Artist Feature | Heather Choate Davis

What first drew you to writing? 

Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. He was an advertising guy and I just loved the whole idea of making words and pictures work together. From a very young age I started telling people that I was going to be in advertising, “the word part, not the art part.” I didn’t even know the term “copywriter” until a few months before I talked my way into my first job doing just that at 18. 

You started your career as a copywriter, you've written books, written liturgies, and now you find yourself writing songs. Do you find these various creative expressions complement each other or do you see them each as their own separate art form?

I’ve written screenplays, teleplays, one-act plays, and children’s books, too—none of them produced or published! This is the reality of the creative life: unrequited love and dashed hopes redeemed by the occasional WooHoo! Shortly after I retired from full-time ad work at 25, I was hired to create a one-woman show for Norman Lear, which got me into the Writer’s Guild. So that was cool.  

I usually have one kind of writing hat on for a project or a season and really focus on that. For the past seven or eight years, I’ve been writing theology books, like my thesis work Man Turned in on Himself, which are designed to solve the problem of people outside the church—and way too many inside—really have no idea what the faith is all about. It’s not that pastors aren’t trying their best to teach them, it’s that too many pastors are formed in a bubble by people who live in a bubble and they just don’t have the point of reference of a person who views the world without God, so they often can’t communicate effectively.  

As much as I loved writing those books, that season left me longing to return to my heart work, which unexpectedly—and delightfully—took the form of music. 

The disciplines and skills of the different creative forms definitely do complement each other. As I’ve been writing these songs, I’ve been mindful of how the copywriting discipline of saying what you want to say in as few words as possible, and in a fresh compelling, visual way, likely made songwriting much easier for me than it would be for someone who hasn’t logged all those hours crafting language. As for actually producing the album, well, I started working in recording studios at 19 overseeing the production of radio spots. So early on I learned how to listen, to make each second count, and to tweak what you’re hearing in the studio to make it more like what you’re hearing in your head.

After a career of mostly writing words unaccompanied by music, why do you think you were moved to start writing music? 

I think God had been preparing my heart for the language of music for as long as I’ve been a Christian. I was 33 when Christ called me to himself in the midst of a crisis and music was one of His most effective tools. The first Sunday after I’d finally said to God, “ok, you win,” the little choir at our neighborhood church where our son had just started Kindergarten sang Shepherd me oh, God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life—and I thought, “Wow! How does this song know me so well?” A few days later, on the eve of my infant daughter’s brain surgery, I was in the church where I was baptized and confirmed and had never returned—having rejected Christianity for all its ugly, hypocritical, partisan noise—and heard While I am Waiting, Come and the Taize chant Jesus, Remember Me and together they just ripped my heart open. 

This would mark the beginning of my deep connection to the music of Taize. A few years later, I would weave their chants together with Marty Haugen’s glorious Holden Village Evensong to create The Renaissance Service™. And fifteen years after that, when my dear aunt offered me a trip anywhere in the world for my 50th birthday, I would answer without a moment’s hesitation, “Taize. I want to go to Taize.” 

There’s a visual piece that accompanies this story, too: the painting by Guido Reni of St. Cecilia. I had first seen it when I was scavenging the world for slides to use in The Renaissance Service. I didn’t know who St. Cecilia was but this image so spoke to me that I used it the opening night as a visio divina with the Taize chant, In God Alone my Soul (can find rest and peace, in God, my peace and joy). I returned to this image many times over the years but it was only recently that I learned that St. Cecilia was the Patron Saint of Music. I read it on a placard at the Norton Simon Museum on a field trip with my Spiritual Direction cohort and just sat on the floor in front of her and wept. 

Last year, I printed out a copy of Cecilia for my piano lesson notebook cover and finally discovered that she was not actually a musician or a singer herself, but simply one whose heart was profoundly and divinely connected to the heart of God through music. I found that very encouraging. 

Tell us about where you draw your inspiration from.

