December 26, 2023 by willedare

After The Holidays

Greetings during this time of short days and long nights in the northern hemisphere.

I hope you are warm and well as you read this blog post.

Right now in Massachusetts we are graced with a beautiful full moon shining down on our snow-less streets.

I first shared the song “After The Holidays” (in the player at the top of this page) three years ago in a blog post about the challenges of feeling lonely during the holiday season.

As you may remember — or perhaps you have blocked it out of your memory in order to be able to move on with your life — three years ago things were not going well in the USA.

Many hospitals were overwhelmed by COVID — with dead bodies being stored in refrigerated trailer trucks until funeral homes and crematoria could catch up with the demand for their services.

It was a very challenging winter holiday season.

And 2023 has brought new challenges — and tragedies — into our lives here on planet earth.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Wars continue to grind along, destroying human lives along with the lives of countless other beings caught in the cross fire. Pollution continues to seep into every ecosystem here on planet earth. Climate change continues to increase with catastrophic consequences.

My heart goes out to anyone who is feeling hopeless, who is feeling distraught, who is feeling alone, or who is feeling unloved during this holiday season.

And although I am fortunate to have a life partner + family + friends with whom I can gather during the holidays, I can vividly remember how heart-broken and grief-stricken I felt when the first big love of my life chose to end our relationship many decades ago…

“After The Holidays” taps into those feelings of raw desperation.

It was written by John Meyer.

His friend Judy Garland performed it on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1968.

Mr. Meyer is still alive and living in New York City.

Earlier this month I tracked down an email address for him so that I could let him know I had released a version of his song.

And much to my (happy) surprise, he was kind enough to give it a listen.

Here is how he responded:

“Will, I’m impressed.

You’re note-perfect — good for you!

Others bend the melody to suit their often tasteless predilections.

And I like that you take your time with the song, investing it with real poignancy.

Thank you for sharing.

Merry Christmas!”

Needless to say, I am delighted (and relieved) that he responded so positively to how pianist Doug Hammer and I interpreted his song.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

And I will gently point out that this is yet another winter holiday song written (or co-written) by Jewish composers/lyricists — joining a beloved list of favorites including “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Silver Bells,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Let It Snow,” and “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.”

Here is a link to my version “After The Holidays“ in case you might like to stream it.

And as I have explained before, if you “like” one of my songs or add it to one of your playlists, that will improve the algorithmic sharing of my music.

Thank you to the John Meyer for writing such a moving song.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing so sensitively on my version of John’s song AND for being such a diligent engineer/producer.

Thank you to Stephen Fischer for his terrific graphic design work.

Thank you to the photographers at Pixabay — and to Scott Wynn — for their great images.

And thank YOU for reading. and listening to another one of my blog posts!

May your 2024 be full of peace and hope and determination…

August 12, 2018 by willedare

Heaven Here on Planet Earth

Anyone who has spent time on the outer arm of Cape Cod can be deeply grateful to John F. Kennedy due to the creation on August 7, 1961 of the Cape Cod National Seashore during his short presidency.

Cape_Cod_National_Seashore_Wikipedia — Image from Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia — which is where I borrowed this map — it includes over 68 square miles of “ponds, woods and beachfront (in) the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecoregion.”

It’s also where I and my sweetheart and various family members are fortunate to camp each summer during the last week of July and the first week of August — in North Truro on the Atlantic side of the outer arm (or wrist, really…) of the Cape.

In 2010 the campground where we have stayed for over 25 years — called North of Highland — was protected with a conservation easement thanks to the hard work and generosity of many people and organizations — including JFK’s younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy.

So hopefully it will remain in operation for generations to come!

For me camping in North Truro is heavenly…

This is a view of our site from a site which some of our family members rent above us.

We are in a bowl which is home to pine trees, grasses, chipmunks, red squirrels, all sorts of birds, lots of ants, a few oak trees, crickets, various fungi, and quite a few blueberry bushes.

There are also visiting dragonflies, bees, mosquitos, horseflies, June bugs — who appear in the evening, attracted by our lights — and on some nights we can hear coyotes howling in the distance.

Although I have never seen a raccoon or opossum or rabbit or turkey or deer at our campsite, on one night someone DID get into our niece’s trash can.

So I am guessing that larger animals are around — just wisely inconspicuous during the day.

I love the way that sunlight dapples the trees and grass — and I love picking a few blueberries each morning.

