January 16, 2026 by willedare

I Walk With Music

Hoagy Carmichael — NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This month’s song is a minor hit from what is sometimes called the Great American Songbook.

Composer Hoagy Carmichael and lyricist Johnny Mercer created it for a Broadway show — I WALK WITH MUSIC — which did not prove to be a success.

But it did give us this sweet song.

I discovered it when I was putting together an hour-long program of songs by Hoagy Carmichael — who also wrote the music for standards including “Georgia on My Mind,” “Stardust,” “The Nearness of You,” and “Skylark” (another song co-written with Johnny Mercer).

Pianist/producer Doug Hammer and I had a lot of fun recording it.

I just re-read the Wikipedia entries for Johnny Mercer and for Hoagy Carmichael.

I learned that — later in his life — Hoagy appeared as a songwriter character on THE FLINTSTONES animated TV show and also participated in a TV special with Fred (Mr.) Rogers.

And I was reminded that Johnny Mercer was a bit of a Jekyll/Hyde personality — beloved during the daytime and then drunk at parties saying mean things during the night — after which he would send flowers and an apology the next morning.

Johnny Mercer (from the Johnny Mercer Foundation website)

In addition to being successful songwriters, Hoagy and Johnny were also successful performers.

Later in his life, Hoagy worked as an actor in movies and TV shows, while Johnny recorded many hit singles over the years — of his own songs and as well as songs written by other people.

Johnny also was one of three men who founded and ran Capitol Records very successfully for many years.

He was mentored early in his career by Yip Harburg (the lyricist who co-wrote “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” “Over The Rainbow,” “How Are Things In Glocca Morra?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” among many other hits).

And near the end of his own life Mercer became a fan of singer-songwriter Barry Manilow.

In fact one of my favorite Johnny Mercer songs — “When October Goes” — was created after Mr. Mercer died with music by Barry Manilow and unpublished lyrics given to Mr. Manilow by Mercer’s widow, Ginger.

Both Mercer and Carmichael kept writing songs even after rock-n-roll had significantly altered the landscape of popular music — which meant that their work was less and less in demand…

I take inspiration from their creative perseverance as well as from the rich legacy of hit songs they left for all of us to savor.

On a personal note, I have begun attending several open mics on a regular basis, sharing my original songs while accompanying myself on ukulele.

Performing like this has been a good workout for my brain because I now have to remember both lyrics AND chords.

It has also been interesting to see how other regular open mic attendees do (and don’t) welcome one into each musical micro-community.

The key, I think, is simply continuing to show up.

Gradually we reveal ourselves to each other through our song choices and through the things we say between songs (the open mics I attend allow a person to perform 2-3 songs per night).

And trust begins to form…

And curiosity begins to arise…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

All of the venues are also registered with ASCAP, the performing rights organization I joined several years ago.

So after each open mic, I log onto my ASCAP account and enter which of my original songs I performed.

In theory this is supposed to generate a tiny stream of income for me, but I haven’t seen anything yet…

One final thing I have been appreciating about attending open mics is that they give me a chance to fine-tune the lyrics of songs I haven’t yet recorded (but plan to record with Doug Hammer later this year).

If you would like to stream “I Walk With Music,” you are welcome to click here for a link to many different digital music platforms.

Thank you to pianist/composer/producer Doug Hammer for our ongoing — and ofter very playful — musical collaboration.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his photo and design expertise.

Thank you to Wikipedia (to which I give a tiny financial contribution each month) for being such a useful source of information.

Thank you to all of the terrific songwriters, living and dead, whose work touches our souls and lifts our spirits on a daily basis.

Thank you to Jeno Szabo for his beautiful image from Pixabay.

And thank you, dear reader, for making it through another one of my (now mostly monthly) blog posts.

December 4, 2025 by willedare

Throwback Thursday #8

The only flowers remaining these days in my neighborhood are chrysanthemums and asters.

They are a hardy bunch, bless them.

We’ve had a few frosts; so most bees and butterflies are gone…

I’m already counting down the days to the winter solstice, when daylight in the Northern Hemisphere will again start to lengthen!

In recent weeks I’ve re-discovered the pleasures of tea — my current favorite being Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice with some honey — and soup (today chicken, squash, carrot, potato, onion, garlic and ginger, are simmering together on the stove…)

Yum!

