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So right now we are sitting in a consideration of the life of Saint Augustine’s mother Monica. In case you were unaware, soon after Augustine’s conversation and baptism his mother dies. The entire episode is detailed in book 9 of his Confessions.

This has been a challenging album to work on. There is a lot of rich material and my methods and care around the album work has shifted a bit as well. I have a few song that for sure will be on the final album but others that are just not quite there.

One thing I began to do during this phase of album creation is to have my trusty A.I. robot companion produce some daily scholarly articles on Monica and Augustine’s reflections or her from the Confessions. I like to use the text to speech mechanism in the app to listen to these on occassion.

At some point this album will get released but really I am in no hurry and want to do right by it so I am sitting a bit longer in the material and doing a bit more producer input on this one giving myself some time to come up with more creative angles for songs.

One especially touching part of the story of Monica is the shared vision Augustine and his mother share immediately prior to her death. It is a fascinating moment in Augustine’s writing where he details a supernatural experience of the presence of God. We would all I think do well to pray for and seek such a blessing and even more with family member or a friend. In the case of Monica and Augustine it began with a conversation considering what God had in store for His people beyond this earthly life. Here is a taste!

Raising ourselves with a more ardent affection toward the Selfsame, we passed step by step through all bodily things and through the very heaven from which sun, moon, and stars shine upon the earth. We ascended still farther inwardly by thinking, speaking, and marveling at your works; and we came into our own minds and passed beyond them, so that we might touch the region of unfailing abundance, where you feed Israel forever upon the nourishment of truth, and where life is the Wisdom through whom all these things are made—things that have been and things that will be.

Wow! So there something to check out. 😀

. . .

At the same time I have been on a crazy coding agent kick.

In case you did not know, the A.I. tools have significantly improved over the past half a year both in accuracy and capability. I began to tinker with OpenAI’s Codex tool, another tool called OpenCode as well as Anthropic’s Claude Code. I also expanded into testing out Gemini functionality. Still primarily I use the kleenex of A.I. ChatGPT.

One significant area of help that has occurred by use of coding tools is the ability to really improve the site and data around my albums and songs. If you visit the site and explore you will see this. We now have lyrics for every song published on our site. VOX has been very hard at work. We added album and song pages and even meanings for the songs to help folks dig deeper into the songs and Augustine’s thought.

To add a little humor we added a little VOX001 ticker at the bottom of most pages. He shares a little dry Augustine humor. Some of it is funny. Some of it is a groan but still kinda funny lol.

One huge release on the site is the Study tool. It’s quickly becoming my favorite. It is basically an entire application built into the site that provides a library of public domain texts and translations. It even provides a little music player for study sessions and ability to play back some works in a synthetic text to speech voice that is pretty darn good if I don’t say so myself which I guess I just did.

I also was able to enlist some additional human help from one of my younger brothers who helped to enter some song pages and provided some helpful feedback on the site looking for bugs. Thank you Jonathan bro!

All this to say the new album is progressing and do please feel free to check out also all the new things on the site. These tools are so cool and can allow us so many new ways to learn and explore. I am very grateful. God is good.

Peace!

Recently I got the fun opportunity to hang out with some siblings at a concert. It was awesome! It is so hard these days to catch time with family with so many important things folks have on the daily with family and work and life.

During that time I got a question about the music. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I remember it had something to do with listening to one’s own music. It was a good comment and a reminder of the danger of pride and of narcissism. It is likely something many of us struggle with to varying degrees.

What this made me think about days later was how these songs and this project are really about remembering. Here in Augustine we recall the church of the past and try to give them a voice in the present. It isn’t perfect; it is totally robot tech, and I don’t have any illusions about having any special mojo to make this happen. It is just a matter of care and tinkering and I suspect some small amount of providence given how the project has affected me personally. If you enjoy it I am glad to have you here and if you don’t I hope God softens your heart a little to hear something from someone sometime to be blessed in an incredible way.

And all that to say one thing that is so wonderful about faith and life in Jesus Christ, hard as it also is, is the reflection on his church and the activity of remembering who we are and what we are and where we have been and how great and kind a God we have, who condescends that he might save and rescue each one.

So on this Friday night we are remembering a few things:

Moments with family and friends

Good songs that helped us through tough times

Other good songs that challenged and encouraged

The moments in life that challenge us to really grow beyond [fill in the blank]

God for his salvation and kindness

It’s no wonder the Psalmist in Psalm 107 said let us give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his kindness toward the children of men. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so! And that is followed by a list of situations mostly created by individual sin. One reminder there is to call on him in our distress.

