Return to Center is a collaboration between Emily Lewis and Portland based Producer and multi-instrumentalist Lynx DeMuth. This EP also features the musical skills of Sidecar Tommy (Beats Antique), Paul Theodore Chandler (March Fourth), Brandon Warren on drums and the songs are mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps, owner of The Hallowed Halls in Portland, Oregon.
Return to Center - The Story Behind the Songs
Raining Fire
What do you do when your special place burns to ashes? My answer: cry and cry and cry and then write a song...
Raining fire was written in response to Harbin hot springs burning down in 2015. I lived in Oakland at the time and Harbin was my “respite from the city life” in many ways. Going to there gave me a chance to rest and recharge and also spend time with dear friends in a beautiful natural setting while getting to soak in healing waters.
When the fires hit and I learned that Harbin had burned down the grief was deep. Grief for the loss of place, the community of workers there, grief for all the connection that could no longer happen there, grief for the animals that didn’t make it or were dislocated from their habitat, the list goes on.
But it also represented something deeper for me. At that time in my life I was hustling hard to stay in the bay area. Financially I was struggling. I was piecing together gig jobs left and right to pay rent. Honestly, I was exhausted by the hustle. Harbin was the one place I connected deeply with rest and deep connection time with friends and nature that helped balance out the otherwise hectic life I had built in Oakland.
When it burned down I felt a sense of where do I go now to recover when I need to just stop and rest?
Years have passed since I first wrote the song and the fires in California (and all over the west in the U.S.) have only gotten worse. This song really could be written for any of the beloved places that have burned in the last 6 years since.
Raining Fire song is a plea for clarity of vision, and a prayer for a new dream to emerge out of the smoke and into form. It asks the question: How do we move forward in the time of this pandemic and climate change? How do we humble ourselves to admit we have lost our way? We can course correct by listening deeply within ourselves for the next steps.
But we don’t do this journey alone. We do it together. Doing things together in community is what I believe is part of the new dream we are building.
Be still and listen
Through the dream
We’ll make our way through
Melting
This song encapsulates the cycle that is always occurring between contraction and expansion of the Heart. It’s about the fierce vacillation between melting, softening, and then closing, losing faith and ground. Melting is a song about melting into a state of grace and embodied sovereignty.
As an empath and highly sensitive person I used to judge my sensitivity as a weakness. When I realized it was a strength was when I started allowing myself to be who I was instead of resisting it.
This song is about devotion to the healing path. I want to continue to open my heart, soften and melt into a state of grace. But a fierce embodied grace with strength and flexibility. Sometimes I have it, other times I’m sinking into quicksand of limiting beliefs and thoughts.
This is the journey. This ebb and flow is the ever changing winds and I’m flying the best I know how… so come fly with me… cuz inside, I am still melting…
This song encapsulates the cycle that is always occurring between contraction and expansion of the Heart. It’s about the fierce vacillation between melting, softening, and then closing, losing faith and ground. And then trusting again and coming out of fear and softening again.
Melting is a song about heart healing. I want to continue to open my heart, soften and melt into a state of grace. This is the journey. This ebb and flow are the ever changing winds and I’m flying the best I know how… so come fly with me… cuz inside, I am still melting…
Spinning Around
What if we were willing to trust in the divine order of our lives? Is there a way to settle in to a deeper trust in how things are unfolding for each of us? We are all awakening but some of us just don’t know it (consciously) yet.
I wrote this song after starting to have some awakenings in consciousness. One of the side effects of awakening for me at that time was that my consciousness was no longer located in my head which is where it normally felt like it resided! It was not centralized in my body - it was decentralized and in everything.
During that chapter of my life I felt like I had superpowers! My awareness had expanded 360 degrees out of my crown chakra so I literally could see and sense what was happening behind me. I could see and feel into everyone's hearts as I would pass them on the street. I could feel how closed or open they were in their hearts. At first this was amazing but then it became difficult to witness. It was painful to experience how so many people are closed down in their hearts.
My “superpowers” eventually faded as I don’t think I could have kept experiencing that long term. But for that short period of time I was able to see through the veil of my limiting beliefs that we are anything other than pure love. There was no “Emily” ego to defend. Just a loving presence that was also moving through the world in this particular body.
To live an undefended life is my deep prayer for myself and others. In order to do this, the ego needs to take a back seat and the heart needs to drive.
When we return to center, (our center), we can stand in our own sovereignty. We can have big awakening experiences that may seem totally life changing but then there comes the time that we return into being and inhabiting our bodies more fully.
Well, at least, this is what’s true for me… I am learning how to wake up through my body and heart. I am noticing the magic that happens when I pay attention and Return to Center...