I hope your Thanksgiving was delicious and calm and heartful.

Today I am throwing back to a very short blog post about why I love leading Music Together classes which features a somewhat silly song which I recorded using GarageBand on an Apple laptop many years ago.

“I’m A Baby Monkey” remains very popular with children of a certain age…

In closing, I thank you for reading this blog post and possibly jumping back to my Throwback Thursday post

My stats are fluctuating from modest (seven visitors on 11/28/25) to quite a few (55 visitors on 12/2/25).

I don’t know if my site is being hacked/scraped by some sort of bot or if these are actual visitors.

To quote singer-songwriter Iris DeMent, I’ll just “let the mystery be…”

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

May your spirits remain light as we head towards the shortest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere!

ps: Thank you, too, to the great photographers at Pixabay…

November 21, 2025 by willedare

Under My Umbrella

Autumn has arrived in New England.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Autumn is probably my least favorite season.

Partly this is because I do not like being cold.

Partly this is because I do not like the shorter days.

And partly this is because I do not like being reminded that everything dies in the end.

I do however like being reminded of how amazing mother nature is — creating a system of fully recyclable and compostable solar collectors in the form of LEAVES!

Hurrah for leaves and photosynthesis!

I wrote the first version of “Under My Umbrella” while camping in North Truro on Cape Cod.

Then my friend Molly Ruggles wrote a new bridge section — which is the version she and I and our friend Carole Bundy recorded (in the player above).

You can click here to read — or re-read depending upon how long you’ve been following my blog — a short post from 9/10/24 which features the earlier (pre-Molly) version of this song.

And here is a link to the Molly, Will & Carole version in case you might be willing to play/like/share it on your favorite music streaming platform.

We recorded it with me, Carole and Molly singing plus Molly playing Doug Hammer’s Schimmel grand piano in his studio north of Boston, MA.

Thank you to Doug for his excellent engineering and music production skills.

Thank you to Molly for writing a new bridge and also a bunch of lovely harmonies for all of us to sing.

Thank you to Molly for playing piano AND for designing our graphics.

Thank you to the gifted and generous photographers at Pixabay.

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

I remain very grateful for our wonderful WordPress community.

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

October 17, 2025 by willedare

Both Sides Now

What a song!

I, like many, have long loved Joni Mitchell’s original recording of “Both Sides Now” — as well her later version with an orchestra.

Pianist (and engineer and mixer) Doug Hammer and I recorded our own version to accompany one of my sweetheart’s annual ART/Word group exhibitions.

The theme that year was BALANCE.

I was not in the greatest voice when we recorded our version, but Doug was able to polish things to a lovely sheen during our fixing/mixing process.

This summer and fall I’ve been riding the train (actually the train + bus due to ongoing track repairs in Massachusetts to fix a sinkhole situation) a lot from Boston to Ithaca, NY — where a bunch of my family members (sisters, niece, grandniece, nephews, mother, and cousins galore) live.

This has given me plenty of time to gaze at passing scenery, and I have seen some extraordinary cloud formations.

At dusk they are often illuminated by the last rays of sun coming over the horizon, which makes them even more magical.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I love that “Both Sides Now” leaves the listener with no concrete answers.

Ms. Mitchell writes, “I really don’t know clouds (or love… or life…) at all.”

And I also love Ms. Mitchell’s description of falling in love — “Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels — the dizzy dancing way you feel — when every fairy tale comes real — I’ve looked at love that way.”

It immediately reminds me of my own history with that feeling — and how intoxicating and exhilarating it was…

And I also remember how devastated I was when my various romances came to an end.

Ahh, love…

Ahh, loss…

Ahh, life…

Ahh, clouds…

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

What are YOUR associations with this wonderful song?

I’d be honored to read any thoughts and feelings in the comments section below.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for being such a great musical ally for three decades.

And thank you for his wonderful, well-tuned Schimmel grand piano…

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for designing this lovely graphic.

Thank you to the talented photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to Gretje Ferguson for taking this photo of me many years ago.

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

You are welcome to click here and stream/like/playlist/share our version of Joni’s song.

And you can click here to visit my website if you are curious to learn more about my musical life here on planet earth.