Time to remember some old school salvation Augustinus Vox style. 😊

Here is a little sentimental experiment late on a Friday night. In a moment of reflection I was reminded of another moment many years ago that ended with me finding and reading a moving passage.

The passage began in this way:

“To restore man, who had been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small.”

In the remembering I decided to make this little album:

The Word Became Small

https://suno.com/playlist/466f7983-1d5a-4e47-b4e8-d8aca52d3096

From Milan to Ostia: Instrumental Meditations

Our newest Augustinus Vox album is a new instrumental project called From Milan to Ostia: Instrumental Meditations.

The album traces Saint Augustine’s journey immediately after his baptism in Milan in 387 A.D. That moment was one of joy, release, and a new beginning. Augustine later remembered it this way:

“And we were baptized, and our anxiety about our former life fled away. In those days I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness I felt as I considered the depth of your plan for the salvation of the human race.”

But the joy of baptism was not the end of the story.

After Milan, Augustine traveled south with his mother Monica toward Ostia, the port city of Rome. They intended to sail back to Africa. Instead, Ostia became the place of one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes in the Confessions.

Augustine writes:

“There, far from the crowds, after the weariness of our long journey, we were regaining strength for the voyage ahead.”

That “voyage ahead” was supposed to be the trip home. But for Monica, unexpectedly, it became the journey into the next life.

Before her death, Monica told Augustine:

“My God has granted me this far more fully, because I now see you as his servant, despising earthly happiness. What am I doing here?”

That line became one of the emotional centers of the album. Monica had prayed for Augustine for years. She had followed him, wept for him, pleaded for him, and hoped for him. And now, after seeing him baptized and turned toward God, her deepest earthly hope had been fulfilled.

This album is meant to sit inside that space: the quiet after baptism, the road south through Italy, the rest at Ostia, the window overlooking the garden, and the farewell Augustine would never forget.

Because the album is instrumental, there are no lyrics telling the listener what to think. Instead, the music tries to meditate on the movement of the story itself: joy, pilgrimage, rest, memory, and loss.

Tracklist

1. After the Water

The album opens in the stillness after baptism. The old anxiety has fled, and Augustine stands at the beginning of a new life.

2. Farewell to Milan

A reflective departure from the city of baptism, Ambrose, and new faith. Joy is still present, but the road is already calling.

3. The Little Company

Augustine does not travel alone. This track imagines the small circle of family and companions moving together after the great turning point.

4. Southward Through Italy

The journey begins to stretch across the land. The music follows the movement from Milan toward Rome, carrying both hope and fatigue.

5. Psalms for the Journey

Augustine remembered the sweetness of God’s salvation after baptism. This track imagines prayer, song, and meditation accompanying the road.

6. The Port of Rome

Ostia appears as the threshold between lands, seas, and lives. It is a place of waiting, rest, and preparation for the voyage ahead.

7. Window of Ascent

At Ostia, Augustine and Monica share a moment of spiritual vision at a window overlooking a garden. This track meditates on that quiet ascent of the soul.

8. Earthly Hopes Fulfilled

Monica has seen what she longed to see: Augustine as God’s servant, no longer clinging to earthly happiness. Her deepest hope has been answered.

9. Before the Tears

Before Augustine’s grief breaks open, there is a sacred stillness. This track lingers in the space just before farewell becomes unavoidable.

10. The Unfinished Voyage

The planned voyage to Africa remains unfinished for Monica. Her journey turns beyond this life, leaving Augustine with memory, grief, and hope.

From Milan to Ostia is not only a journey across Italy.

It is a journey from water to farewell, from earthly hope to eternal longing, from the joy of baptism to the mystery of the voyage beyond.

And we were baptized, and our anxiety about our former life fled away.

In those days I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness I felt as I considered the depth of your plan for the salvation of the human race.

We were asking what place would be best for us to serve you, and together we were returning to Africa.

And while we were at Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died. I pass over much because I am hurrying.

There [at Ostia on the Tiber], far from the crowds, after the weariness of our long journey, we were regaining strength for the voyage ahead.

Here we have a few quotations from Book 9 of the Confessions which instruct us on where our journey with Augustine will next take us. We will move from the city of Milan in northern Italy to the south towards the port of Rome referred to as Ostia. Augustine does not tell us much about the trip but it would have been a much longer journey than our previous journey from the countryside of Cassiciacum to Milan. That earlier trip might have taken at most 3 days, whereas the trip to Ostia, we expect, may have taken about a month.

