May 11, 2024 by willedare

Cry If You Want To

I first heard this song performed twenty-plus years ago by my friend Erica Leopold.

It was written by a woman named Casey Scott, and I am guessing that Erica heard the song when it was recorded by a jazz singer named Holly Cole — although I read in Casey’s bio that she used to live in the Boston area in the 1980s…so maybe Erica heard Casey busking in Harvard Square!

I have found a lot of comfort over the years re-visiting Erica’s version of this song — which she recorded with pianist Doug Hammer and included on her debut CD.

Erica used to attend lots of music festivals and concerts in order to find great songs from all genres — folk, jazz, pop — that she could weave into her own musical performances.

I produced a couple of her performances when I oversaw events at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Harvard Square. I also performed with her several times in a winter holiday benefit series.

She was a generous collaborator, and she “cleaned up very nicely” when it came time to perform — wearing beautiful outfits with elegant hair and makeup.

Erica moved from the Boston area to western Massachusetts, and her singing activities slowed down as she focused on mothering a wonderful daughter who became very involved with horses.

Then (ARGH!!!!!) Erica discovered that she had brain cancer — which she fought with grace and humor for several years.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I biked to visit her when she was getting care in an excellent rehab facility in the Boston area after a big operation. I brought my ukulele and a songbook, thinking that she might like to make some music together.

But after a few songs, I realized that she just wanted to be quiet, make eye contact and hold hands.

So we did that for a while.

“Cry if you want to, I won’t tell you not to, I won’t try to cheer you up… I’ll just be here if you want me.”

Erica hung in there for a long time, with a dedicated network of friends and family visiting her on a regular basis.

She died near the end of 2022…

Here’s a link to her obituary if you are curious to learn a little more about this lovely soul.

And here’s a link to her Facebook page — which offers a beautiful glimpse into her life.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

A few years ago I learned “Cry (If You Want to)” so that I could perform it with pianist Molly Ruggles during a UU church service in Medford, MA.

And then I recorded it with pianist Doug Hammer last year — in honor of one of my nephews, whose father had recently died.

“It’s no use in keeping a stiff upper lip, you can weep, you can sleep, you can loosen your grip. You can frown, you can drown and go down with the ship… you can cry if you want to.”

The graphic design for my recording of this song juxtaposes a photo taken by my sister Christianne of this nephew walking in a stream on their farm in upstate New York with a professional photo of me when I was about the same age as this nephew (who is covered up by my head to preserve his privacy…)

He will probably be grieving the loss of his dad — in obvious and not-so-obvious ways — for the rest of his life.

“You can stare at the ceiling and tear at your hair, swallow your feelings and stammer and swear…”

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I spent many hours this week putting together a Spotify playlist of songs for a baby shower in honor of my niece and her husband.

You may remember them from a blog post I shared in November 2019 about their wonderful wedding.

At the suggestion of her mother I included a lot of songs which our family used to listen to and sing when we were children and teenagers.

Some of them — such as “Stewball” by Peter, Paul & Mary, “I’m Gonna Be A Country Girl Again” by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and “Our House” by Crosby, Still, Nash & Young — moved me to tears.

My Niece and Her Husband (Photo by A Couple of Dudes Photography)

Music can be a very powerful connection to past events, past loved ones, past memories.

One more deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I wish more of us would set aside time to listen to music and have a good cry.

I have a belief that much of the dysfunctional — and at times horrifically destructive — choices that my fellow human beings make on a daily basis are due to past injuries, past humiliations and past losses which have never been properly acknowledged and grieved.

For example, here’s a blog post I wrote back in 2019 about a very damaged — and damaging — human being who is still in the news these days.

When was the last time HE had a good cry?

Does anyone ever offer him an empathetic shoulder to cry on?

I am guessing, “no.”

I have long been fascinated by the way that tears come out of our eyes, which are located near the front part of our brains.

And I often wonder if crying might be part of how our brain processes/grieves/heals itself following an injury, insult or loss…

What do YOU think?

I hope that this song — which offers such a comprehensive, open-hearted, and non-judgmental invitation to cry — might touch the hearts of a few of my fellow human beings who may be feeling a bit shut down and overwhelmed by all that is happening these days here on planet earth.

One more deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank you to Casey Scott for writing this song.

Thank you to the photographer who took the photo of me as a teenager — when I was still working a little bit professionally (doing voice-overs, commercials and subbing on the soap opera ANOTHER WORLD).

Thank you to my sister for taking the photo of my nephew in the glen and to Stephen Fischer for incorporating it into a graphic design for this song release.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his sensitive piano playing and nuanced engineering/producing chops.

Thank you to the photographers at Pixabay for their beautiful images.

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

If you like this song well enough to listen to it again, you are welcome to stream it by clicking here.