September 19, 2025 by willedare

May The Bees Keep Buzzing

One of my favorite bloggers is Dan Kennedy, who has worked at many different media organizations in the Boston area and is now a professor at Northeastern University.

He writes about what is happening in — and to — the media here in the USA.

I first became aware of our Boston media landscape when I worked as PR Director at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Harvard Square.

My boss Diane Wortis and I created (and then produced annually for five years) a day-long conference called “Arts & The Media” which allowed us to call everyone who had anything to do with arts coverage in the Greater Boston area and invite them to participate on a panel.

This included folks from our big papers (including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Boston Phoenix) — to folks at radio and TV stations, to folks who worked for smaller local papers and magazines.

Our conferences started happening as Mitt Romney’s private investment company Bain Capital was buying up a bunch of local daily and weekly newspapers in the greater Boston area and consolidating them into one company — which meant that the staff at all of these formerly independent papers was being slashed and lots of generic (non-town-specific) content was starting to be written which could be printed in many different papers within this new chain.

I bore witness firsthand to the degradation of media coverage as a result of large-scale, corporate consolidation.

And twenty five years later, that trend of media consolidation has only worsened.

All of this is to explain why I write near the end of this song — “May our press remain vital, always truth pursuing…”

Reading our local papers and nurturing relationships (via hundreds of hand-written thank you cards) with local arts writers and arts editors for over a decade helped me to understand how crucial the Fourth Estate is to a functioning democracy with healthy checks and balances.

Dan writes in his blog about what is going poorly (media consolidation continues, ad revenues drop…) and also where there are glimmers of hope via new models of local journalism.

And sometimes he weighs in on journalistic best practices.

He steered me to a speech Marty Baron gave at Brandeis University a few years ago which touched upon the fascinating topic of objectivity.

Mr. Baron used to be the editor of The Boston Globe and then became the editor of The Washington Post.

Here’s the heart of what Marty had to say:

“Objectivity is not neutrality.

It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism.

It is not false balance or both-sidesism.

It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction.

It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover…

The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible.

It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.

We don’t start with the answers.

We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.”

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

May our media in the USA stop kowtowing and collapsing… and realize that they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to arrests in the middle of the night, arrests while we are walking from campus to our apartment, arrests while we are in a courthouse following all the rules about how to become a US citizen, arrests while we are picking vegetables, arrests while we are doing our laundry in the middle of the night.

Anothert deep breath in.

And another deep breath out.

You can click here for a link to “May The Bees Keep Buzzing” on Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, etc.

If you might be kind enough to stream it —and maybe even “like” it and add it to one of your playlists if you are so moved — that would be very helpful to feed positive data into the various algorithms which decide whose music gets played and how often…

I have selected flower photos from the wonderful photographers at Pixabay which I hope will help to offset the serious tone of this blog post.

Thank you to them and their skill and their generosity.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his sublime collaborative skills — both playing his Schimmel grand piano AND using his Apple computer like a 21st century wizard.

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

July 26, 2025 by willedare

Don’t Blame Me…

Greetings!

I hope this blog post finds you well.

My most recent song release — “Don’t Blame Me” — was co-written by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh.

I wrote a long blog post about Ms. Fields on October 1, 2017 which you can read (or re-read) by clicking here if you are curious.

The more I have learned about her, the more I admire her.

And the more I perform her songs , the more I savor the ease, wit and humor in her lyrics.

Dorothy Fields was an extremely successful lyricist and librettist in a very male-dominated entertainment industry.

She was friends with — and sometimes collaborated with — all of the songwriters in the Golden Era of Popular Song including Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the list (of male songwriters) goes on and on…

She had hits from the 1920s to the 1970s — and did not get discouraged (as many of her male colleagues did) when rock-n-roll began to displace her songs from the hit parade.

Instead she started working with a much younger composer, Cy Coleman, and had one of her biggest hits — the musical Sweet Charity — when she was 62 years old.

I, as a late-blooming songwriter, find her to be very inspirational.

I have chosen freesia for this post because I imagine she would have enjoyed their delicious fragrance ‚ and because they always seem very elegant to me.

According to her biographers, she was always very well-dressed (one grandparent was a tailor…) with separate closets for hats, shoes, active wear, evening wear, etc.

Here’s a streaming link for “Don’t Blame Me.”