There weren’t very many this summer, which may be because it has been somewhat dry.

We only experienced rain three times this summer while we were camping — a) on the day we drove down to set up camp, b) once overnight, and c) a substantial storm on the day that we were packing up to return home.

When it rains I imagine how good the moisture must feel on the roots of all of the trees and shrubs and grasses.

Each berry is such a jewel… and hopefully there are plenty more for the folks camping at this site right now as well as for any animals who like to eat them, too.

I spend most of the day in our tent — which is quite spacious — with a ukulele, a little handheld digital recorder, a rhyming dictionary, two lap top computers, and several bags worth of song ideas.

Each morning I stretch and listen to song ideas I’ve accumulated during the previous months — or in some cases years — until something catches my fancy.

Then I focus on that particular idea for the rest of the day — writing lyrics, coming up with chords for a missing bridge, etc.

The song in the player at the beginning of this blog post is one I wrote a few camping sessions ago and later recorded with the pianist Doug Hammer at his studio north of Boston.

This is a view of our (green) screen house — where we cook and eat — and our (orange) tent.If you look past our tents in the upper left corner of this photo, you can glimpse the tent site from which the first photo in this post was taken…

There are many, many things I love about camping.

For example, when we are camping, we become much more aware of our relationship with water — since we are carrying it in big multi-gallon containers down to our campsite for drinking and cooking and cleaning dishes.

Also all of the sinks in the bathrooms at the campground have faucets that automatically shut off after a couple of seconds.

And hot showers cost 25 cents for three minutes of bathing time.

I also love that there are LOTS of stars visible at night.

I went for several long walks along the beach late at night when the sky was clear — and the moon so bright that I didn’t need to use a flashlight to see where I was going.

Being away from street lights and TV screens and radios — while spending hours and hours surrounded by birds and insects and trees and sky — helps me reconnect with what’s important.

Like time with family and friends.

And intact ecosystems.

Before dinner — which is often something delicious cooked by my brother-in-law who bikes to the local fish store on an almost daily basis, bless him — I usually walk down a pine-needle-covered path to the Atlantic ocean and swim.

In recent years the tide and winter storms have created a gully along the beach which ranges in depth from one to five feet depending upon the time of day.

Since there is now a robust population of seals who swim up and down this section of the Atlantic ocean — as well as great white sharks who come to eat them — my family is much happier if I swim laps in the gully rather than in the ocean.

There were a couple of great white shark sightings during our two weeks at the camp ground, and also one day when a bunch of whales cavorted within sight of the beach.

But I did not see them because I was working on new songs in my tent…

Everyday I checked in with a hydrangea plant which grows near the path to the bathrooms and showers.

There was so much happening on this plant — it was a world unto itself!

Every day flowers would unfold new petals.

And bees and wasps and even flies in many different shapes and sizes would gather pollen.

During the course of our time at the campground, several spiders wove webs — which in due time trapped a quite a few meals.

Here is a close up of one of the spiders against a green hydrangea leaf.

Eventually it was time to pack everything up and return home.

This is always a sad and somewhat stressful process for me.

But my sweetheart and family members are very patient, since they know it happens every summer on the last day of our camping adventure.

What doesn’t usually happen, however, is an hours-long rain storm on the day of our departure.

Strangely this lifted my spirits…

I even got to continue working on a new song after our tent was down — with our brown tarpaulin providing protection during a prolonged period of deluge…

Thank you to all of the folks who keep North Of Highland camping area going year after year. I highly recommend it if you are in need of some rejuvenation!

Thank you to Andrew for letting me use his photo looking down towards our camp site, and for making so many delicious meals.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his wonderful skills as a pianist AND as a recording engineer.

Thank you to the Kennedy family, whose love for — and lobbying on behalf of — Cape Cod has impacted millions of people — and plants and animals — for many, many decades.

Thank you to my sweetheart for all of the beach photos and for letting me use his phone to take photos of the hydrangea and our camp site.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to this blog post.

If you are curious to stream this song, you can click here for a link to various streaming services including YouTube, Pandora and Spotify.

Where is your heaven on planet earth?

May 15, 2018 by willedare

The Wind Beneath My Wings

This afternoon I saw an airplane rising in the sky above Boston.

As usual, I was amazed that such a huge and complicated chunk of metal could become airborne.

Apparently it has something to do with the Bernoulli Effect.

