November 10, 2024 by willedare

The Power Of Love?

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

Outside where I live in Massachusetts, leaves are changing color and falling to the ground.

Inside I am sitting on our couch under a layer of blankets and writing in the middle of the night.

I woke up to go to the bathroom and now am unable to fall asleep,

All my brain wants to do is think about potentially catastrophic things which may start unfolding in 2025 as a result of our recent national election.

Before I continue this blog post, I am going to pause and acknowledge any readers who may be excited and happy about recent election results.

I do not want to rain on your parade, and I hope that you are savoring your victories.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

However, if you are a reader who is feeling less excited and hopeful about the future as a result of last week’s election, my heart goes out to you.

Although I have decided not to read about politics and interact with the media for the time being, my brain — especially when I am lying awake in the middle of the night — keeps remembering things that are likely to be impacted in the next four years:

NATO — and the safety of all the countries bordering Russia…

The health of women I love — and the health of women I will never meet — due to new restrictions about what decisions they and their healthcare providers are allowed to make about their own bodies…

Social security — which I have paid into since I was three years old and which I was planning to start collecting in three years time…

Medicare/Medicaid and other health insurance options — for millions of Americans and for me.

The cost of anything we don’t make or grow in the USA — due to potential new tariffs.

The cost of anything we DO make or grow in the USA — due to the potential prosecution/expulsion of many people who currently harvest our produce, work in our slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants, labor in our restaurants, work on our construction sites, landscape our properties, mow our lawns, blow our leaves, etc. etc. etc.

My two nephews — one approaching draft-age and the other one still eligible to be drafted if we find ourselves in a situation where we need to expand our (already vast) military capabilities.

Image by Wolfgang_Hasselmann from Pixabay

Long term — and potentially irreversible — environmental consequences due to potential deregulation of rules which currently protect the entire web of life here on planet earth.

Our access and ability to vote, our access to education, our access to public healthcare in the event of another epidemic…

The list goes on and on.

I don’t understand how love and respect factor into any of the above.

I don’t understand how love and respect can withstand — much less overcome — the forces which spread disinformation, which lie, which aim to divide us, which value power and money over honesty and decency.

I hesitate to call those forces evil, but I have been reminded more and more in recent months about a book I read a long time ago by M. Scott Peck called THE PEOPLE OF THE LIE.

As the group mind at Wikipedia summarizes:

“According to Peck, an evil person:

is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets (scapegoats) while being apparently normal with everyone else
commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
abuses political (emotional) power (“the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion” (Peck, 1978/1992, p298^[7]))
maintains a high level of respectability, and lies incessantly to do so
is consistent in his or her sins.
is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim
has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves, but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspection, or admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the focus of evil on others. Evil is an extreme form of what Peck, in THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, calls a character and personality disorder.”

The group mind of Wikipedia also describes Peck’s understanding of love in his previous book, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED:

“Love is not a feeling, it is an activity and an investment — ‘The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth’ (Peck, 1978/1992, p85). Peck expands on the work of Thomas Aquinas over 700 years ago, that love is primarily actions towards nurturing the spiritual growth of another.”

I welcome any insights into the power of love and how it does — or doesn’t — impact our current political situation here in the USA (as well as how love and respect may impact other patterns unfolding here on planet earth).

Please leave a comment if you are so inspired.

I end with a link to this heartful song at the beginning of this blog post in case you might like to listen to it on a streaming platform, add it to a playlist, or share it with a friend.

It was written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, a delicious songwriting team who helped to create the musicals RAGTIME, SEUSSICAL, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND and A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (which is where “Love Who You Love” comes from) among many other projects.

I initially featured this song in a blog post I wrote in August 2015 which you can read by clicking here if you are curious.

Thank you to Ahrens and Flaherty for writing “Love Who You Love.”

Thank you to Doug Hammer and Mike Callahan for playing so beautifully on this recording of it.

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

Photo by Gretje Ferguson + Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer @ DigitalFisch

Thank you to Stephen Fischer for creating this graphic design using Gretje’s photo.

Thank you to the wonderful and generous photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to all of the folks who helped to create the internet and WordPress so that I can share my thoughts and music with you.

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

I welcome any comments below.

September 21, 2021 by willedare

Overjoyed…

I picked today’s song because WordPress tells me that this is my 100th blog post.

If I had been asked to guess how many blog posts I’ve written since I started in 2013, I would have said 30 – 40.

So I am surprised to discover that this is #100.

As loyal readers from the past years can attest, I do not write on a regular schedule.