Thank you to the glorious photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing piano while simultaneously recording him and me on “Don’t Blame Me.”

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

Here is a bouquet of freesia for your efforts!

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

What a fragrance!

June 12, 2025 by willedare

Throwback Thursday (#6)

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.

You can click here to read more about this fascinating topic if you are curious.

It is another reminder that singing — and singing with other human beings — can be a very healthy and uplifting thing to do.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I am most familiar with the pink + white varieties of bleeding heart, but occasionally I have seen a completely white variant in a neighbor’s garden.

It is very elegant — but I miss the pink/red part of the blossoms…

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to Mother Nature, who keeps doing her thing regardless or in spite of the mess we humans are making in our own lives.

And thank YOU for reading yet another one of my blog posts!

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

You are always welcome to visit my musical web site — willsings.com.

And you can find me singing on various streaming platforms by searching for “Will McMillan featuring Doug Hammer.”

May 22, 2025 by willedare

Throwback Thursday (#5)

We’ve been experiencing a cool, windy and wet spring here in the Boston area.

Today, for example, we are forecast to have 24 hours of rain plus possible gale force winds along the shore.

Yikes!

This hasn’t been very pleasant for those of us who ride our bikes from point A to point B on a regular basis.

But I think the plant world has been enjoying it — and flowers appear to be blooming over a longer period of days and weeks.

I have been very grateful for that!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

This week the allium bulbs I planted a few years ago next to our driveway have started to bloom.

Hurrah!

They are the one type of bulb I’ve planted (other than some crocus) which have managed to blossom robustly each spring.

They always remind me of something Dr. Seuss would have drawn.

I especially like the purple ones.

Today’s Throwback Thursday takes me back to a short blog post about creativity from October 25, 2013.

It’s very sweet until the end, when I realized that the open mic I mention no longer exists.

And the restaurant which hosted it has closed.

And the lovely woman who ran it recently died.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Ahh, change…

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.”

Ahhhhh…

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.

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay

Thank you to the earth and to bulbs and to rain and to the sun.

And thank YOU for reading another one of my blog posts — and maybe two of them if you click the link many paragraphs above, too!

I realized recently that I rarely include a link to my official website in my blog posts.

If you are curious, you can click here to visit willsings.com.

Happy spring — at least to those readers who live in the northern hemisphere!

May 9, 2025 by willedare

Asleep At The Karmic Wheel

I hope you are well as you read this bog post.

Thank you for dropping by!

“Asleep At The Karmic Wheel” is a song I wrote many years ago after I stumbled upon a particularly satisfying chord progression on my ukulele.

My understanding of the concept of karma is that each of our actions has consequences.

Here’s a more detailed explanation from The Himalayan Institute if you are curious to learn what they think...

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.

Image by Екатерина Евлогиева from Pixabay

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.”

Yowza!

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.

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.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his beautiful graphic design work.

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay.

And thank you to everyone who has been streaming my music on Pandora, Youtube, Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, and other digital music platforms.

Slowly but surely, my total number of streams continues to rise.

And so do the tiny amounts of money I receive each month from my music distributor.

You can click here if you’d be willing to stream “Asleep at the Karmic Wheel” once or twice (and maybe even give it a thumbs up or add it to a playlist…)

One final THANK YOU for making it to the end of yet another one of my blog posts.

I will end with a deep breath of gratitude in.

And a deep breath of gratitude out.

I welcome any strategies about how YOU are not falling asleep at the karmic wheel in the comments below.

May 1, 2025 by willedare

Throwback Thursday (#4)

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

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

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.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

If you are curious, you are welcome to visit (or re-visit if you are a long-time follower…) a blog post about spontaneity from October 4, 2013 by clicking here.

It reminds me about the ongoing balance in our lives between being well-prepared and surrendering to the present moment.

Thank you for reading yet another one of my blog posts.

And thank you to the wonderful photographers at Pixabay for these glorious photos of tulips!

Deep breath of gratitude in.

Deep breath of gratitude out.

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

Pixabay

I Walk With Music

Throwback Thursday #8

Under My Umbrella

Both Sides Now

May The Bees Keep Buzzing

Don’t Blame Me…

Throwback Thursday (#6)

Throwback Thursday (#5)

Asleep At The Karmic Wheel

Throwback Thursday (#4)