life

Lynn

There is no way to write what needs to be written today, what should be written today. I have no words adequate to convey the tempest of love, grief, happiness, sorrow, gratefulness, and numbness that are all raging within me. We meet people every day. Most of these meetings are short-lived and have little impact on our lives: a quick wave to a neighbor, a “pardon me,” to a stranger at the store. Many are routine parts of everyday life, whatever that means at a particular moment in time. We don’t remember the majority of the people we’ve met in … Continue reading

Let’s Shoot the Moon

In stark contrast to the chaos swirling around me the previous day, this song was written in one of the most devastating silences imaginable: an empty house that’s empty because of a death. If you’ve had the sad occasion to be involved in the immediate aftermath of the death of a loved one, you know that it’s filled, perhaps mercifully, with an amazing amount of work to be done. Funeral arrangements, obituaries, family decisions and the diplomacy that has to accompany them, the phone ringing non-stop, telling the same story to a million friends and strangers, all with raw emotions … Continue reading

Václava

I’m not entirely sure how to approach entries for 2020. With only two songs written for Song-A-Day, and the circumstances surrounding the reasons why, it seems impossible to take my normal approach of not discussing meaning or direct inspiration. In fact, it might be wrong to do so this time around. What you’re reading is actually the second time I’ve written this entry. I had provided a more detailed account of everything that went on prior to leading up to the day I wrote this, but that level of detail is less relevant than it would seem. I’ll sum it … Continue reading

Love and Life Are Deep

Moving Pictures

I can’t overstate how influential Neil Peart has been on my life. He and his two cronies were with me for hours and hours of D&D, thousands of bus rides and car trips, hundreds of notebook doodles, and many deep discussions of life, politics, philosophy, religion, and what it means to be a free and independent human being. He lived an amazing yet often tragic life. Watching how he dealt with some of these things helped me deal with my own tragedies, even if not in the same way. He was a reluctant, even unwilling celebrity, but if you happened … Continue reading