2 of 3

Many of these stories appear on the inside of Doan's Eire—Isle of the Saints and Wayfarer—Ancient Paths to Sacred Places album covers. Among them is one legend of Columba. One of Columba's companions had claimed the right of refuge in a church and was killed by the High King. Columba avenged his death and was exiled to the Isle of Iona, off the coast of Ireland. On Iona, Columba founded a religious community that went on to establish missions throughout Scotland, England, and Europe.

Doan writes of sitting on a promontory of the Isle of Iona and looking out to sea: "Music welled up in my thoughts as my imagination glimpsed Columba the man grieving the loss of his earthly home that now lay just beneath the horizon." But Columba had a deeper vision. "I saw, too, Columba the saint, whose great faith in God filled him with commitment to teach about another Home that resides just beyond this world."

Doan had few Christian influences growing up. In college he dabbled in various kinds of Eastern spirituality. It was "kind of like the '60s thing," says his wife, Deirdra. "You didn't search [for truth] in the Bible, you searched in Eastern mysticism . …It certainly couldn't be in the Baptist church."

When Doan and Deirdra were dating, she was returning to the faith of her childhood and urged him to investigate Christianity. "I started reading the Bible and I couldn't put it down," Doan said. The turning point came when he was reading a passage in Leviticus. It struck him that God instructed the Israelites not to consult sorcerers and mediums because to do so precluded complete reliance on God. Doan says the insight available from other supernatural means is real but insufficient. Deirdra says that because of Doan's experiences, he can relate to New Agers. "He can speak to them profoundly and without guile," she says, "because he is them, only he has the blessedness of Christ in his life."

Perhaps Doan's greatest potential appeal to New Agers is the absence of an overt agenda. He simply shares what he has received, be it an insight about materialism in the modern world, the effects of Christianity on Ireland, or the temporality of individuals and empires. Doan says, "I think that if I can do something honest and sincere and truthful, and if it is something that is a revelation, it's my duty to be there and express it openly."

A few years ago, Doan was trying to depict in music Christ's welcoming embrace of the individual at death. Shirley MacLaine's Out on a Limb was on tv at that time, and Doan watched it, guitar in hand. The first portion, he said, recounted her experiences as an actress, her divorce and subsequent affair with a married man, and his severance of the relationship. Then, Doan says, the account shifted from big-city streets to the jungles of Peru, where MacLaine was searching for the meaning of her life. At that point, Doan had a revelation: Shirley, you have a broken heart. This is why you're doing this.

With that in mind, Doan cast his composition as a waltz. It portrays the image of a dance with Christ, "as if he knew your step and you knew his, and a glance said it all," he says. "It was that love that I wanted to capture in this music."

He called the piece "Beloved." A week after its release, he received a call from a video producer who said one of his clients had listened to hundreds of tracks of music. When she heard Doan's "Beloved," she stopped and said, "What is that? I want that on my video." The woman was Shirley MacLaine.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

December 9 2002, Vol. 46, No. 13