I first attempted to release this song several years ago, but complications at CD Baby — the company I use to distribute recordings to digital streaming platforms — led me to cancel that initial piano/vocal rendition.
Fast forward three years, and I am releasing a new version — this time recorded with my friends Molly Ruggles (playing piano and singing) and Carole Bundy (singing).
Molly also crafted our harmonies.
I co-write this song with two former bandmates, Scott Kowalik and Javier Pico, with whom I was in a pop-rock band a long time ago.
Here is a photo of us way back when…
Photo by Kymbob
Scott and Javier are on the right side, and I am leaning on Alan.
Robert sits in the middle.
That is when I still had a fair amount of hair.
I think Scott’s girlfriend at the time snapped this photo near the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
I am saddened to realize that some of the lyrics in this song (“and so we set off to fight another war…”) areeven more compelling today than when Scott (mostly the chorus) and I (mostly the verses) wrote them.
G-d only knows what will continue to unfold in the Middle East… and Ukraine… and so many other active human war zones…
I do not want my blog posts to be too discouraging, overwhelming or unhappy.
There’s already plenty of that energy in circulation here on planet earth!
That’s partly why I started sharing shorter, flower-filled Thursday Throwback blog posts this year.
And “Let The Day Unfold” offers a bit of hope and maybe even a smidge of wisdom.
I DO feel that many of us are caught in a losing battle — armored “with the righteous power of the either/or” — about all sorts of very important topics.
For example, I can easily find myself hunkering down in a judgemental, self-righteous, bike-riding, public transportation-using stance regarding our over-consumption of fossil fuels (leading to the increasingly erratic and dangerous weather here on planet earth).
But life is always — or almost always — more complicated and nuanced than a purely either/or position.
That’s why I love the yin/yang symbol — it so beautifully illustrates the concept of “both/and.”
And it reminds me that compromise is not necessarily a horrible option.
Thank you to the generous photographers and graphic designers at Pixabay.
Thank you to Javier and Scott and Molly and Carole and Doug Hammer(who recorded us and then patiently helped to mix and master this new version of “Let the Day Unfold.”)
And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts and songs!
One of my favorite perennials is the Bleeding Heart.
Their flowers are like origami.
How does Mother Nature manage to create such an extraordinary variety of shapes and colors out of a such a limited selection of amino acids (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) in plant — as well as our own — DNA?
And how do the plant cells unfold in such complicated and exquisite patterns?
Today’s Throwback Thursday heads back to a November 9, 2013 blog post about how people who sing with other people — especially in choirs when they are encouraged to breath together during certain sections of the music — can end up aligning their heart beats.
If I needed any more reminders to “carpe diem” and seize the day, there they are!
I just learned from Wikipedia (after I went to Google and checked the correct spelling of this Latin phrase) that “carpe diem” is more accurately translated as “enjoy the day” or “pluck/harvest the day.”
I like these more accurate translations MUCH better than the traditional one.
I associate the verb “seize” with military campaigns, kidnappings and my European ancestors confiscating almost all of what is now South, Central and North America from the folks who were once living here.
“Enjoy,” “pluck,” and “harvest,” however, all feel less violent and more sustainable to me than “seize.”
And I did, in fact, pluck two allium flowers from next to our driveway — which were part of double stems from two different bulbs — to enjoy inside.
I think allium are part of the garlic/onion/leek family — so I suppose I might even be able to dig up and eat some of the bulbs if things get dire in the future…
But for now I will remain very grateful that no animals (rabbits, squirrels, rats, skunks, etc.) have dug them up for food so that I can enjoy their springtime extravagance.
I love combining the idea of a karmic wheel with the idea of us all (or many of us…) being asleep at the wheel — which is, of course, an extremely dangerous situation both for the person who is driving and also for all the other beings who are on or near the road on which this drowsy person is driving!
Because I have set up my daily life to be walkable, bikeable and/or busable (as dictated by the weather), I almost never drive a car.
