Dan Haseltine tells us that a songwriter’s job is to describe the world as it is and as it it could be, and he presents his vision of both.
Starting with a painfully vulnerable description of his childhood, Haseltine explains how a dysfunctional and volatile family life pushed him to music, and how music led him to mission. He transparently shares the generational brokenness that resulted in him growing up without access to a father, and then reveals how watching the Live Aid concert in 1985 transformed his understanding of rock and roll and permanently fused in his mind “music” and “mission”.
After describing the unlikely genesis of Jars of Clay at a small college in southern Illinois, Haseltine explains how the band was led to use its platform of musical success to embrace mission by starting the charity Blood:Water.
In telling this story, Haseltine reveals two lessons he has learned about humanity. First, that human beings often try to control or destroy things we do not understand, and second, that we long for “spaceless embrace” with each other but continually drive wedges between ourselves. Haseltine then offers his vision of the world “as it could be”.