I’ve been getting many questions over the last week what exactly this television program is I will be featuring on. For everybody that hasn’t got access to SKY Satellite TV (Channel 200) or to the Eurobird Satellite (28.3E) broadcasts: Controversial TV is a digital TV channel, broadcasting from 6 am until 10 pm daily on SKY. The name was changed from the original “Edge Media TV” some months ago. In their own words, the channel “is a platform for people to share alternative views and discuss suppressed viewpoints, we aim to air programming that is educational, thought provoking and enlightening“. Many of the shows can also be viewed online on Justin.TV. You can check out the broadcasting schedule here. The channel has a large and ever growing loyal following of viewers.

I am very excited about the invitation for an interview about my research into the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château. It’s also fantastic to be given the opportunity to present my music and my Mystery Pop project to a larger audience!

Where my Dutch album “Scènes” was a threesome project with my producer Crip Theeuwes and Artist Manager Gerry van der Zwaard, my English language songs are fully self produced. It means I wrote the songs, recorded them, mixed them and did all of the promotional activities. I often feel like the proverbial one-man-band. The next project getting this treatment is a video-clip for my latest song City of Secrets, which I wrote for bestselling author and Hollywood icon Patrice Chaplin.

I was wondering how I could make a fantastic professional video on a shoe-string budget. I then remembered that Patrice Chaplin had a Hollywood movie out in 1987 by name of Siesta. Now Siesta isn’t an ordinary movie. It was directed by Mary Lambert, a famous video-clip producer who had worked with Madonna, Sting and Janet Jackson. Siesta is the story of a woman waking up lying in a field in a Spanish airport with amnesia. During the film she pieces back together how she got there, involving a renewed romance with an old flame. When it came out, the movie was praised and trashed. You love it or you hate it. What most critics agreed on was it’s appealing high style and colorful exoticism. Lambert directed a star-studded cast. To nam a few actors in it: Martin Sheen, Jodie Foster, Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Isabelle Rosselini, Julian Sands – even Grace Jones makes an appearance. The soundtrack was done by Miles Davis. Today, the movie is a Cult Film. It is truely a product of the eighties which is also the period during which I got bathed in my main musical influences. People regularly tell me my songs really sound like they were recorded in the 80s.

Like my song City of Secrets, Siesta is all about unrequited love. I realized the movie could really match the song and got in touch with Patrice’s publisher to see if there was any chance I could use some material from the movie. I couldn’t believe it when I got the news back from Siesta’s producer Zalman King (who is a bit of a legend himself), that I got the go-ahead to use scenes from the movie in a video for my song. It means that I am about to produce a video clip containing a Hollywood cast in fantastic 80s styling. No idea how I am ever going to thank Zalman, Patrice and her publisher for backing me up to this extent. I realize I am a privileged guy, having found people who like my music, recognize the hard work and who are willing to back that up.

It’s another great experience.

It’s been a crazy week. The release of The Book of Love got quite a bit of attention and since I am doing this completely on my own there are a lot of things to do. There’s interviews to do and basically trying to get as much exposure as I can to promote the song. Kathleen too has done her share and said some incredibly nice things about me on her Facebook and in her newsgroups for which I am very grateful. I am happy to report that things are going well. At this moment I exclusively get airplay that I am aware of on the internet, particularly on Jango.com. I believe it’s the largest fully interactive internet radio station in the US, representing 7 million listeners. In a week’s time, my song has been played over 1,500 times.

The best thing that happened in terms of promotion was the invite for a feature on Philip Gardiner’s show on Controversial TV on SKY. The show is called Gardiner’s world and is broadcasted on SKY 200. It’s a fantastic opportunity for me to reach a whole new audience. I already bought a new shirt. I will play two songs and do an interview. Philip has reserved a full hour to discuss my music and my research into Rennes-le-Château. The show will be recorded on October 2nd. I am very excited about it, not in the least because I will share the floor with author and researcher Robert Bauval, whose books occupy quite a bit of space in my living room.

