This song is a prayer for peace and for sanity.

This offering is grounded in an invitation to let down our rigid weaponry, our brittle dogma, our ideologies of scarcity and dehumanization, our violence ingrained into the fabric of our ancestry. 

Can we center the needs of children and serve the precious present moment, showing up for each other, realizing we don’t have all the answers and that the challenges we face may be more complex than vanquishing the non-believers? 

Can we listen to a more subtle and ancient song and stay present to a deeper pain, one calling us back to the humble places we so eagerly try to avoid in our mad dash for solutions? 
This song is a simple prayer for peace and for my own healing, my own salvation.

My son Leo debuts on this song as the crying infant at the end. This work is dedicated to him and his flourishing.  

I hope that it evokes something which aids your journey through your blessed life. For this is a blessed life, no matter the chatter. 
May we be well. 
May we be whole. 
~ 
If you would like to support this music and the human being it and his young family, please consider joining my Patreon! I offer this music as a gift, and am deeply grateful for any support which comes back to me. 
Link here: 

https://www.patreon.com/danielcherniske

Kingdom Of Heaven

"We are only human" Improv song

This is a song of the moment, of the days of early September, of kitchen dishes and conversations with friends fraught with hope, anguish, fear, vision. This is a song of fields of flowering Goldenrod, creating rolling hills of golden petals, nectar, song. 

This is a song of celebration for the turning of the wheel, the pain of being, the love of family and the mischief of babies. 

Arising through improv and intuitive listening and creation, this song birthed over an afternoon of sitting with the medicine of cannabis, cedar, and the instruments of guitar, cajon, banjo, whistle, vocal chords and pumping heart, long fingernails,

Created and recorded on traditional Seneca Nation lands. 

May we flourish as the flowers do. 

May we rise as our mushroom kin. 

May we remember to look each other in the eye and to walk the path of connection and community. 

We are not supposed to do this alone. 

May we dance wildly. 

Daniel.

*My eight month old sun and center of my universe breaks into the studio and begins emptying the contents of the paper recycling bin at my feet, debuting his 2nd vocal collaboration with his father. The first of many.

Goldenrod

This is a song of struggle. A song a getting lost and coming back home; of celebration and humble remembering.

It is so easy for me to fall into cycles where I simply loose presence. I find myself caught in the fray of the next task, money stress, thankless empty tank, prey to the forces that burn down the Amazon, the same forces which clear cut strip mine my own inner ecosystems. The blistering degradation of our detached machine culture seeps into my reality, and quickly swallows all of the reasons for why I am here on this planet at this time. My nature becomes distorted and I find myself slipping into the malaise of fear, of helplessness.  I often speak about how many forces there are which prey upon our most sacred, most beautiful parts of our beings and commodify, control, rob, and the sell us back the disposable gimmicks. Capitalism and it’s owner Patriarchy are well oiled machines, farming us in the same way we farm the plants, the animals. Clear cut mono-crop sweat shop quick stop. 

But… there are so many more forces calling me home. Presence is a garden waiting to be remembered. 

In the macro, I find my life right now mirroring that of a meditation, where I center for a brief moment in full presence, feel the sensation of coming home, of returning to the place I know I need to life my life in, and then get distracted by a thought or a fear. I may get lost for who knows how long, but with practice I come back home, I let go of that distraction, and come back. In this song, the “Garden” is simply a state of presence. 

I can come back to the garden waiting in the line at Lowes, pumping gas, sitting in traffic. In that state of presence I am able to fully show up to this life. I owe it to all of the forces which sustain me with their medicines, their lives, our dreams, our battles and our collective future to live engaged, alive, striving for wholeness and remembering what we have lost, how we got here, and where we must go. 

If this song resonates with you, share it around so that it can become a tool of yours. Reach out to me if you need support as we go through this time together. 

With love tinged with grief, Daniel Cherniske

The Garden

This is a song in progress that is bubbling at the surface and needs to be shared as the process moves. I am working to write a new story about the world and learn to deepen my trust and understanding, solidarity and clarity. A simple lullaby to rest with. 