It is fascinating to me that many of the places mentioned by Augustine still exist today as we have a modern-day Milan, Rome and Ostia. You can even plan a trip if you wish to copy the journey yourself today on Google Maps, though admittedly Google couldn’t find me a way there from Des Moines lol.

If, however, I start from Milan and plan a trip to Rome and then Ostia, I can get some sense of their potential journey.

This is not to say of course that modern roads correspond to where ancient roads would have taken Augustine and his little company. In fact we know something of the roads of that time and more than likely the journey was not nearly as direct as a car trip would be today. For certain it would not be a mere 7-8 hours but as mentioned about a month-long journey.

Imagine what that might have looked like for our little band of travelers: Augustine at age 33, his mother Monica at age 56, Augustine’s teenage son Adeodatus, his brother Navigius, Evodius, possibly even Alypius and perhaps a few unnamed persons. We know this was likely the company due to clues in the text of Confessions Book 9, which explicitly mentions those names and references friends and household at the time of Monica’s death and immediately prior.

The text doesn’t tell us too much of the journey so we will let our minds imagine a bit. What it does tell us, however, is that, as they left, they were experiencing a joy at their recent baptism and that ahead of them was a long, tiresome journey that resulted in a pause at Ostia followed by an unexpected time of grieving due to the untimely death of Monica.

In fact Augustine relates that prior to her death Monica actually spoke to him in a kind of foreshadowing way about how all her aims in life were fulfilled in seeing those she cared about come to know Christ. He recalls that she put it this way:

My son, as far as I am concerned, I no longer take delight in anything in this life. What I am still doing here, and why I am still here, I do not know, for every hope I had in this world is now used up.

There was only one reason I wanted to remain a little longer in this life: so that before I died I might see you as a Catholic Christian. My God has granted me this far more fully, because I now see you as his servant, despising earthly happiness.

What am I doing here?

Soon after saying this Monica will become ill and die and pass into glory.

So in considering where we go next on our journey I plan to do another instrumental album. It will take us on this journey from the spiritual heights experienced at Milan on a journey to Ostia on the Tiber. We will stop before Monica’s death but will look to foreshadow it. After this we will move into another lyric album specifically on Monica and Augustine’s remembrance of her.

In doing a little fun imagining with the A.I. I was able to come up with a pretty cool map of the journey. It started with a first draft and quickly moved into our 80s vibe. Here they are for your enjoyment.

First Draft

Second draft 80s rock edition

To see more about where we have come from and where we are going, you can listen to Confessions Book 9 yourself here:

Well it’s official!

The publish button has been hit on our newest album:

Piano Sessions

You can click the album cover above to begin listening to the album on Suno without any ads. I expect the album will soon arrive on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Amazon and other stores.

Click here for Spotify

So a little about this album…

It has been under construction for quite some time. Longer than any album I’ve worked on previously for sure. The album is really a celebration of the journey so far with Augustine and Augustinus Vox. I had hoped to release it on my birthday last week on April 19 but normal human festivities prevailed, for which I’m grateful as there were some additional changes I made and testing I did even in the last week.

One of the major late changes was a decision to modify the opening song of the album. I originally intended to begin the album with a Piano version of the opening song from our Soliloquies album called Opening Prayer. This was the shape of the album for quite some time but in a moment of recollection I began to recall an older song I’d made back in some early experiments with Against the Skeptics called To My Friend Romanianus. I couldn’t get away from the song and it became the opener Receive this Song. I found it to be a sort of dedication to any who might venture along this journey with me. 🙂

History of the Opener: Receive This Song

Some time after that album was released I was experimenting further with the ideas after releasing On Order. I decided it might be a neat experiment to try to do draft albums for each book of Contra Academicos that were more faithful to the text of the work and call it something like Contra Academicos: The Complete Journey.

[Disclaimer: If you want to listen to it you can do so by clicking here but be warned unlike our published albums this has little to no QA. I call it a draft album.]

The idea was forming that perhaps a good way to learn Augustine was to work with his ideas in a variety of degrees. First a lighter album and then on to something a bit more dense. Learning topics of theology and philosophy is hard for me and I find the music a helpful way to engage with the ideas and appropriate them. Regardless, that draft album was pretty cool on the listen-through, enough that I sent it to a friend. I continue to work with Contra Academicos to this day and have an idea that it might make a pretty entertaining stage play were it infused with a bit of 80s rock and humor.

