the past and realize that it lives only in the mind and ego, then we open up the possibility for more forgiving and loving qualities, because we’re not acting with unconscious limiting beliefs.
I have been inspired by forgiveness and love as an artist. I believe we must embody forgiveness and love to truly live, or we slowly die within, and our colours fade. Art reflects life, and songs are a powerful vehicle to share these broad themes. I have had feedback that my songs have helped and inspired people, even in the most challenging situations. Songs have the capacity to say so much in so little words.
It’s easy to say and hard to do, right? When we put love and forgiveness into a song, poem, painting or dance, somehow it’s easier. We can all start with our own art-life combination, like a prayer that plants that seed of forgiveness and love, a self expression for oneself that has the capacity to inspire many towards being that change. There is something to be said for the saying “treat others the way you wish to be treated.”
If we are to rise up out of the negative dream, we must start with ourselves. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” Gandhi said. Art is life, and paradoxically learning how to live life is an art in itself!
“The more we choose to engage with forgiveness and love, the more these qualities grow.”
– Heather Frahn, Singer-Songwriter