And you are always welcome to visit my musical website by clicking here.

July 11, 2023 by willedare

Waltzing With COVID-19

Three and a half years ago the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID had become a public health emergency.

*Image by Miroslava Chrienova from Pixabay.*

Six weeks later, it grew into a pandemic — from which many of us are still recovering…

However, the WHO recently announced that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency.

This is good news.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Apparently deaths from COVID are at their lowest point since the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.

This is also good news.

However, a lot of people are still continuing to die here in our Not-So-United States of America.

Last night I ordered a pizza and salad from a nearby restaurant, and after I picked it up, a woman waiting outside congratulated me on wearing a face mask.

She, too, was wearing a mask and told me in no uncertain terms that our COVID challenges are not over yet.

In fact, the 40-year-old son of one of her friends had just died from COVID.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

In 2023, the USA COVID death toll has averaged 150 people per day

Although this is a decline from a peak death toll of 2,500 human beings per day in early 2022, 150 per day still feels like a lot of people dying to me!

And all around the world, people continue to die — one every three minutes — “and that’s just the deaths we know about,” says WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “COVID-19 is (not) over as a global health threat.”

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I wrote the song in the player at the beginning of this blog post during the first year of the pandemic.

I was inspired — in part — by the months-long hospitalization of a fellow singer who was on a ventilator for a very, very long time.

Amazingly enough he has managed to recover — and resume singing!

He was cared for by a team of truly courageous nurses, doctors, and support staff who came to work day-in and day-out while most of us were sheltering in place at home.

I bore witness to the dedication and patience of many nurses, doctors and support staff during this time because — exactly as COVID was entering our lives — I was diagnosed with an obscure medical condition called PGNMID.

As the COVID epidemic grew worse and worse, I met with specialists at several hospitals, underwent kidney and bone marrow biopsies. and ended up being given three rounds of six-month-long-treatments — chemotherapy+immunotherapy+steroids the first time, a new immunotherapy drug the second time, and an even newer experimental immunotherapy drug the third time.

I appear to be responding well to the latest round of treatments — and may write more about this experience in a future blog post.

I mention it now because I saw firsthand — on a weekly basis — the brave and loving response of the medical community during that horrible time.

Recently another musical acquaintance shared with me that she stopped working as a nurse a year ago so that she could begin to recover from the stress and trauma of being a nurse during the COVID pandemic.

I know she is not alone…

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

It’s easy to forget — or ignore — the reality that most of the people who have died due to COVID were connected to a web of caregivers, family and friends who are now grieving their loss.

Deep sigh…

Millions of human beings around our planet — myself included — are now struggling to regain their hopefulness, their sense of connectedness with others, their equilibrium, their sense of purpose, and their mental health after being in survival mode for the past few years.

And some folks are also struggling with mysterious, lingering health challenges after being infected with COVID.

A recent interview on Fresh Air with a neuropsychologist named James Jackson reminded me that there are millions of people here on planet earth who continue to experience a wide variety of debilitating symptoms due to their COVID infection — the “long-haulers.”

As the Fresh Air webpage explains, these folks “struggle to remember things, perform basic tasks and solve problems” — which can lead “to a loss of employment, income, and important relationships.”

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Jackson has written a book called Clearing The Fog — From Surviving to Thriving with Long COVID.

I am rooting for all of the COVID long haulers!

I have so many thoughts and feelings about COVID — as I am sure you do, too.

Maybe you will be moved to share a little of what you are feeling and thinking these days about the impact of COVID on our lives in a comment at the end of this blog post.

Part of me was tempted when writing this blog post to share a list of the high-profile folks — such as former presidential candidate Herman Cain — who downplayed or actively denied the significance of the COVID virus… and then ended up dying from it.

However, that seemed too disrespectful and schadenfreudey.

I did stumble across an interview earlier this year with a former Republican senator from Oklahoma — Jim Inhofe — in the Tulsa World, in which he explains that one of the reasons he retired was long-term COVID-19 complications.

At the time of his retirement, he said that he had tested positive for “a very mild case” of COVID-19.

But in this interview he admits that it has been much more serious.

And according to Inhofe, “Five or six others have (long COVID), but I’m the only one who admits it.”

Yikes!

I think he is referring to other US senators… but maybe he means members of Congress overall?

He also says: “I try to be careful, but I have to be reminded to do things like wash my hands. I have to do things I’m not used to and that’s difficult sometimes.”

I agree.

It can be VERY difficult for us to change our longtime habits and mindsets and patterns of behavior.

Apparently Inhofe has also been an outspoken climate science denier for decades — and we shall see how that ends up affecting him…and his family…and his former constituents…and all of the rest of the web of life here on planet earth in the upcoming days and weeks and months and years!