There’s more news still. Around the time I was finalizing the Book of Love, I got in touch with Patrice Chaplin’s publisher. For those who don’t know her: Patrice is a bestselling writer and playwright. She has written over 25 books. Her novel Siesta became a film starring Jodie Foster and Isabella Rossellini. As a Bohemian in Paris she spent time with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Married to Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael, in Hollywood she worked with Lauren Bacall, Miles Davis, and Salvador Dali. She currently lives in London. When her book City of Secrets was published in 2004, it caused quite a stir. The book basically recounts how a young woman gets involved with the keeper of the Grail in the Spanish city of Gerona. The book, which is an autobiographical account, is beautifully written and has many touchpoints with the mysteries that are so dear to me. My next single will be called City of Secrets. It’s a song written for Chaplin about her book. Fortunately, she loved the lyrics and the music and even let me use a picture of her on the cover. The song is very different from Book of Love. Book of Love is completely unique in its emotion I think. City of Secrets is an up-tempo addictive pop song. It is a love song again but not like any other one you’ve heard I think. The song will have it’s TV premiere in the Philip Gardiner show. I am slowly releasing it to the internet channels as we speak. You might want to have a peep here.

Take care | Corjan

With the Press Release out it’s time to drop the charade.

My new single is called The Book of Love, after the bestselling novel of the same name by the American author Kathleen McGowan. Kathleen is an internationally acclaimed author who has sold millions of copies of her books in 60 languages and who is a frequent guest on the American news shows. Kathleen is a phenomenon. I had the privilege to talk to Kathleen on Skype during an interview for my Internet Podcasting Station Radio Rennessence in February of this year. My Rennessence colleagues Filip Coppens, Andrew Gough and myself were really impressed by Kathleen’s deep knowledge of the early European history, its mysteries and the way she knitted everything together into a coherent logical story. I had already read her previous book The Expected One and the sequel to that The Book of Love was about to come out. After the interview we hooked up on Facebook and Kathleen sent me a copy of her book to read.

What I read in the Book of Love simply blew me away. The Expected One was a good book but this one was formidable. Without giving away the entire plot, she pieces together the life of Mathilda of Tuscany who allegedly owned a copy of the Libro Rosso, containing a gospel written by Christ himself and given to his alleged spouse Mary-Magdalene. Now from my extensive research into and around the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château I know many of the legends and tales recounting how Mary-Magdalene set foot in southern France after the crucifixion. I am not a religious man. I am from the school of “there-must-be-something-ism”. I do however have an endless fascination for the true history of Christianity that I share with Kathleen. The book is highly recommended to anyone who likes a great story based on actual facts. The novel format Kathleen uses makes for a fantastically compelling and entertaining story that has everything a great tale needs. Love, hate, intrigue, heroes and enemies. All this against a meticulously painted historical backdrop. It grabbed me like no book had done before.

For a long time I had the idea to do a concept-album around a mystery theme. A way for me to do an English album and to create a crossover between my activities as a Mystery Researcher and as a Recording Artist. At the same time I thought the whole thing would feel too manufactured as a concept and never really made a start. That is until after I met Kathleen. We met up in May in Bruges (Belgium), where Kathleen was attending the procession of the Holy Blood with some friends and some fellow researchers. Much to my regret I couldn’t join her on the rest of her trip through Europe as my business called me elsewhere. It was then that I decided I had to do something with this new energy I had found and proposed to do a song around The Book of Love and its predecessor. She loved the idea. It took a while to find the time to write but when I started, I finished the song in no time at all.

My song The Book of Love is about Love with a capital L. It tells of Mary-Magdalene, the woman who fell in love with the Man who knew he wouldn’t get very old and intended to die for the salvation of everybody else. The bitter irony in that is beating me senseless. She took his legacy, his ideas and allegedly his gospel to Europe and continued his work in the name of love. Now whether you are a believer or not, whether you believe that Jesus and Mary-Magdalene were in love, engaged, married, a mum-and-dad or not: it is one hell, or should I say heaven of a story.

I am very proud to say that Kathleen loves the song. She actively participated in getting the lyrics just right and is looking for ways to get it to the attention of her readers. She authorized me to use the title of her book so we could really link up our works.

Needless to say that I feel enormously privileged to have been given this opportunity, being an obscure Dutch artist with an inpronouncable name (try “Coriander Wrath”and you’ll be 95% there . The fact that I can link my song to the monumental work of an internationally famous writer feels quite unreal at times but when I woke up this morning it was still there so here I am.

You can listen to the song in the player on the right side of this page. I am really interested to hear what you think, so perhaps you can leave a reaction below this post.

If you really like it, you can buy it in all the major online stores, just pick your favorite one:

Take care | Corjan de Raaf

O, and here are the lyrics of the song:

The Book of Love

the book of love