More on Piano Sessions

So how did we get from 80s rock to Piano? Well, I enjoy a variety of music styles and I enjoyed the idea of Vox and band making me an album for my birthday to celebrate all the work we’ve put into the project. You’ll find in Piano Sessions many covers of some of my favorite songs that we’ve created over the last year as well as a few new original songs which I also call Piano Sessions Version because they all originate from an 80s rock version. Some have little echoes of their source as a rock ballad which is quite surprising at times. Additionally there are a few unique ones in there that are sure to be favorites of someone out there.

An Overview of the Originals

Receive This Song

Receive This Song as mentioned is the opener to the album. The song is drawn from the opening of Contra Academicos where Augustine writes to his patron and friend Romanianus.

Light-Giver of the Dawn

This is the second original song on the album that comes at the end of the first half of the album. It comes from an ancient hymn attributed to Hilary of Poitiers.

Orabo

Orabo is actually a hymn fragment attributed to Saint Ambrose. In our Ambrosian Hymns album this song is what is behind Heart and Spirit. The term Orabo means “I will pray” which is how that hymn fragment begins. Orabo was first published in its rock form on Suno and on YouTube. You can listen below. A fantastic instrumental!

I Will Pray (Orabo Interlude)

This song comes as a short interlude. It is a cover of our instrumental Orabo above but with the lyrics of the hymn fragment I quite enjoyed.

And finally…

The First and the Last

This song is probably my favorite on the album and I can never wait to get to it. It originated from our exploration of the works of Ambrose. Specifically it came out of experiments with Ambrose’s Hexameron.

Well, all this to say, I hope you enjoy this new album. I know I sure do.

Thank you as always for listening and reading!!

Until the next sounds drop!

-Kyle

We had another live show test this last Friday, but it seems that, in my distraction, I forgot to publish it.

I think we are getting closer to nailing it down. Take a listen and see if you agree.

https://suno.com/playlist/1d1245b3-2e4d-40c2-a6b5-20661acb8d27

Analytics are funny things to examine.

Recently out of curiosity I logged into my distributor account and pulled down a report of every Augustinus Vox song and the number of times it has been played. This report does not include Spotify, where nearly half of all listens come in, so I also pulled a separate Spotify report to get those numbers.

I sent both reports to the “A.I. overlord” and I inquired about the top 10 tracks by number of plays. It responded back with the top 10 tracks, which quite surprised me because a song I did not expect was listed first. Here is the list.

1. The Living Law
2. Shadow of a Doubt
3. The Handing Over
4. Canticle of the Creatures
5. The Order of Love (Instrumental)
6. Grief and Gratitude
7. The Light Beyond the Tomb – Piano Sessions Version
8. Nothing for Certain
9. Heart and Mind
10. The Question of Joy

Upon checking further it seems that someone recently utilized The Living Law within some kind of social media short or ad and this caused it to jump up to the number one spot.

On seeing this, I began a journey to recall what that song was about and how it came to be. One memory that is very distinct is that the idea for the song occurred to me over a lunch break and that it was a song inspired by Augustine’s Retractions where he comments on and critiques his past works. At the time I had been working and thinking about the Immortality of the Soul album for several weeks and had essentially finished the album. I was in what I call the QA stage where I listen over and over and then make micro adjustments to songs and sometimes regenerate a song entirely when I like the tune but dislike aspects of how it sounds or the way the lyrics are sung. In this phase I explored Augustine’s Retractions and he had this to say about the work:

After the books of the Soliloquies, once I had returned from the countryside near Milan, I wrote a book called On the Immortality of the Soul. I had intended it to serve as a kind of reminder for finishing the Soliloquies, which had been left incomplete. But somehow, against my wishes, it got into people’s hands, and so it is counted among my works. At the very beginning, the force and brevity of its chain of arguments make it so obscure that it tires even my own attention when it is read, and I can hardly understand it myself.

Then, because I was thinking of nothing but human souls, I said in one argument in that same book, “There cannot be any discipline in that which learns nothing.” And elsewhere I said, “Knowledge embraces nothing except what belongs to some discipline.” It did not occur to me that God does not learn disciplines, and yet has knowledge of all things, including foreknowledge of future events. Something similar appears where I said, “No being has life together with reason except the soul.” But life without reason certainly cannot be denied of God, since in him there is both the highest life and the highest reason. And I also said earlier, “That which is understood is always of this kind,” even though the mind too is understood, and yet it is not always of this kind. Again, when I said that the mind cannot be separated from eternal reason because it is not joined to it spatially, I certainly would not have said that if I had already been so trained in the Holy Scriptures as to remember what is written: “Your sins separate you from God.” From this it is clear that even things joined not by place but in an incorporeal way can still be said to be separated.

