And an interview with the one gone too soon and Mel B.

And, Natalia.

Natalia Lafourcade

Bob Boilen as been gracing the NPR airwaves with his brilliant series, Tiny Desk Concerts for about ten years. He gives us access along the way, to fabulous music in an intimate setting where we just about believe we're there. Adele, Ben Folds, Blue Man Group, Chance the Rapper, Suzanne Vega, and my new favorite, Vicente Garcia, all there.

I ended up in an interwebs rabbit hole listening to Natalia Lafourcade. That's her above and her music is delight and joy and collaborative.

There's a lot to share here.
Have fun.

Are you listening to Vicente Garcia?

Let's just enjoy this, shall we?
It may be 50 degrees and winter here in sunny Southern California, but the warm breeze is almost detectable. (Under the heater vents.)

Something lovely

Do you know Sally Taylor?

This is awesome.

The inevitable question.

When you write a lot and then you don't, the inevitable question arises. What happened? Well, I don't really know. I don't know if something happened.


I gave the blog a rest while I was writing elsewhere. Thinking other thoughts.
And then, out of the blue, someone asked me what I want to have done by the time I'm 80 (which, by the by, rather far off) and I blurted out, “Well write a book that's for sure!”


So, someone living deep inside me, who I'll assume is an inside-voiced version of me, is speaking up. I'll listen. I'm good at that. Not as good as my friend Lori, who listens so intently and completely I often wonder if she's fallen asleep while I'm talking or has gently set the phone down so she can attend to a project as I go on, but, is really just fully listening.


But, back to me being a good listener.


I am listening, and I'll say based on this, writing has become a goal for the year. This means, I have a plan, or at least I'm formulating a darn fine one, to write every single day of my life for the next year. If some of it goes beyond the morning pages and begins to draw the tale of Ethel and I tooling through Europe with 52 years between our ages, or summons the memories of the first time I laid eyes on my mothers' group and the attendant baby sausages swaddled and lying on the hospital meeting room floor, well, I'll be happy to let that happen. Welcome the reveries which turn ideas into lyrics or stanzas or just fine paragraphs.


I do it anyway. I may as well do it with pluck and purpose. So there.


It isn't a resolution. It's a plan. Kinda formalized.


And again the answer to the aforementioned inevitable question is this: We remodeled the kitchen and for a while, I lost my chair.

Happy 2018.

Space.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor e. Frankl

Every year, one word.
This year: space.

Multiple candidates for the guiding word danced on a page coming down to first curate and then, invest.

They were each headliners for a while and both words are wonderful. But, when I think about what I want to occur this year, space wins. 

Space for air
Space for thought
Uncramped shelves
Space to God
Space for nothing
In my trunk
In my garage
my closet
my brain

I love a lot of what I experience, but I'm finally catching on that not all of it belongs on my shelf. 
I don't want it.
Well, some of it I want.
And, if I give myself the space to consider, it might just be the right thing to accompany me on in life.

I think this now. Give me space and I'll let you know if it's really truth.

space.