In online article by Matthew Reeve I learned that “Daniel Bernoulli was an eighteenth-century Swiss scientist who discovered that as the velocity of a fluid increases its pressure decreases.

This can be demonstrated when a constant flow of fluid or gas is passed through a tube, and a section of the tube is constricted.

At the point of constriction, the flow will speed up and there will be a drop in pressure against the walls of the tube.

This principle has become widely known as the Bernoulli Effect.”

The Bernoulli Effect explains why planes fly AND why we are able to produce sound with our vocal cords.

Matthew Reeve continues,

“The two results of the Bernoulli Effect can be explained with two examples.

Flow increase: When you place your thumb over the end of a running hose, the flow of water speeds up and travels further across the garden. At the point of constriction velocity increases.

Air pressure drop: An airplane’s wing is shaped so that the bottom is flat and the top is curved. When air flows across the top of a plane’s wing, it travels faster and the lower pressure creates lift.”

This keeps the plane aloft.

Astounding!

I first heard about the Bernoulli Effect in a voice lesson with Professor Eugene Rabine.

He was attempting to explain to me how our vocal cords — which are more accurately called vocal folds — vibrate to produce sound.

When we make a sound using our voice (also know as phonation), our vocal folds are pulled together by a team of small, strong, sophisticated muscles.

During phonation, the stream of air coming up from our lungs through our wind pipe/trachea is momentarily stopped by our vocal folds.

At this point pressure begins to build up below the vocal folds.

Back to Matthew Reeve’s article…

“When the pressure is high enough, the vocal folds are forced to separate and the airstream is allowed to flow through the vocal folds.

The airstream through the vocal folds then accelerates causing a drop in pressure.

This drop in pressure then sucks the vocal folds back together.

Air pressure under our vocal folds then builds up again and the process continues.”

This cycle of our vocal folds opening and closing — hundreds of times per second — creates the waves of air pressure that we recognize as sound.

Reading about the Bernoulli Effect reminded me of a recording of “The Wind Beneath My Wings” that pianist Doug Hammer and I made during a rehearsal for a memorial service a few years ago.

It combines the act of singing with the imagery of flying.

Thank you to Nicki Nichols Gamble for asking me and Bobbi Carrey to sing at her husband’s memorial service — and for requesting this particular song.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his terrific piano playing and for his engineering expertise.

Thank you to David Gay, Eugene Rabine, Roland Seiler, Craig Wich, Mary Klimek, and all of the other human beings who have taught me about healthy vocal function.

Thank you to Pixabay for some lovely photographs and to the internet for some useful graphics

Thank YOU for reading and listening to another blog post — and thank you to everyone who continues to offer me positive feedback and enthusiastic support for my music-making.

You are indeed the wind beneath my wings.

And — echoing the final lyrics of the song — I also give thanks for the Bernoulli Effect, which allow planes to fly and human beings to sing!

March 28, 2018 by willedare

When Did Snowflakes Fall So Sweet?

At last winter is melting away.

The piles of snow between our sidewalk and the street are getting smaller.

Tiny green fingers are pushing out of the earth…

And today the first crocus bloomed in our front yard!

I planted a bunch of bulbs in November, right before the ground began to freeze.

And it appears that the squirrels did not dig all of them up — because crocus leaves are popping up everywhere.

Hurrah!

Several years ago I wrote a very simple song about spring and colored blossoms falling down to the ground.

This was before I started playing the ukulele — so I just sang into my lap top computer using the wonderful Apple program GarageBand.

Then I fooled around with a lot of the sounds and loops that are included with Garageband.

And then I took my laptop to my friend Doug Hammer’s studio, where he added a few more layers of sound — including spring peepers! — and I recorded (I think) a few more vocal tracks.

After Doug mixed it, I spent time at the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston, getting help in terrific “one to one” training sessions (which Apple used to offer) about how to make a video to accompany my song.

The final product is pasted above.

Here are more crocus photos to savor…

There is a yard at the top of a hill between Harvard Square and Central Square in Cambridge.

I go there every spring because their front yard is PACKED with crocus, snowdrops, and miniature iris.

It is very similar to this photo except much smaller in total square footage.

I wonder how many years of planting bulbs it takes to create a field like this!

I am waiting to see my first pollinator of the season.

It is amazing that bees can survive our New England winters — and then they appear as soon as the first blossoms open their petals to the sun.