Every time I am able to walk or bike from point A to point B (such as from home to Music Together classes or from home to Trader Joe’s), I am happy that I am not adding to the ever-more-precarious imbalance of greenhouse gasses in our planet’s atmosphere.
But I do ride to gigs at retirement communities in either a hybrid car or a regular gasoline-burning car — depending upon which accompanist I am working with on that day — which can leave me feeling like I am part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I remain aware that advertising agencies, the companies who hire them to inspire/hypnotize us into buying lots of things, and our various media who feed those messages (hundreds per day!) to us have created a completely misleading narrative about how to find happiness and meaning in our lives.
And now we are living in a period of reckoning — both politically and environmentally — for all of the untruths and PSYOPs to which we have been exposed.
Here’s a fascinating example of how maddeningly f–ked up things have become here in the 21st century.
Apple, a company which prides — and markets — itself on protecting its users’ privacy recently settled a lawsuit which alleged that it, in fact, was recording its users’ conversations and sharing them with advertisers.
What???!!!
I do not have an iPhone or iWatch, but I do own several Apple laptops (going back twenty years), a couple of iPods (also going back many years), and I continue to love Apple’s GarageBand musical composition program.
What a disappointment…
Here’s an AP article/explanation from 1/2/25 by tech writer Michael Liedtke:
“Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.
The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn’t seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, ‘Hey, Siri.’ Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.
The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple’s long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve ‘a fundamental human right.’
The proposed settlement filed in an Oakland, California federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.
Apple isn’t acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement, which still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Lawyers in the case have proposed scheduling a Feb. 14 court hearing in Oakland to review the terms.”
I just checked online and learned from BloombergLaw.com that on 2/20/25, “A federal judge gave his preliminary approval to a $95 million settlement that would end a five-year class action over alleged privacy violations by Apple Inc.‘s Siri virtual assistant.”
It truly makes one wonder how one can trust any company whatsoever…
And it confirms what my brother-in-law Andrew had started noticing many summers ago when we were camping on Cape Cod — that conversations we were having within earshot of his iPhone were triggering uncannily specific ads (directly related to what we had been discussing) on his Facebook feed.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Graphic design by Stephen C. Fischer
G-d only knows what our individual — and shared — karmic reckonings will be in the hours, days, weeks, months and years ahead…
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing so elegantly and engineering/mixing so patiently on this song.
Our current political climate here in the USA continues to be extraordinarily challenging, but we did get some promising political news from our neighbor to the north recently…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I strive on a daily basis to find a balance between engagement — giving tiny amounts of money to political races around the country, sending postcards to potential voters in those races, writing to my elected officials, reading the news, etc. — and disengagement so that I can cultivate a little bit of optimism, hope, love and respect (which seem to be in short supply these days… at least in certain corridors of power.
Returning to my earliest blog posts has become part of the latter — soul nurturing — strategy.
I love being reminded of events which I have forgotten about — and also being reminded of how my life has unfolded/changed/evolved during the past decade.
Today’s blog post is made possible by our copyright laws.
Cole Porter’s terrific song “Let’s Do It” entered the public domain last year.
So my friends Carole Bundy, Molly Ruggles and I can now share a very fun version which includes some updated lyrics (by Molly and Carole) as well as an entirely new section of the song — written in the style of Cole Porter — by Molly.
Molly created the first draft of this song for a performance with her friend Kate Stringer at Club Cafe in Boston during which I sang some harmony.
Then — after Kate moved to London — the song evolved a bit when Molly, Carole and I added it to our repertoire.
Adding new sections to pre-existing songs is one of Molly’s many creative super powers.
But it can create copyright challenges — unless one is able to get permission from whomever owns the rights to the song.
But now, because “Let’s Do It” (which was first published in 1928) has entered the public domain, we are allowed to take creative liberties with it.
Molly, me and Carole in Maine
“Let’s Do It” was one of several hit songs from Cole Porter’s first big Broadway success — a show called PARIS.
He had been writing songs for a couple of decades — starting in Peru, Indiana (where he grew up the only surviving child in a very wealthy family) and continuing in Massachusetts (where he was valedictorian of his class at a prep school, Worcester Academy) and in Connecticut (where he attended Yale).