From prayer, Scripture, and people, and the perpetual dance between the three.  From identifying specific problems that need addressing, and coming up with creative solutions to chip away at them. Everything I do has a very specific intention: that people will be stirred to lean into the possibility that “maybe there’s more to Christianity than I thought.” This goes for people both inside and outside of the Church. 

What does your creative process/rhythm look like?

This is one aspect of my creative life that never changes: I start with prayer and then I get to work. Once the noise of the day takes over, the work is rarely as good or as easy (and social media now really messes with the creative process). So, I’m pretty disciplined about the foundation of my days. When the kids were younger and home for the summers, I would get up at 4:00 a.m. to get a few good hours in on whatever book I was writing at the time (most of which were never published). Consistency and persistence is really essential to completing any creative work. 

Last year, when I started taking piano/composition lessons, my daily time at the keyboard became my devotional time: somehow, despite my complete lack of ability, there was just no space between my love for Christ, His love for me, and the words and notes that were coming out of the piano and onto the page. 

If you had to choose one record, one band, and one book that has had the most influence on you as a writer, what would they be?

I really struggle with these kinds of questions so I’ll just say this: I don’t actually listen to a lot of music because I need a lot of silence. But Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Peter Gabriel’s So (and his mystical song Solsbury Hill), Billy Joel’s The Stranger, the soundtracks to the musical Ragtime and Les Miserables, Leon Russell singing A Song for You, Bradley Cooper singing Maybe It’s Time from A Star is Born, and every single ballad Kate Campbell has ever written or sung are all pretty deep in me. 

As for books, well, there’s only one book I read every day so I’d have to say The Bible. Very early on in my faith walk I started reading Spiritual Classics from Renovare (edited by Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin). I like books like that: books about how people followed Jesus and what it cost them and how their lives served the world. Two books that I think are invaluable for creatives of faith are Breath for the Bones by Luci Shaw, and All That is Made: A Guide to Faith and the Creative Life by Alabaster Publications.

Tell us about your new record.

Well, first things first. It’s called Life in the Key of God and it will be available starting on October 15th for pre-sale/pre-stream holds wherever you buy or stream music leading up to the official release on November 12th.  

I think it’s fair to say that the album is the fruit of my whole adult life of prayer, of listening, and of following. As you know, I heard my first song—Fear Not!—when I was pondering how to open that liturgy you and I had decided to write together. It was a problem that needed solving. I couldn’t find a single song or chant that served the purpose of what I thought needed to be said. And then I heard it, “I want to know what angels knew when they said, ‘Fear Not!’” The whole first verse and the melody. A few days later I heard another song called Wide. And a few days after that the song that would become the opening track of the album: Enter Here.  

Just as suddenly as the seeds of this new music were planted they were left to take root in the dark as I found myself called into a two-year program of Christian Formation and Spiritual Direction (CFDM). This process, I believe now, helped clear out all the muck in the pipes so that when I began to serve the music in earnest my heart could reflect the very heart of God. I was in the final months of my spiritual direction training when the music was finally re-cued: Phil Cordaro, an accomplished composer who’d been teaching piano to the kids on our cul-de-sac for years, drove up (as he’d been doing for 15 years) and I suddenly ran out the door and jumped him, “Phil, do you teach adults and can you teach me to play some simple Taize chants and maybe, you know, compose a little?!” 

We started two days later but I had NO idea where this was headed. I’m not a naturally gifted player. I am absolutely not a singer. So what in the world was I going to do with these songs? It was only after I’d written five of them that I had that moment of great clarity: each song was written for a certain dear friend to bring to life. That’s when I realized that I was giving birth to an album, and that it would be glorious because my friends are so talented and generous and they just poured themselves heart and soul and mind and spirit into this music. 

I have no idea what the next year will bring, but I do know that sitting at the piano each day and hearing the music move through my body has been as healing as it has been creatively fulfilling. I pray that this same healing, encouragement and joy will spill out to all who hear it.