There are so many important causes to which one can devote time and care and love and money these days.

I am a fan of environmental advocacy — because without functioning ecosystems, the human species will collapse.

Just like our populations of pollinators (bats, butterflies, bees, etc.) have been collapsing in recent years…

All sorts of factors may be causing this collapse — including our human use of pesticides and herbicides.

So I no longer use any products like RoundUp or wasp spray.

And I pay extra money to buy organic produce and meat — mostly because it is healthier for the people who plant the food, who cultivate the food, who harvest the food, who clean the food, who package the food, who ship the food, and who handle it in our stores.

I also support organic farming because the hedgerows and bacteria and trees and streams and animals who co-exist with — and in the case of pollinators are partially responsible for — our food crops are not being poisoned either!

May all beings bloom and grow and flourish in an ever-changing balance…

Thank you to Mother Nature for inspiration.

Thank you to Apple engineers for creating laptop computers and Garageband.

Thank you to the former “one to one” teaching team at the Apple store in Boston.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his musical and engineering expertise.

Thank you to Pixabay for beautiful images of crocii.

And thank YOU for reading and watching and listening to another blog post.

I welcome your comments and/or feedback.

July 22, 2017 by willedare

I Wait…

“I Wait” was written by Steve Sweeting, a songwriter, jazz pianist, and teacher who currently lives in NYC.

He and I have been friends since we began making music together in Allston, MA, a couple of decades ago.

“I Wait” is one of many songs we recorded two years ago for a CD of his music called Blame Those Gershwins.

I love this song’s bittersweet, thoughtful perspective.

It articulates how I often felt while I had a day job — and only made music at night and on weekends…

It wasn’t until I was laid off by the non-profit organization where I had worked for 16 years that I finally dared/cared to focus on music full time.

Making it.

Leading classes where we do it together.

Recording it.

Sharing it in retirement communities and assisted living facilities and public libraries.

That was almost five years ago.

And I am now grateful that I was laid off — although I was surprised and shocked and disappointed at the time.

Some of us (such as me) become so grooved/entrenched in the flow of our lives that we need to be forced by outside circumstances to make important changes.

I do not think that waiting is a bad thing.

Patience can be a virtue.

Learning to delay gratification can be a huge developmental step on the path to maturity.

And some animals wait patiently for hours before making their next move.

But — if I understand the concept of yin/yang correctly — within a reservoir of waiting there also lies a seed of activity germinating…

Just as our torrents of activity/accomplishment need to be interspersed with spaces of calm reflection and “not-knowing.”

Time to mull.

Time to muse.

Time to dream.

Time to imagine the consequences of how our actions might ripple for seven generations into the future here on planet earth…

What kind of balance are you able to find in your daily life between waiting and doing?

Thank you for reading and listening to this blog post.

And thank you to the photographers who made these beautiful images I found at Pixabay — and also to my sister Christianne, who (I think) took the photo of me gazing out over Cayuga Lake a few summers ago.

Tempus fugit…

March 12, 2017 by willedare

Stuff (and Amanda McBroom’s Blessing)

Recently we experienced the warmest February day ever recorded in Boston according to a radio announcer on WBUR.

Hmm.

In the short run, I am very grateful for this lovely respite from wintry weather.

In the long run, however, I wonder what’s going on with the larger weather patterns and ocean temperatures on planet earth?

Our opposable thumbs — and seemingly insatiable desire for novelty and innovation — have helped us to create all sorts of stuff.

And much of what we have created needs power from fossil fuels (in the form of electricity, for example) to function or is actually made from fossil fuels outright in the case of plastic.

Plastic wrap. Plastic toothbrushes. Plastic containers to store leftovers. Plastic bags. Plastic bumpers on cars (one of which my sister’s dog was able to chew into pieces when he thought a small animal was hiding under it!)

Plastic plates. Plastic silverware. Plastic cups. Plastic shower curtains. Plastic bowls. Plastic bottles filled with water and laundry detergent and shampoo and apple cider.

Plastic dispensers for easy-gliding floss (which is itself made out of plastic). Plastic souvenir tchotchkes. Plastic electronic devices. Plastic credit cards.

The list goes on and on.

Today I listened to a news story about an area in Texas where we human beings have been extracting oil and gas for the past hundred years.

We’ve been blessed with an inheritance of solar energy accumulated by plants growing on planet earth for millions of years — and we are withdrawing it — and spending it — in the blink of a cosmic eye.