According to Wikipedia, he wrote hundreds of songs at Yale — two of which continue to be sung at football games.
He also wrote the songs for four entire musicals which were performed in New Haven and also on tour at college clubs during vacation breaks.
After he graduated from Yale, Mr.Porter pretended to study law at Harvard (to satisfy his very wealthy grandfather, who was paying for his education) while actually studying music and writing songs — and rooming with future a Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who was then an avid law student.
Cambridge borders East Arlington (where I live), and I love walking through Harvard Law School — which happens to be next to Harvard’s music department — and thinking about Mr. Porter treading the same streets a hundred years ago.
Although he lived an extravagant life, the second half of it was filled with chronic pain due to a horseback riding accident on Long Island.
This accident (the horse he was riding fell and rolled on top of him) left him with multiple leg fractures which never healed well…
Molly, Carole and I leading a service at the UU Church in Milton, MA
He endured many corrective surgeries over the following decades and eventually had the lower part of one of his legs amputated.
Argh!
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Although some of his earlier songs had been interpolated into other shows, Mr. Porter did not have his own hit show until he was 36 years old.
But — in the midst of much revelry and travel — he could be a very disciplined person.
He continued working on music during his 20s and early 30s while simultaneously leading a life of extraordinary luxury — renting historic palazzos in Venice during the summer and hiring entire ballet companies to entertain at his parties.
He even wrote a jazz-inflected music score for a ballet production in Paris which pre-dates George Gershwin’s much more famous Rhapsody In Blue.
Carole, Molly and I are not living lives of extraordinary luxury, but we ARE acutely aware of how fortunate/privileged we are to be able to devote time and energy to making music during this very challenging — and at time horrifying — time on planet earth.
A deep breath of gratitude in.
And a deep breath of gratitude out.
Thank you to Cole Porter for writing “Let’s Do It.”
Thank you to our copyright laws for allowing creative material to go into the public domain after a certain number of years.
And a special THANK YOU to everyone who has been streaming, liking, and playlisting our “Molly, Will & Carole” music!
We’re up to 2500 total streams on Spotify and 6500 total streams on Pandora (which are the only two music-listening platforms I currently keep tabs on…)
I have recently learned that streaming activity on the very first day of a song’s release strongly influences the future algorithmic behavior of that song on that platform — ie: whether a song is recommended to other potential listeners.
So if you might be willing to click here to stream “Let’s Do It” on the platform of your choice — and maybe even “like” it and add it to a playlist — we would be very grateful.
I will end with one final THANK YOU to you for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts!
I have chosen today’s glorious photos of iris because they are another one of my favorite flowers — especially the old-fashioned varieties.
We have a bunch of iris which grow alongside our driveway.
The purple ones have an aroma which — to my nose — smells exactly like grape soda.
Yum!
I am guessing it will be another week or two before our iris start blooming here in the Boston area… and I am waiting patiently for their aromatic arrival.
I hope you are feeling well and finding ways to savor the natural world as an antidote to all of the human-created drama which continues to unfold here on planet earth.
As I mentioned in my previous Throwback Thursday post, I am revisiting my earliest blog posts — from almost 12 years ago — and updating them a little bit.
When I was deleting files from my laptop computer earlier this month, I found a bunch of photos from when I visited friends living in Shanghai.
With my friends’ permission I have added a few of them to my second blog post, which was inspired by an interesting thing which unfolded at the bilingual school where one of my friends was teaching.
Many songs from the 20s, 30s and 40s include references to specific people, places, products and events — thus functioning as historic 20th century time capsules for 21st century listeners.
A) Mulligan Stew, I learned from Wikipedia, is an Irish-inspired recipe for a soup or stew made from whatever food items one can round up.
It was also known as “Hobo Stew” during the early part of the 20th century in the USA.
I feel a special affinity for Mulligan Stew, because it appears to be very similar to the endless soup I like to make during the winter months.
