Have you noticed the shift? In March and April we scrambled, suffered much grief, confusion, and many losses. We fought like hell to find the path through this wild storm. The new normal was more bad news, now served daily. We here in America have leadership who: called Covid-19 a 'liberal hoax,' thinks injecting Lysol disinfectant will cure it, go to the Mayo clinic and not wear PPE - and then lie about all of it. It's shameful, and unspeakably damaging.
I have for years been fueled and informed by the Leonard Bernstein quote, "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
We live in very violent times. We are under attack and under unique disadvantages, make no mistake. But friends, what has become painfully obvious is that WE are the solution. We are a part of the collective consciousness that has begun to find and be the answers. We are the help. To wait around for someone else to steer us through the storm would be fatal. To let someone in Washington, DC or anywhere outside of ourselves take the wheel would be a grave miscalculation. Each one of us must take our own wheel.
I think about the words of Barack Obama, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
A new light grows stronger inside each one of us these days. We are transitioning from reaction to action. Take your wheel!
For my part in fighting against these high waves of isolation, monotony, unemployment...to deal with the storm which is all around me I must insist I play music for you. I must be brave enough to connect. I must show up.
This is my light. It's my wheel. It's what I can do from here.
I insist there be more empathy, more connectivity, and more healing love of music. So to transition out of March/April's sentiment of 'Social Distancing Alone, Together' - I'll be seeing you every other day in May (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31) and I call it the 'May There Be Light' tour.