What an amazing inheritance!

Why are we squandering it to manufacture and then purchase stuff that doesn’t usually make us feel any better after the initial thrill of acquisition subsides?

Stuff that won’t decompose for hundreds of years — thus contaminating and altering all sorts of natural processes and feedback loops on land and in our lakes and rivers and streams and oceans.

Why have we not been taught to weigh the long-term consequences of our manufacturing and consumer choices?

I sometimes wonder what an economy would look and feel like which actually honored the long-term costs and consequences of fossil fuel-driven lives on the larger ecosystems which sustain the amazing, interconnected web of life on planet earth…

I am guessing it would be simpler and slower.

It was a growing awareness of all the stuff in my life which inspired me to write lyrics for a melody by Steve Sweeting many years ago which became the song “Stuff.”

I was visiting dear friends who had moved into a large new home on Bainbridge Island near Seattle — and reflecting upon the pros and cons of our very blessed — and privileged — lives.

Two years ago Steve and I recorded “Stuff” for a CD of his songs called Blame Those Gershwins.

I recently sent a copy of it to Amanda McBroom.

She is a songwriter and singer and teacher whom I met when I participated in a week-long cabaret conference at Yale.

I — and many of my singing peers — love to perform her songs, the most famous of which is probably “The Rose,” which she wrote for the movie starring Bette Midler.

She has recently finished a new CD of her latest batch of songs called Voices.

I guessed that she might be sick of listening to herself (which one ends up doing over and over and over again when one is recording and mixing and mastering a CD) and open to the possibility of hearing something new.

And, bless her, I was right.

Here’s what she wrote back after listening to Steve’s CD:

“Thank you so much for sending the lovely CD! It was such joy to hear your voice again. AND to listen to something that wasn’t ME for a change!

The songs are terrific. Your performances are nuanced and touching and lovely.

My very favorite is STUFF.

I think I have to have it.

Feels like it would something perfect for me to put in my repertoire if your friend is willing to share.”

Needless to say I was astounded and excited and humbled that she had made time to listen to the CD, that she liked Steve’s songs, and that she liked one of the songs to which I had contributed lyrics well enough that she might end up adding it to her repertoire!

Deep breath in…

Deep breath out…

It’s funny how something as simple as someone asking for the sheet music for a song I have co-written gives me a renewed sense of validation and encouragement to continue on my (still extremely humble) path as a songwriter.

Maybe it’s another example of the power of feedback loops — in this case feedback that Amanda found the melody and chords and ideas and arrangement of “Stuff” compelling enough that she might want to learn it and then share it with others.

Another deep breath in…

And another deep breath out…

Despite all of the larger patterns of disrespect and dishonesty and disbelief which are rippling around our country and around the planet these days, I will continue to count my blessings, continue to reduce my ecological footprint, and continue to sing — and sometimes write — songs.

Thank you, as usual, to Pixabay for the lovely images in this post.

Thank you to Steve Sweeting for entrusting his melodies to me.

Thank you to Amanda McBroom, for making time in her complicated life to listen to Steve’s CD AND then to send such uplifting feedback to us.

And thank you to YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

PS: I hope you noticed the irony of me ranting about all the plastic junk we human beings create and buy and sell on planet earth and then agreeing to make a CD recording of Steve’s songs — thus creating 250 shiny, round, flat pieces of plastic which will be obsolete junk within another decade or so…

Yet another deep breath in…

And deep breath out…

March 8, 2016 by willedare

A Beating Heart

I recently spent an afternoon at Doug Hammer‘s studio, recording songs by Rodgers & Hart and then working on one of my original compositions, called “A Beating Heart,” which you can play by clicking on the left side of the bar below this paragraph.

A careful reader of this blog might recall that I included a Garageband version of this song in a post on April 9, 2014.

Since then Doug and I have begun creating piano/vocal versions of many of my songs so that we can perform them at places like Third Life Studio in Union Square, Somerville.

We got a lot of positive feedback after our debut performance there in December with guest vocalist Jinny Sagorin — and we’ll be returning at the end of April to reprise that show.

With so many huge and important things happening on planet earth right now — such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity, our human over-consumption of shared resources, and even the astoundingly unlikely presidential campaign here in the US — I often wonder how my original songs fit into the larger equations of life on planet earth.