I start with cut up carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions — plus a frozen chicken thigh — and boil all the ingredients until the chicken is cooked and the carrots are starting to lose their crunch.
Then I add some cut-up garlic, fresh ginger, salt, pepper and whatever additional spices — curry powder? thyme? turmeric? one of Trader Joe’s multi-spice blends? — call out to me from the shelf.
Then I eat it for about a week — refrigerating it each night and adding more water plus additional ingredients — leeks? parsnips? kale? mushrooms? squash? rice? tomatoes? okra? tofu? canned beans? frozen artichoke hearts? leftover Chinese food? — on a daily basis before cooking it some more.
Yum!
B) Noël Coward, as you may already know, was a multi-hyphenate powerhouse — an actor-playwright-composer-director-singer from England who died in 1973 after a long and very successful career.
I have only learned and performed one of his songs — “If Love Were All” — which was part of Judy Garland’s repertoire.
But I have a Noël Coward songbook in my basement music library which probably deserves more attention in the future.
C) Wikipedia tells us that “The Beaux-Arts Ball… is the annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring…on the rue Bonaparte overlooking the Seine… Its reputation for high style, nudity, wild antics, and cross-dressing encouraged imitators in American cities. In 1931, in New York, famous architects dressed up as their buildings and today, many American architecture schools hold similar costume balls.”
I am guessing that the one in New York in 1931 is the Beaux Arts Ball to which Larry Hart is referring in his lyrics.
They sound like very creative and somewhat outrageous events!
I am happy to share that my streaming numbers have been rising on Spotify and on Pandora (which are the only two music streaming platforms I currently monitor) — so a BIG THANK YOU to anyone and everyone who have given one of my songs a listen!
I have become more and more of a Pandora fan in recent months, even though their music is only accessible in the USA (and not globally like Spotify).
I use their free option, which means that I have to listen to ads every few songs — which I often mute.
And I use a similar free option on Spotify and YouTube Music.
Even though Pandora’s parent company, SiriusXM, has been laying off large numbers of staff in recent months, the core group of people at Pandora who offer customer service and training to independent musicians like me has — so far — remained intact.
What I particularly love about Pandora is that they do not use chatbots to communicate with independent musicians like me.
Real live Pandora staff offer free training sessions via Zoom each month to encourage musicians to take advantage of their free promotional strategies which can help songs find new listeners.
I tried one strategy — creating a featured track — and the song I featured received hundreds more streams as a result.
Of course, you probably remember that all of the music streaming companies pay only fractions of a cent per stream to recording artists and songwriters like me…
But I have released 58 songs during the past 4 years, and many of these songs have each been streamed over 1000 times on Spotify and Pandora — although less often on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, and other digital music platforms…
And all of those fractions of cents DO have the potential to add up to something substantial.
So I remain hopeful that my persistence will pay off as the months and years go by — as long as we have a functioning internet, a functioning economy and a functioning democracy…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing his beautiful Schimmel piano on this recording and for being very patient while we mixed and mastered it.
For over twenty five years I camped there every summer with my sweetheart and his extended family.
And then COVID — and a new baby — entered our lives, and we all decided to rent a house together at the opposite end of the state (in Pittsfield) with a big, fenced-in backyard instead.
The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.”
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
This song was inspired by a couple who rented a campsite at the other end of the little valley at North Of Highland campground where we had a perennial campsite.
I don’t remember exactly how we reached out and introduced ourselves, but I am pretty sure I showed them the wild blueberry bushes which were bearing fruit all around our little valley.
And they invited us over for an informal cocktail hour one evening, which was very pleasant.
And then we discovered that the guy was a swimmer who, like me, loved to do laps along the ocean shoreline — although this was becoming more and more risky because the increasingly abundant population of seals in North Truro had been attracting more and more great white sharks…
So we hit it off with these two friendly people and became well-acquainted over the course of a few days.
Then, to my surprise (because I had assumed incorrectly that they had a week-long rental) they packed up their tent and — with warm goodbyes — drove away.