I think it’s been pretty hot in Oklahoma in recent weeks…

One final deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

I am always surprised and heartened to check my WordPress stats and see that people continue to visit my blog even when I haven’t posted anything new in many weeks.

Thank you to all of my visitors!

And thank you to Pixabay for their wonderful and generous photographers.

And thank you to Doug Hammer for playing his Schimmel grand piano so poignantly AND for helping me to mix/master “Waltzing With COVID-19” via many Zoom sessions during the past two years.

If you are curious to hear more music, you can find me singing — with Doug Hammer playing piano — on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube and other streaming platforms.

And you can listen to “Waltzing With COVID-19” on your favorite streaming platform by clicking here.

Any song you “like” or “heart” or add to a playlist will improve the algorithmic activity of my music there!

I am going to continue to wear a mask whenever I am inside a movie theater or a bus or a subway or a friend’s car (if the windows are rolled up) or a friend’s home or an office or a hospital or a retirement community.

This is a simple way we can continue to respect and care for each other.

One more deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

December 8, 2014 by willedare

Love Is Real

Love IS real.

It may not always be easy to feel, but it’s always there somewhere — or perhaps everywhere? — waiting to be tapped into.

In the two years since I was laid off from my day job, I have come to understand that music is one of our most accessible — and brilliant — technologies for re-connecting with love.

I experienced another love-filled gig with pianist Joe Reid last Saturday at a retirement community to the south of Boston.

It was the first time we had been there; so I didn’t know what to expect.

I was also feeling a bit concerned that our choice of “Make Someone Happy: The Songs of Jule Styne” — rather than a program of songs by the more familiar Cole Porter or Gershwin Brothers — might have been too risky for a first visit.

But we were warmly welcomed, ushered to a lovely performance space (not too big, not too small — a “just right” Goldilocks fit) with a small grand piano, a good PA system, and an audience of American Popular Songbook aficionados.

The size of the room — and the lighting in the room — made it possible for me to make eye contact with everyone.

Many audience members knew the words to the songs we were performing — and I, inspired by my Music Together classroom experiences, exhorted everyone to hum, tap, snap, or even dance if the spirit moved them.

There is something about the structure of a well-written song that allows — even encourages — one to put one’s heart into the singing of it.

And knowing that a song has a beginning, a middle, and an end somehow makes it safe for me as a singer to experience a wide range of feelings while I am singing it.

I think I have written in previous blog posts about how amazing subtext can be — how simply changing what or whom one is thinking about as one is singing can completely alter one’s interpretation of a particular song.

I have even begun to wonder — as I sing and make eye contact during performances with as many different audience members as are willing to connect in that surprisingly intimate way — whether I start connecting on an unconscious level with some of THEIR subtext, THEIR history, and THEIR associations with a particular song.

Whatever is transpiring energetically, it certainly opens MY heart — and re-connects me to feelings of joy and heart-ache and love and fear and desire and hope and pain.

Afterwards Joe and I listened to the stories that these songs evoked in the residents — tales of huge summer parties near Westport, CT in the 30s and 40s, or of seeing Barbra Streisand in the original production of Funny Girl, or of listening to these songs on the radio with loved ones in the living rooms of their past.

One woman said something like, “We have to have you and Joe back again right away — your singing reached inside and touched my soul.”

This is what I live for.

This is what music can do.

Two strangers can, in a safe and well-boundaried way, touch each other’s souls.

John Lennon knew that.

He wrote the song “Love Is Real” — which I recorded several years ago with Doug Hammer at his Dreamworld Studio. Then I monkeyed with those tracks using Garageband to create the version at the top of this page.

Thirty four years ago John Lennon was killed as he got out of his car and headed into his apartment in NYC.

According to Wikipedia, he had chosen to get out on 72nd Street (rather than the driving into the courtyard of his building) so that he could chat with any fans who might be waiting to say “hi” and ask for an autograph.

In fact, earlier in the day he had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy — the life-affirming album he had recently released with Yoko Ono — for the man who later shot and killed him.

After I heard the horrible news of John’s death, I remember walking along Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square, feeling very sad and upset that this could ever have happened.

One loss often awakens previous losses — like a metal chime rippling and echoing through the layers of one’s emotional body and memory.

So, with hindsight, it is very likely that I was also grieving other deaths, other losses, other assassinations — as I grieve tonight…listening to John’s music and reflecting on his inspiring life.

You can click here for a link to a comforting essay I found online which offers perspective about why so many of us continue to be so deeply moved by John’s murder.

I loved John Lennon.

I continue to love his music — as well as the music of all The Beatles.

And his songs live on.

Love IS real.

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

Grief

Cry If You Want To

Waltzing With COVID-19

Love Is Real