Is my desire to share them with a wider audience (“Me, me, me, me! Look at me! Listen to me!”) simply another manifestation of the grossly self-oriented human trend in behavior which is currently tipping our larger ecological feedback loops further out of balance?

To re-center myself, I think of a poster in the bathroom where I get acupuncture which features some of the Dalai Lama’s wisdom:

“Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart. The key point is a call for a genuine sense of universal responsibility that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness.”

He has also written:

“Today more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to all other forms of life.”

However, we human beings still tend to think and plan and speak and act with human ‘tunnel vision.’

I often listen to a radio program on Friday afternoons, and last week the host, Ira Flatow, was discussing asteroids and comets. He mentioned one which flattened 770 square miles of forest in Siberia on June 30, 1908 — adding that luckily no one was hurt.

Wikipedia uses similar language in its description of what is called the Tunguska event, saying that it “caused no known casualties.”

I would modify that to read, “no HUMAN casualties.”

770 square miles is roughly the size of the entire greater Boston area.

All sorts of living beings — trees, eagles, ants, berry bushes, wolves, beetles, moose, falcons, reindeer, elk, plants, bears, storks, robins, bees, nightingales, mushrooms, bacteria, etc. — must have been hurt and/or killed.

Why do we human beings so easily ignore or dismiss non-human death and suffering?

How can we be so deeply ignorant of the profound and crucial ways our human lives are interconnected with the lives of innumerable non-human beings here on planet earth?

The most obvious example of this is the fact that we animals breathe out what plants breathe in. And vice versa. It’s an extraordinary bond between plants (trees, shrubs, phytoplankton, algae, grass, etc.) and animals (dolphins, ants, chickens, worms, orangutans, etc.)

And us.

We human beings are also animals.

We depend upon the health of the plant world for our human health.

Healthy trees and healthy forests and healthy phytoplankton and healthy oceans are not optional.

They are vital to the health of all of us.

I agree with the Dalai Lama that we human beings need to experience and understand on an open-hearted, emotional level that our daily lives ARE deeply connected to the lives of all other beings on planet earth.

And the health of those other beings IS intricately connected with our own health and survival.

This is where I see music playing a part in the larger equations unfolding on planet earth.

I know that music — both making it and listening to it — helps me re-open my heart and get in touch with my feelings.

And I see each week in my Music Together classes how singing and dancing and playing as a group can create a community of joy and humor and respect in 45 minutes which continues to ripple — gently and positively — throughout the week in the lives of the families who attend class.

So I will take a deep breath (like a whale!) and dive through my ambivalence about self-promotion into a starboard sea full of hope, love, respect, education, playfulness, creativity, compassion, song, and dance.

And occasional blog posts.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Thank you for reading and listening!

I found the lovely photos in this post from a site called Pixabay.

And if you’d like to listen to “A Beating Heart” on a digital music platform such as Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube, you can click here.

You are always welcome to visit my website — where you can find many songs (and learn more about my musical life here on planet earth if you are curious).

You can also find me singing all sorts of songs on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube and other digital music platforms.

October 29, 2015 by willedare

May I Suggest

Summer thinking…

I love this song written by Susan Werner.

It’s a perfect example of the kind of song I aspire to write — heartful and loving and wise and melodic.

In less than five minutes she inspires and comforts and counsels and softens the heart of the listener (and the singer) in a way that leaves me gently astounded.

Mother and son by the lake…

I first heard “May I Suggest” when a musical friend dropped off a CD at my house with a note saying that she could imagine me singing it.

I am guessing that was in 2008, because this recording is from a rehearsal with pianist Doug Hammer in September of that year.

I’m pretty sure I sang it as a final song in a concert that year at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, where I used to work.

Mother and son and sky…

Recently another musical friend mentioned to me that she had fallen in love this song…and then the random function in my iTunes library popped this take into my headphones as I was updating my database and mailing list.

So I am adding it to my list of songs to sing to myself in order to buttress my resolve as I prepare for the first public performance of all songs I have written or co-written (coming up on December 4th…)

Boy and uncle on boathouse

After I listen to the news on public radio from Syria, from Iraq, from Turkey, from Libya — and from many, many other tragic situations near and far on planet earth — I often wonder why I am bothering to devote hours of my life to an undertaking as utterly self-oriented as a performance of songs I have, for better and for worse, written.

And yet music CAN touch people’s hearts.

Music CAN comfort and inspire.