I also cannot recall what I meant when I said, “If the soul is without a body, it is not in this world.” For are the souls of the dead not without bodies? Or are they not in this world? As though the lower regions are not part of this world. But since I used being “without a body” in a positive sense, perhaps by “body” I meant bodily afflictions. If that is what I meant, then I used the word far too strangely. This too was said rashly: that bodily form is given by the soul from the highest essence, and that a body exists, to whatever degree it exists, through the soul. Therefore, the body subsists through the soul, and exists by the very fact that it is animated, whether universally, as in the world, or particularly, as in each individual living thing within the world. All of this was said altogether too rashly.

This book begins: “If there is such a thing as discipline anywhere…”

In the above quote we see Augustine’s awareness that some of what he shared in the work was shared in ignorance of the Scriptures. This idea prompted me to explore a song that incorporated scripture and his later corrections. The song came together quickly and here it is!

Our new album is officially out and beginning its journey to a streaming platform near you. We call it Ambrosian Catechesis, Vol. 2: The Light of Mystery. Our aim here is to journey with Augustine into the post-baptism instruction he may have received from Ambrose.

Listen to the album here:

https://open.spotify.com/album/4C7tgLScVOyhUECRwRtK1X?si=J3cRWY5jSWCm4nxb7xQalA

We draw on several sources for this album, chiefly a work referred to as On the Mysteries (listen to the entire work translated into English). This is a work of Ambrose where he explains to those newly baptized what they have recently experienced. It is a work filled with biblical imagery and explanation.

One example is Ambrose’s description of a practice where before baptism, the phrase Ephphatha was spoken over the person. This phrase comes from the Gospels and is a well-known phrase Jesus spoke over a deaf man before healing. Ambrose describes it this way:

So open your ears, and take in the good fragrance of eternal life, breathed into you through the gift of the sacraments. This is what we signaled to you when, celebrating the mystery of the opening, we said: “Ephphatha”—which means “Be opened”—so that each person coming to grace would know what he was being asked, and would remember what he should answer.

Christ celebrated this mystery in the Gospel, as we read, when he healed a man who could not speak and could not hear. But he touched the man’s mouth, because he was healing both a man who could not speak and a man himself. In the one case, so that his mouth would be opened by the sound of the voice poured into it; in the other, because that kind of touch was fitting for a man, but not fitting for a woman.

Here Ambrose touches on the practice of saying Ephphatha as celebrating the mystery of the opening. It is meant, then, both to symbolize the act of God in bringing the person to baptism and to serve as preparation for the act itself. It is a wonderful phrase that symbolizes God’s act of healing the human heart.

Ambrose himself held a view of baptism in which baptism is a real saving mystery in which God forgives sins, grants new life, joins the believer to Christ, and brings the person into the life of the Church. This is a view both similar to and quite different from the view many Christians hold today. On the one hand a Roman Catholic for example would find much to agree with in the practice and the way it is described, seeing in the descriptions echoes of their own experience in the church. On the other hand an Evangelical would find this view of baptism to be stronger than the typical evangelical view that baptism is a symbol of an inward reality and perhaps be challenged by the ancient understanding to consider a different view. Regardless, both view baptism on a basic level as marking a change that God has worked in bringing a lost person to Himself. And so we celebrate with Ambrose this mystery and consider that wonderful working of God in the heart.

Another interesting aspect of the quote above is the last sentence regarding the touch being fitting for a man and not a woman. This is not meant to say the practice of saying Ephphatha was not done over both genders. Rather here Ambrose is speaking to a real cultural reality of Jesus’ day in which to perform a healing in the manner of touching the tongue would have been inappropriate had the man not been a man. So think of it like a kind of side comment about the culture and time not as an indication that men received a different version of the rite than a woman. Phrases like this can be a little jarring at times when reading ancient writers and they remind us of the gap in time and culture as I would doubt that a modern teacher would have said the same in that manner. One aspect this phrase brings out though is the very personal nature of the healing Jesus performs for the individual and this is something we know all too well across gender differences. When the Lord moves to heal us he does so at the most personal level. What a cool Lord!

All this to say we begin our new album with a song inspired by this mystery in the hope we all might experience as well as remember that healing. Ephphatha, friends!

https://open.spotify.com/track/3lAzvI7EojaXwEtx0pguQs?si=wDE-HptzSbmO6P6XjNt__A