Standing In The Fire

We become fireproof, and then we become the fire.

I wrote this song in 2016, in my emotional ashes of Liane Ashberry’s 2015 suicide, and in the embers of my father’s dying.

I will shortly re-record my vocals with a huge grateful smile on my face, and re-produce the song as ‘the fire’ - infinitely empowered - rather than standing in the fire, almost entirely disempowered, as in this first version.

Our smiling changes everything :) so watch this space for the new version before long.

Standing In The Fire - recorded Feb-June 2017

I recorded this first unfinished version between February and June 2017, which bridged the raging end of my ten year divorce, and also my catastrophic ‘giving away’ of half of my business - later to become 75% - in return for what I was promised would be its powerful redevelopment and expansion, but which became another disintegration.

I have only revisited and listened again to this version of the song in the last few days, although I’ve continued to work on it occasionally in the years since 2017, performing it live, and to myself. Several years ago a vocal line emerged in the space at 1min 46secs (after “It’s a sea of tears”) in the final verse, which had not emerged in 2017.

For several years, I now sing “And what the flames make of me,” rather than “And what the flames do to me,” which again is a very different interpretation of where the power is. Besides this, most of my vocal phrasing and intonation when singing the song now is of an uplifting soulful vibration, rather than dark and somewhat miserable. You’ll notice the difference in due course when the new version is recorded, produced and available to hear, which will initially be at AlanChapman.com/music, song number 30.

At the time of this recording I was simply standing in the fire, with no ‘conscious’ ‘rational’ idea of the doors that ‘standing in the fire’ would open for me, nor of the seeds that are planted and which grow in us, and through us, to manifest years later , becoming new, peaceful, fearlessly loving realities, for ourselves and externally too.

As doors close, to what we believed defined us and who/what we wanted to become, new doors open, to the emergence of emotional, physical, spiritual, metaphysical, ‘informational’, and other indescribably powerful energies, from deep within our soul.

Standing in the fire, we become fireproof, and then we become the fire.

It is the grief of growth, the rebirth via trauma.

It is the gift that reframes itself, from being what killed our ignorant arrogant self, which we fought against, but years later now embrace with gratitude, self-forgiveness and infinite optimism, creativity, laughter, and in my case songs too.

It is the triumph of intuition and heart and love over the conditioning of our false beliefs about almost everything.

Songwriting and recording credits:

Standing In The Fire – written in 2016 by Alan Chapman – this is the version I recorded and produced with Rick Willson in his studio Feb-Jun 2017 – Alan vocals, Spanish and electric guitars, percussion; Rick bass and drums; Alan and Rick keyboards programming. This is a dark and deathly version, to be re-worked and re-recorded euphorically and upliftingly so, as explained in the notes on AlanChapman.com/music for song number 30 and excerpted here below, because my musical storytelling might be helpful to others standing in their own fires, so they may understand that we do indeed become fireproof, and we do indeed become the fire, and that fire is light and energy, and plasma, and so is how we grow, and is ‘the purpose of the pain’.

Please note that there are potentially distressing descriptions in what follows:

(Song number 30) - Standing In The Fire – written in 2016 when I was renting a duplex flat in Eynsford, Kent, from a psychopathic multi-property-owning reverend, and travelling back occasionally and deeply traumatically for my divorce ‘mediation’ meetings to my ‘Feelgood Farm’ farmhouse (occupied and run in my absence by my daughter) in Leicestershire. The 2017 version I recorded and produced with Rick Willson (Feb-Jun 2017) is Alan vocals, Spanish and electric guitars, percussion; Rick bass and drums; Alan and Rick keyboards programming. This is a dark and deathly version, because that’s what was happening in my life at the time: the completing of my 10 year acrimonious divorce; the catastrophic redevelopment and theft/destruction of my website business and earnings; the grieving for Liane and her suicide aftermath; my surviving a very determined suicide attempt end-2015; my caring for my Dad through to his dying in 2016 and my being present when his rigor mortised corpse was put into the black plastic body-bag by the undertakers; too much trauma, but incredibly powerful emotional, physical and spiritual growth and platform, towards my reborn 2023 soul and self and energies. A 2023 version will be re-recorded and re-worked, especially with new vocals to be how I’ve sung the song and how it has grown from being dark and deathly to being euphorically optimistic about soul and spiritual rebirth, and infinitely fearless love and compassionate energies.

This is Liane and me in 2014 when she was well.