And music IS an activity which tends to bring people together — sometimes harmoniously!

Salamander on boy’s hand

So I count my blessings (another great song…written by Irving Berlin), and send emails to my elected officials, and donate extremely modest amounts of money to hard-working non-profit organizations, and write songs, and snuggle with my sweetheart, and lead my Music Together classes, and ride my bike, and sing!

The photos in this blog post were taken my my sister, Christianne, who blessedly documents our lives together.

Gosling and boy

These are all from summer 2015 when we gathered at a cottage which is shared by 50+ cousins (although usually not at the same time…) on Cayuga Lake in upstate NYC.

Our great grandfather bought it and then gave it to his six children and their descendents.

I feel my sister’s images complement the lyrics and tone of Susan Werner’s great song.

Into the lake!

I almost never remember to take photographs of life as it is happening, but I am very grateful to those who DO take pictures and then share them with the rest of us.

Thank you for reading and listening to another blog post!!!

Sunset …

October 21, 2015 by willedare

Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing

Exuberance.

Joy.

Playfulness.

Improvisation.

Not having to sit still.

Clapping.

Snapping.

Tapping.

Dancing.

Bouncing up and down.

Singing.

Laughing.

Doing whatever one wants to do as long as one is not hurting oneself or anyone else.

These are all daily occurrences in my Music Together classes.

They contrast vividly with my work as a child and teenager in NYC — modeling for catalogs, doing TV commercials and voice-overs, working in a dinner theater production of The King and I, and even co-starring in a few made-for-TV movies.

Here is what I looked like as a child.

As one of my childhood role models, Jack Wild, explained in an interview I found on Youtube, children who work in show business are not treated like children.

They are treated like small adults and are expected to behave as well as — and often better than — the grownups on the job.

Here is another shot where I am behaving more like a small adult.

Jack Wild was The Artful Dodger in the movie version of the musical Oliver and also starred in an odd TV show which aired on Saturday mornings called H. R. Pufnstuf.

I realize now (after watching an old episode via Youtube) that it was very loosely inspired by the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” and that it was a pretty horrible show — relying all-too-heavily on a laugh track to seduce us into thinking that what we were watching was actually funny.

But each episode usually provided Jack with an opportunity to sing and dance, which is what I particularly admired.

One song —”I’m a mechanical boy” — had enough resonance to me as a child that I remember it with bittersweet fondness to this day.

You can watch it if you are curious by clicking here.

Jack may have also been aware of the painful ironies of this song…

From Wikipedia, I learned to my sadness that Jack died ten years ago from mouth cancer.

He had apparently been smoking ever since he was 12 years old and drank very heavily starting in his 20s when work in the entertainment industry dried up for him.

He was 53 years old — my current age.

Deep sigh.

There but for the grace of g-d…

My career as a child and teen actor happened before the era of VHS recording devices — so I have very few watchable artifacts from that period of my life.

I have a few head shot photos (which I have sprinkled into this entry), a resume which I think might have been typed using what was then a new technology (an IBM selectric machine owned by good friends), and a VHS copy of one of my last films, Goldenrod, which was made in Canada and was eventually purchasable in VHS format.

Every few years, however, I spend an hour searching on Youtube for possible remnants of my childhood career.

Recently I got lucky!

I found an audio file for a voiceover I made when I was 11 or 12 — promoting Oreo cookies — as well as a Dr. Pepper commercial I made as a teenager in which I sing in the background on a fishing boat.

At least I think it’s me…. I know I made a Dr. Pepper commercial which was filmed on a fishing boat, but I don’t remember much from the shoot except that I was grateful not to feel too nauseous while we did take after take in what must have been the Long Island Sound.

Here’s my teen-era head shot.

You can click on the links below if you are curious…

Dr, Pepper Commercial.

I am pretty sure I am the teenager wearing a baseball hat who dances behind David Naughton on the THIRD boat (a fishing boat) in the sequence and leaps onto a railing when everyone sings,”Only Dr. Pepper tastes that way.” If you look at the timing bar, I appear about 29 seconds into the clip…

Oreo Cookie Commercial.

I am the voice saying, “Then you get two crunchy chocolate outsides to eat last!” and also one of the voices singing, “‘Cause there’s not a better middle you can fiddle with” at the end of the spot.

