Ahead of her upcoming album Beneath all Bloom, which is set to be released in June, Blue Lobelia has released a new single: “Look for Your God.” Soft and acoustic yet at times intense, the track seeks to express the unity of creator and creation.
Rachel Bruch McAllister, the artist behind Blue Lobelia, has been crafting Beneath all Bloom for two years now. Relating her sense of spirituality to the intensity of her dreams, Bruch McAllister has drawn from her vivid dreamscapes to craft music that depicts her own spiritual beliefs and how they compare to the community of organized religion she was brought up in.
“To some degree, I measure my spiritual health and my level of ‘presentness’ by my ability or inability to remember my dreams,” says Bruch McAllister. “When I’m feeling the most in tune, alert to my creative whims, I tend to have these incredible, thrilling dreams that I believe are just as influential as the remembered experiences in my waking life.
“I have been keeping a sporadic dream journal throughout my twenties to capture these experiences, and it suddenly felt like I needed to hear them, to explore the personal meaning they held through music.
“‘Look for Your God’ is the last song I composed for the album and it combines two dreams that I had. The dreams and the song explore a hypocrisy that I have struggled with in organized religion and my personal reconciliation between the faith community I have been raised in and my personal spiritual practices.”
There are few things more intimate and personal than a person’s spirituality, and it is clear that by expressing that side of her, Blue Lobelia is pouring out something from deep within her for all to hear. “Look for Your God” feels soft and tender while emotional and raw.
Her expression of separating organized religion from her own beliefs hits us immediately, with the opening line stating, “Look for your god in the sky, but don’t forget to find him at your feet.”
“I think that part of the reason why faith communities don’t always have environmental action on their priority list is because there is this disconnect between creator and creation. In my own spiritual understanding, creator . . . and creation (Mother Earth) are inseparable. They connect to make a whole.”
Instead of looking spiritually beyond what is tangible, Bruch McAllister is expressing that the intangible spirit is directly connected to everything that physically exists in nature.
“What I am coming to understand is that this disconnect between body, earth and spirituality/faith, between creator and creation, contributes to my own hypocrisy — to my ability to make choices that are unhealthy for the environment and my fellow humans.”
Show Dates:
05.05.19 – Halifax, NS @ Lilac Lounge
05.18.19 – Saint Andrews, NB @ Paddlefest