Jeremy L. Berg

Happy Black Friday … um, I guess? But what if we could purchase some positivity and throw some joy and peace and love at those we meet? This has been a very difficult year for artists and musicians, unable to gig and play to crowded rooms. It’s also been a hard year for fans of our favorite musicians, unable to tap your toe in a concert hall or share music and sunshine in the park.

Ben Kyle (of Romantica) is a friend and a favorite musician of ours. I love his new project with his son and if you’re looking for gift ideas this Black Friday, why not purchase something that will keep blessing others with a message of light in a dark year. For a guy who is still wearing t-shirts going on 20 years old (from college), perhaps this is my chance to update my wardrobe, and shine a little light as well! Check it out!

FROM BEN KYLE:

In quarantine heaven on the Floridian Gulf Coast, I was working with my son Roy on the beginnings of a little business designing his own brand of simple clothing items like t-shirts and sweatshirts. My soul was also re-awakening to the play and delight of visual conversation in painting. And as I painted my little color metaphors, I would sometimes playfully write on them with the words of a song that was running through my head, or something significant someone had said, or a little wisdom that I carried in my heart at that moment.

Over my journey through illness, there were many words and phrases that became significant,indispensable, healing, and even life changing for me. 

I remember very early on in my time in the abyss, my father-in-law turned to me and spoke the words “You will be healed.”  Without affect or hyperbole, just plainly and gently, “You will be healed.”

Those, of course, were the words I needed to hear and carry with me if I were to have any hope of overcoming the odds. And I believed them. I chose to believe them. And I carried them with me very closely for years, speaking them over and over again to myself, as if spoken directly from the very heart of God. 

The power and energy of words is immeasurable and yet we find ourselves in a world and a global context where so many of the words we hear (and have been guilty of speaking) reek of negativity, judgment, blame, shame, division, aggression and fear. And if this is what we speak and hear, surely this is ultimately what we will become.

And if we consider that on top of this, our current practice of mask-wearing, seems to reduce, if not remove, our ability to communicate our care and common humanity to someone outside our immediate family through the simplicity of a smile or the basic ability to speak clearly, my sense is we could be amplifying an already very estranged energetic environment to new stratospheres.

So I got to thinking, in this unequivocal context, and experience, if I have to wear a mask, how do I replace my smile? How do I show someone that I care? If I can’t smile or speak clearly to someone, how can I bring more love energy to the world and to my little human interactions with everyday strangers?

How can we add more love and poetry to our world in this crucial and pivotal moment?

And a little lightbulb went off.

What if we could wear what we want to say to ourselves and each other? 

What if we could wear the words we need to hear or see right now? 

What if we could embody the intention we have for this day?

What if we could wear the prayer we have for each other?

What if we could embody the song that the force of love is always singing to the world?

And so I thought to myself…. I love to design visual things and I love to write and sing beautiful words.

What if I brought these gifts together to offer something we can wear that might resonate with our own hearts and bodies…. And might just be the words someone needs to see or hear that day.

Just as there were so many instances when I was at the end of my ontological rope and it was precisely these poetically resonant words that I needed to hear or see that pulled me through and gave me the faith, hope and love to keep going and to keep healing and to keep believing in life, in humanity and in the world. 

So from the seeds of my lockdown project with my boy Roy, a new dream of a poetically resonant clothing brand was born and with that, a very material reality:

POETIC RESONANCE  Words to live by. Love to wear. Designer clothing with care.

SHOP NOW!