From Tangier With Love!!!!

Hey,

I hope you’re doing well! I’m so blessed and fortunate to be back here, in what is more than my room at the Riad Fajar in Tangier! From the moment I stepped on the train taking me from Casablanca to Tangier, looking at this wonderful country by the window, I surprisingly got filled up with deep emotions, especially after we released this incredible and so beautiful video for the song Springtime! 

I’m only here for a few weeks, but I really want to immerse myself in the Springtime spirit and vibe, as I’ll be fortunate enough to walk in the same streets that enlightened us strongly a decade ago precisely as we first came here, our hearts full of hope for a new beginning, which, in the end, has been above and beyond every possible expectation! 

🎧 Music I’m listening to

Without any surprises, Springtime from Alex Henry Foster! It’s the first thing I listened to as I stepped into Morocco — a home that chose us!

Listen to the Missive Playlist

📖 Reading highlight I’m pondering

There’s something profoundly healing in the line that Alex wrote for Springtime, “When love has given what time has been taking away.” I kinda have been obsessed with it in the past few days! 

I feel like the more time we spend down here, sadly, time has a way of eroding things like certainty, innocence, relationships, even parts of ourselves we thought would last forever. It slowly and relentlessly steals essential parts of what seemed like an indestructible and incorruptible foundation. Just like ocean waves on any man-made structure… 

But I also know for certain now that love also moves differently and also has its own, even more powerful rhythm. Love heals and restores. It doesn’t erase the losses or turn back the clock, but it gives back meaning, tenderness, and the courage to keep carrying what remains, even if it’s as small as a seed, a whisper, a thought, a feeling.

Sometimes, after years of grief, distance, or change, love arrives quietly and places in our hands exactly what time had convinced us was gone forever: a sense of belonging, of wonder, of being. Perhaps this line is a reminder that while time may take many things from us, love still possesses the extraordinary power to return us to ourselves.

I will definitely have an Open Conversation around Springtime with Alex in the upcoming days, so please, feel free to share questions or thoughts with me!

🎙️ Podcast That Inspired Me

The Price of Music - The UK’s fan-led live music revolution

Shain Shapiro is a Canadian music industry friend I’ve had the chance to meet quite early when I started in this endeavor! He’s a true believer in the power of music, which brought him to write books about it and to start a company that is now teaching and helping cities to bring more music in order to become better cities! Very inspiring! 

Arts meets commerce! I love to see when people win over an industry! 

📸 My Picture Of The Week 

A picture I took here in Tangier the first time we came in 2016. I have always been fascinated and intrigued by those fine lines defining completely different worlds. 

💬 Shared in the Long Shadows Chat this week

Since the release of Springtime, we’ve been so blessed to receive countless messages from so many different countries around the world! Someone even had a tattoo of Alex’s hummingbird design recently made, and for us, it’s always so moving and inspiring to read you all and to take time to talk and share about it! 

Someone from Japan shared a simple message that stayed with us:
“This is a single from Alex, a friend of mine for over 10 years, who has spread his wings from Canada to the world! Everyone, please listen to it.”

There’s something deeply moving about those words. In a time when the World Cup has the entire planet draped in different colors, cheering for different flags and singing different anthems, this comment reminds me of something even greater: every journey that reaches the world begins with a human connection. 

Before there are audiences, there are friendships. Before there are nations, there are people. Before there are millions of streams, there is one person saying, “I know him. I believe in him. Listen.”

Life is a song, love is the music!

Let’s be great to one another! 

Your friend and Chief Operator, 
Jeff