Last spring, following a fifteen year break, I started composing music again. The result is the album Delight, which is available on iTunes and YouTube along with videos I’ve created. During the years I wasn’t composing I barely touched a guitar or piano. What changed? In a word: technology. By the mid 2000’s I’d published…
Why I Write a Book Series
In the summer of 1960 my father announced, “We’re taking a whole month’s vacation!” His voice was hoarse with promise, his canny grin the same as when he flipped over four aces in poker. But luck had nothing to do with it—we could afford a month in a cabin on Mount Desert Island because of…
Transformation and Musical Development
The title of my new album Transformation means several things to me. There’s personal transformation, something I’ve chased for over fifty years, through the hell realms of a spiritual cult and recently, more happily, through Vispassana meditation. Transformation also refers to the good old alchemy of the blues, in which through music, fear, sorrow, and…
Joni Mitchell’s Blue Turns 50
(I wrote this appreciation in 2010. Blue was released on this day 50 years ago. I’m so pleased to see the world recognizing it — perhaps more than any album in history. The New York Times devoted a fine piece to it, with the thoughts of 25 musicians on each song. I also felt the…
If I Fell
If I Fell is the title of the second book in the Ray of Darkness series, to be published October 1st. (It’s available here for pre-order.) THE SONG Before it was a book title, “If I Fell” was a Beatles song, first heard in their first movie A Hard Day’s Night: John Lennon said, “It…
UN-PUBLISHED!
UNPUBLISHED! What??? Is that even a thing? It is, as I discovered last Monday when I went to the book page for Never Speak on Amazon. I do it at least once a day to check my sales rank—a shameful practice which I try to justify by knowing that I’m far from alone. When I…
The Lost Wax Process
Photo by Florencia Potter on Unsplash If you’re born a lemon-head, make lemonade. (Note to subscribers: due to the demands of my current book project, I will no longer post every Tuesday) I. Growing up my parents often smiled, saying, “You’re so smart!” It gave me a warm sensation in the pit of my stomach. Yet…
The Gentle Art of the Nap
Photo by Julie Johnson on Unsplash The said it was bad. They were wrong. My guilty secret: I take a nap after lunch every day, and I’ve been doing it since my late 20s. Why guilty? Napping has always had this faint whiff of wrongness, something to do with naps being the exclusive province of geezers, folks who…
10 More Great TV Series
Here’s my first list of great TV series The Crown Sumptuous sets and soaring music bring proper grandeur to this royal tale. Apparently, much of the history is sound. For those of us who don’t follow history, there are revelations like Churchill dictating his famous speeches to his secretary from the bath. Most of…
Notre Dame in Flames
Photo by Stephanie LeBlanc on Unsplash There’s nothing modern about this tragedy. Like many, I found the pictures of Notre Dame—with flames reaching to the heavens, the ornate steeple collapsing like a toothpick sculpture— heart wrenching. I’m lucky to have experienced her exterior and interior on many trips to Paris. (The inside and outside are very different,…
Luminous Muse
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