If I do the math, however, I find that I have averaged one post per month.

I am often happy — and sometimes even overjoyed — to be part of our WordPress writing community.

It is thrilling to check my statistics and find that folks have been reading and listening from different countries around the planet.

THANK YOU to everyone who has read and/or listened to one of my blog posts during the past eight years!

And a special thank you to the folks who have taken the time to leave a comment.

Reading and responding to these comments — and also writing comments after reading other people’s blog posts — is how the WordPress community comes to life!

“Overjoyed” was written by Stevland Hardaway Morris a.k.a Stevie Wonder and first appeared in 1985 on his 20th studio album, In Square Circle.

I am not sure when I first heard it — maybe when he performed it on Saturday Night Live or perhaps when a college friend, Rex Dean, sang it?

It became somewhat of an obsession for me and several of my musical friends…

I finally performed “Overjoyed” in 2006 as part of a program of songs written by people named Steve — which also featured songs by Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Foster, Stephen Sondheim, Cat Stevens, Stephen Flaherty, Steve Schalchlin, and my friend Steve Sweeting (several of whose songs have been highlighted in previous blog posts).

This recording is from a rehearsal at pianist Doug Hammer‘s studio north of Boston, MA, which was attended by a journalist, Joel Brown, who ended up writing a lovely feature story in the Boston Globe to help spread the word before my performance at Scullers Jazz Club.

If you are curious, you can read it on my website (look for “Interviews — Boston Globe June 4, 2006).

This recording also features a wonderful musician, Mike Callahan, playing clarinet.

I met Mike when he was an undergraduate at Harvard.

He arranged a bunch of songs for me to sing with the Harvard Pops Orchestra — and then later with the Timberlane Pops. You can click here to see him and me in action if you are curious.

He can play just about any instrument (which is very useful when one is arranging a song for an entire orchestra) and is also a delightful human being.

Mike went from Harvard to the Eastman School Of Music, where he earned an MA and a PhD and is now a professor at Michigan State.

If you click here, you can read his bio to learn more details about his outstanding musical life.

Finding strong takes from previously recorded rehearsals and then polishing them with Doug via Zoom has also been a process which has given me much joy during the past year.

And — well-masked — we’ve even started recording a new batch of my original songs in the past month (I take off my mask when I am in the vocal recording booth…)

Hopefully a few of them will turn out well enough for me to share them in future blog posts.

Watching things grow in the planters on my back porch this past summer has also been a quietly joyful pastime.

I started with kale, basil, tomatoes and marigolds.

The tomatoes yielded a small but sublime harvest of vegetable gems.

Mine were yellow, and I did not document them with a photograph because they were so tasty I had to eat them as soon as they became ripe.

But my friend Carole Bundy sent me this lovely photo of HER first two tomatoes.

I’ve also been eating one brilliant green leaf of kale every week or so…

When the tomatoes were done, I replaced them with cut up chunks of a potato which my mother brought to family gathering earlier this summer.

It was one of a batch which she described as being the most delicious potatoes she had eaten in a long time.

I wasn’t sure if the cut up chunks would grow, but they did have many “eyes” on them…

Now I am overjoyed that one of them has sprouted, grown tall, and even flowered!

I was very surprised by the flowers, which are quite pretty and fragrant.

They have also lasted a long time.

Now the soil under the flowering plant is starting to bulge a bit.

I think I may need to pile more dirt on top of what may be one or more baby potatoes growing down below…

The cat in this photo lives with our neighbors upstairs.

I may write about her in a future blog post.

Trixie did something on 9/11/21 which was heart-wrenching (not to her but to me and maybe also to her owner).

But that is a story for another day and another blog post.

Image by Here and now, unfortunately, ends my journey on Pixabay from Pixabay

Today’s theme is joy and gratitude.

Thank you to the great photographers who share their photos with the world via Pixabay.

I am overjoyed that I can include your photos in my blog posts.

Thank you to all the great songwriters named Steve.

I am overjoyed to sing your songs.

Thank you to Doug and Mike for your musical gifts — and thank you to Doug for your engineering magic, too.

I am overjoyed to be able to make music with you both.

Thank you to the plants which have been so patient and cooperative with my humble attempts at gardening — as well as generous with their fruits and leaves and roots!

I am overjoyed that you breath out what I breath in and vice-versa.

I know I thanked my readers earlier in this blog post, but I will now thank you again!

THANK YOU.

It is a pleasure and an honor to be part of this WordPress community.

PS: You are always welcome to visit my website — where you can find all sorts of songs.