I titled this post “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” because I recently found a lovely take from a rehearsal (with Doug Hammer on piano and Mike Callahan on shaker) I did several years ago at Doug’s studio in Lynn when putting together a show called “Will Loves Steve” which featured all songs written by people named Steve or Stephen or Stevie.

Not only am I uplifted and reassured by Stevie’s melody and words, the rhythm instrument that Mike is playing reminds me of the plastic eggs which we use — with great delight — in my Music Together classes.

Right now I am putting together a show of all songs I have written or co-written called “The Beauty All Around.”

And I am discovering that it is a much more intimate and doubt-filled process than a show which features songs written by other people.

So Stevie Wonder’s great song is going to be my mantra for the next six weeks…

Thank you, yet again, for reading and listening to another blog post!!!

August 13, 2015 by willedare

Love who (and what) you love…

I just returned from thirteen days of heaven on earth a.k.a. camping at North of Highland Campground in North Truro, MA (near the tip of Cape Cod).

One of the things I most love about camping is the lack of interruptions and distractions.

Life is distilled down to basics — and things like TV and America’s Got Talent and Netflix and Orange Is the New Black simply disappear from one’s awareness.

I did not speak with anyone via the telephone.

There was no internet tempting me to visit Facebook or Linked In.

I had no emails reminding me each day about a deeply discouraging array of horrible things happening all over planet earth which I could possibly help by signing a petition and/or donating money.

I listened to no radio.

I read very few magazines (mostly back issues of The New Yorker).

I received no snail mail full of solicitations from environmental defense organizations and prograssive lobbying groups and hard-working political candidates.

Instead I savored the rain and the sun.

And birds.

And wind in the pine trees overhead.

And random sounds of fellow campers in the distance — sometimes the beep of a car with keys left in the ignition, sometimes the cry of a small child having an emotional melt down.

And BLUEBERRIES.

This year we arrived at the peak of blueberry abundance.

Little scrubby bushes which in past summers might have offered a few berries were now covered with them.

Each morning before the sun became too hot, I picked a mug-full to eat — first with oatmeal and then as an anti-oxidant treat throughout the rest of the day.

Some bushes had small berries, and others were loaded with whoppers.

On the morning of our departure, I picked one final mug’s worth to bring home to Arlington, and I am eating the last of them as I type this entry.

Yum for summer!

At first I was concerned that I might be depriving the local wild life of much-needed sustenance.

One morning I watched a small red squirrel pick blueberries, climb up on a small tree stump to eat them, climb down to pick more, climb back up to eat more until she or he apparently had eaten their fill and frisked off into the trees.

But that was the only animal consumption I witnessed.

And I saw many wrinkled, older berries on the ground under the bushes — so plenty of them were ripening and falling to the ground untouched by anyone.

I decided it was OK to revel in this unexpected, beautiful, delicious gift from mother earth.

And there were many berries I did not manage to pick and eat when we left our camp site…

Maybe the two wild turkeys we saw as we were packing up camp would return to savor them?

This morning I was given a link to a slide show that a father had put together to play at the memorial service for his four-year-old son, who had died as a result of complications after an unsuccessful heart transplant operation.

This radiant little being was a student of a fellow Music Together (MT) teacher, and she had reached out via Facebook to a bunch of MT teachers when he was about to go into surgery so that we might pray for him and his family and his caregivers.

Despite the massive amounts of time Aiden had spent in hospitals during his short, sweet life, he was able to stomp in rain puddles and play at the beach and attend Music Together classes with his parents.

Apparently he loved singing and dancing — and his parents included several MT songs as part of his slide show and memorial service.

From the slide show I could see how loved he was by his extended family.

And as a result of watching it, I brought an aching awareness of love and loss with me to my Music Together class this morning — and did my best to welcome and celebrate each being who came though the door.

The song at the beginning of this post was written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty for a musical called A Man Of No Importance.

I recorded it with Doug Hammer playing piano and Mike Callahan playing horn several years ago as part of my “Will Loves Steve” show — which featured songs written or co-written by people named Steve or Stephen or Stevie.

For me it captures some of the poignance of being a loving human here on planet earth.

Thank you for reading and listening!

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

Sound

After The Holidays

Heaven Here on Planet Earth

The Wind Beneath My Wings

When Did Snowflakes Fall So Sweet?

I Wait…

Stuff (and Amanda McBroom’s Blessing)

A Beating Heart

May I Suggest

Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing

Love who (and what) you love…