I have been very aware of — and sensitive to — the realities of love and loss ever since I was young.
In fact, I have been told that my parents used to sing “Good Night Irene” to me when I was a very small child just to see me well up with tears.
Deep sigh…
I have written in previous blog posts about the challenges of working professionally as a child and teenager. One of an actor’s most important skills is developing a sense of connectedness — first with the receptionist who checked you in at each audition, then with the casting agents, with the clients, and with any actors who were part of the initial audition and subsequent callbacks.
And if I got a job — whether for an hour doing a voiceover, for a day on the set of a TV commercial, for a couple of weeks filming a TV pilot, for a few months doing a movie, or for a year doing a musical — I needed to nurture ongoing, positive working relationships with my fellow cast and crew members.
I needed to show up on time.
I needed to know my lines.
I needed not to complain about anything.
I needed to behave as if I was a small, manipulable adult.
When a job was done, I remember how awkward and sad I felt as all of the camaraderie, friendship, affection and even love which had developed among members of the crew and cast would evaporate and disappear.
That was very confusing.
Was any of the camaraderie, friendship, affection and love I had experienced real?
Or was everyone just acting?
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
On a vaguely related note, our planet’s relentlessly-marketed fossil fuels — along with the cars, trains, busses, ocean liners, planes, motorcycles, etc. which need them to run — have allowed most of us human beings to become much more mobile and much less rooted in one neighborhood, one town, one city, one state, one country.
The postal service and the internet have also given us extraordinary options for meeting and becoming acquainted with other humans.
How do we make sense of — and peace with — all of the beings who come and go in our lives?
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I tried to make a little bit of sense out of the ebb and flow of relationships by strumming a ukulele in my tent and then jotting lyric and chord ideas in one of my songs-in-process notebooks.
Eventually “The Crazy Touch And Go Of Our Lives” emerged.
I performed it by myself — playing a ukulele — at some open mics.
Then a few years ago my friend Molly Ruggles (who sings, plays piano and writes songs herself) created a lovely harmony part for her and our friend Carole Bundy to sing.
The three of us performed it at a bunch of porchfests and then recorded it with Molly playing piano last summer at Doug Hammer’s studio north of Boston.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
As I write this blog post, I am reminded of the Dalai Lama’s words about making each day — and, each friend — meaningful.
That is certainly what has happened with me and Carole and Molly.
We first collaborated when I was invited to sing during a service at the UU church in Medford where they were both members and where Molly was also the music director.
And this musical collaboration has deepened and widened over many years — and many delicious dinners — to become meaningful friendships.
We sing and harmonize and rehearse and perform and bear witness to the twists and turns of each other’s lives.
Deep breath of gratitude in.
Deep breath of gratitude out.
I will end this post with my customary thank yous plus a bunch of beautiful images from Pixabay that somehow reminded me of this song.
Thank you to all of the folks who have kept North of Highland campground going for many decades. I miss being there each summer!!!
Thank you to the couple who camped for a few days across the little valley from us at North of Highland campground.
Thank you to the Dalai Lama for his wisdom.
Thank you to my sweetheart and his — now our — family for letting me sit in my tent at the campground all day long, working on new songs.
Thank you to my dear ukuleles, to my “tent of creativity,” and to the various pencils, pens, notebooks, rhyming dictionaries, and laptops which help me to write songs.
Thank you to Molly and Carole for our years of interactions.
Thank you to the UU church in Medford for bringing me and Carole and Molly together as a musical unit and as friends.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for engineering and then mixing/mastering our recordings with us.
Thank you to the grasses and bushes and seaweeds and crabs and sea birds and seals and sharks and fish who make the Head Of The Meadow beach — a short and beautiful walk from the North Of Highland campground — so interesting to visit.
Thank you to the ocean and the sun and the moon and the tides which sweep the beach clean twice a day.
Thank you to everyone who has been listening to my songs via Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and any/all of the other streaming platforms.
Each stream, each like, and each addition to a playlist is noted by that streaming service’s algorithms — and encourages it to share the song with other listeners.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 