Or you can find me singing — with Doug Hammer playing his Schimmel grand piano — on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and other digital music platforms.

And if you are hungry for more music, you are welcome to listen to a sublime version of “In My Life” which I recorded with Doug Hammer.on a bunch of different digital music platforms.

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!

November 27, 2014 by willedare

The Mystery of Neuronal Connections

After I take a shower in the morning, I like to wipe the water off the tile walls with a squeegee.

I had never done this until I visited my friend Michael Ricca’s family home in Quincy, MA.

Their bathroom was spotless, and I learned that Michael’s dad always cleaned the water from the shower walls with a squeegee.

So now I think about Michael and his parents almost every morning as I stand — naked or wearing a towel — and use my shower squeegee.

Michael’s parents used to invite me and him and Nina Vansuch and Brian Patton over for huge Italian feasts when the four of us were singing together in a musical project called At The Movies.

So I also think about Nina and Brian and the music we made together each morning as I wipe water from the shower walls.

I love how “squeegee” and “Michael Ricca’s dad and mom” and “Michael Ricca” and “Nina Vansuch” and “Brian Patton” and “Quincy, MA” are all neuronally linked in my memory banks.

And somehow the act of wiping down the shower walls brings all of them to the surface of my consciousness.

Brian and Nina and Michael and I performed together for a few years, selling out Scullers Jazz Club on a regular basis and recording a CD, Reel One, which still — ten years later — sounds great.

I have included a couple of selections from Reel One in this blog. And a couple more (“Wives & Lovers/Coming Around Again” and “That’ll Do”) are in the player in the right hand side bar of this page.

I especially love Nina’s vocal performance on “Theme from The Valley Of the Dolls” and the vocal harmonies Brian crafted for us to support her.

I don’t know if At The Movies will ever perform together or record again, but I am very grateful that we have such lovely audio documentation of our time together.

I was talking with a fellow singer about the fascinating power of neuronal associations the other night as we drove home from an open mic in Natick.

Sometimes what transforms someone’s song interpretation from good to great is simply how many neural associations they have woven into their memorization of the lyrics.

A song may remind them of a loved one who once sang it to them, or an intense crush they once had in high school, or a particularly tumultuous (or poignant or peaceful) period in their life.

Or all of the above.

And those images, those memories, those associations somehow bring the song to life when they perform it.

I try to inoculate songs that I am learning with as many different layers of memory associations as I can muster.

Then when I am performing, I can tap into different constellations of memory associations as the spirit moves me.

One night a song about love might evoke a strong image of my nephews and niece.

On another night I might find myself remembering my former voice teachers — or the first person with whom I fell head over heels in love — or my sweetheart of 22 years — or one of my siblings — or the horse our family owned as a pet for over 30 years — or the corgi we had who once raised a litter of abandoned kittens — or the heron who sleeps at night on an abandoned shopping cart in the middle of a stream which runs along a busy road near my house.

Or huge Italian feasts with Michael and Brian and Nina and Michael’s parents at his childhood home in Quincy.

Or squeegeeing my shower tiles.

Or all of the above.

November 18, 2013 by willedare

We Never Know Who Is Listening…

One of the truly magical aspects of a musical life on planet earth in the 21st century is how widely one can share one’s songs if one has access to the internet.

After Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer and I — with lots of help from Mike Callahan, Jonathan Wyner, and guest musicians — recorded our CD “If I Loved You,” we heard from family, friends AND folks whom we had never met.

One listener included our version of the David Friedman ballad “I’ll Be Here With You” (which you can hear by clicking on the right hand sidebar of this page) on a CD she sent to her fiance who was serving in the US military overseas.

Another fan — who had been given our CD by a friend — tracked us down and told us that she listened to our music each morning while she worked out. When her husband died, she asked us to sing at his memorial service.

And I recently learned — in a reply to my blog post about music and spontaneity — that a CD of my “Will Loves Steve” show (which features songs written by people named Stephen, Steven, Stevie or Steve) had traveled from Massachusetts to Argentina, where it helped lift the spirits of someone who was feeling very low.

Here’s a selection from that show — “Overjoyed by Stevie Wonder…

The pianist is Doug Hammer, and the horn player is Mike Callahan.

I am curious to see how my musical endeavors may continue to ripple around the planet thanks to the internet.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Ahh, music!

ps: Since I wrote this blog post almost 12 years ago, I have begun distributing music to various streaming platforms.

You can click here for a streaming link to my version of Overjoyed” in case you might like to add it to a playlist and/or “like” it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

Thank you for reading, listening and maybe even leaving a comment!

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

Stephen Flaherty