I chose artwork by Alex Grey's "New Family" painting, as their expression of staring into the world as a new family captures the breadth and realness of life I wish to walk this world in.

Lullaby for a new story (Song in Progress)

Tears Run Down

This song is a song of seasonal turnings. Of the grief and the exhilaration that comes with the loss of summer, with starring into the coming winter and feeling the crisp air on your neck, with the taste of apples and the smell of chamomile tea lingering on your tongue. 

This is a song for the vulnerability and the intimacy this time is cultivating within me. The heartbreak and the blessing of realness. My partner got me a banjo for my 28th birthday, an instrument which has roots in the deepest pains and the highest joys of our musical sounds. An instrument which emerged out of the raw barbarity and insanity of chattel slavery, those wounds never healed, restitution and reconciliation never entertained by those who built a nation on the abuse and desecration of the sacred. We are all still sick from it. 

And yet, the banjo, being crafted from the African resonator instruments and emerging in the Caribbean in the 17th century, elicits wide smiles, rushing rhythm, euphoric provocations. This song is a prayer to the parts of me who are frayed and withered, a soothing balm and calming warm hand to the frantic mind. For me, this song embodies some of the closeness and intimacy I so deeply miss from the hugs and the closeness of bodies and breath we will one day receive again. I am diving into the realm of instrumental musical play, feeling ease and fluidity entwined in this venture. I borrowed my younger sister’s cello for the depth of sound it brings. What fun! In listening, I pray this song meets you where you are at, and simply aides you in feeling it all.

Plums And Smoke (Instrumental)

A raw and unmastered, spur of the moment sharing of a song which wanted to come into creation this morning. The song is rich with the vibrancy of life. Mistakes, alarm going off, footsteps... the tea kettle. It's all there. May you be well.

Let It Be. 1:02:2021

This song comes from the depths of this winter, the transition from calendar years 2020-2021, the returning of the light in the darkness of solstice....from my own need to sing to the hurt and pained aspects of myself..... to wail and to hum..... to feel and to weep. 

This song is a lullaby from the deep soul-space which is holding me as I draft and swim on the choppy waters above, holding on to broken pieces of a ship long capsized. 

This is a grief song. This song is a raw and wild expression of my love for life, and for the pain of working to stay awake and alive at a time when the amnesia of industrialization seems to be waiting around every brightly lit corner. This is a darkness song. 

This song is dedicated to my young son for whom all of my decolonizing and deconditioning work is centered around. For him to be fully safe and healthy, I must continue to let go of my poison and rekindle the fires within my soul, to rebuild the bridges burned and forgotten. 

This is a wild song, barely edited and raw. You will hear the tea kettle singing, and the subtle sounds of life. This is how it is supposed to be. This is the wild music of my life. If it aids you in any way, I am humbled and honored to share it with you. 

Blessings on your journey sweet human. 

May we be whole.

Holding It All

This is a song of struggle and of celebration. 

This song was born out of the blooming awareness that whenever we return to presence, wherever or however we are, we are entering Paradise. So much pain and tension stems from a foundational lack of presence. Life feels too fast, never enough, always striving, never arriving… For me, the daily journey of coming back to presence again and again allows for an experience of life which is full of depth, of wonder, of feeling, of holding it all and not looking away. 

It is vert hard to hold that. It is so easy to forget, to become trapped in the cycles of speed, stress, overstimulation, detachment, derangement and dis-ease. For me, scarcity fuels that cycle, which I battle with daily. 

This song is an act of rebellion. 

This song is a prayer to come back to the nature of our home here within this planet, within these bodies, within these realms. 

I hope this song aids your remembering and homecoming, again and again.

Come Back To The Garden

What does your soul cry out for? What makes your heart run wild with excitement and the garden re-wild in your imagination and inner ecosystems? For me, it is the dance and the channel of music and song, poetry and experimentation. It is the ringing of harmonies, the weaving of lyrics, and the places of power felt when truth is uttered.  This page is a simple home for the various sounds and songs coming through; an invitation to share with you in hopes of some sort of benefit to us both, my dear friend. I hope you are well as your read this, and I value your time spent in sharing with me at this moment.

Daniel Cherniske Music

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