It started as a couple of simple songs but when they were finished, I soon discovered that the songs weren’t quite finished with me. Now, with this audiobook release, my novel, Zen and the Art of Killing Your Self, comes to life as I always imagined, as an audio experience that weaves these songs into the narrative, performed by me rather than just lyrics on a page. The project begged for a complete score. That score features over fifty original pieces of music, thirty of which can be found on Zen Lives, its companion soundtrack album.
The print edition of Zen and the Art of Killing Your Self (ebook) was released in 2015 with its own album of songs called Counterfeit Heart. The character-driven story follows Zen Conlen, a grad student of astrophysics and religion who gets thrust into spiritual journey when his best friend commits suicide. As he travels back to his hometown to bury his friend, he gets many chances to learn about and confront his Self and even to bury it as well. Zen is not a self-help book or a suicide how-to. It’s a light-hearted but deeply introspective dark romantic comedy. Listening to it feels like listening to a sort of concept album. There are moments that feel like verses, choruses, refrains, and bridges that all build to a crescendo at the end. What else would one expect from a novel by a singer-songwriter?
Counterfeit Heart: Songs that inspired and were inspired by the book.
Chris’s full music catalog:
Chris Crabtree is a singer-songwriter-photographer-writer. He provided the soundtrack music for Corporate FM, a film that just won the award for best documentary feature film at the Kansas City Film Festival. He currently works as a Creative for Apple, Inc. His work has appeared in Children’s Hope International Quarterly, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Helix, Licking River Review, and Soundings East.
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