So, after hearing from “thousands of people from around the world,” he put together the albumThe Story of Your Life, and 12 years later, people are still reaching out to him to share.
“The experience changed not only how I make my music now, but how I view the world,” West tells PEOPLE. “I don’t see faces in the crowd at my shows, I see stories being written. Each story is unique, and each story can impact the world.”
Matthew West.Sean Hagwell
A story that recently rocked West’s own world was one belonging to a fan named Ron. Ron had reached out to West’s nonprofit organization to tell him that he was in his final days battlingamyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a deadly neurological disease that slowly takes away a person’s ability to control his or her muscles.
While West went into the Zoom call thinking he could sing and “hopefully be an encouragement,” Ron “had other plans.”
“He spent the entire call encouraging me!” West says. “Little did Ron know that at that time I was battling some serious discouragement and was pretty depressed about the circumstances around me. But here was a guy able to see past his own battle with ALS to show kindness to me. I’ll never forget that.”
A few weeks after the Zoom, West received a call telling him that Ron had died. At that moment, he sat down and wrote his new song “Wonderful Life.”
“These past couple years have brought us tears, heartache, sickness and pain. But Ron taught me about the joy and the peace that you can find in this broken and beautiful, gone mad and magical, awfully wonderful life,” he says, referencing the song’s chorus.
In the director’s cut of the music video for “Wonderful Life,” premiering exclusively on PEOPLE, West incorporated moments from his Zoom call with Ron, as well as some touching photos of Ron and his family.
The video ends with a special message from Ron himself: “I am blessed, and so are you.”
source: people.com
