Company of Friends (Danny Schmidt)

I've said before that Danny Schmidt has been one of my favorite songwriters for the last three years - something about his rough yet tender voice, his incisive guitar playing and his insightful lyrics have a lump-in-the-throat effect on me and, to borrow a word from what is now my new favorite DS song, I am smitten...

I am also blessed in that, by a stroke of good fortune and timing, I'll be hosting him in a house concert soon... a dream come true (pinch me!) - when it was determined Danny would be a performer for our upcoming South Florida Folk Festival, I wasted no time in calling and asking if he'd be interested in giving a concert in my living room, and he graciously accepted.

It was a delight to run my house concert series for four years, from January 2001 to December 2004 and, when I gave it up, the timing felt right... plus now I'm booking our UU concerts (into our third season now) - I've had a few one-offs since the "official" end, which prompts me to advertise Danny's appearance as the Third Annual Heart's Desire House Concerts Going Out of Business Sale... :-)

SONG: Company of Friends by Danny Schmidt

BOOK: Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth by Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman

POEM: Credo by Andrew Zawacki

You say wind is only wind
& carries nothing nervous
in its teeth.
I do not believe it.
I have seen leaves desist
from moving
although the branches
move, & I
believe a cyclone has secrets
the weather is ignorant of.

I believe
in the violence of not knowing.
I've seen a river lose its course
& join itself again,
watched it court
a stream & coax the stream
into its current,
& I have seen
rivers, not unlike
you, that failed to find
their way back.

I believe the rapport
between water & sand, the advent
from mirror to face.

I believe in rain
to cover what mourns,
in hail that revives
& sleet that erodes, believe
whatever falls
is a figure of rain
& now I believe in torrents that take
everything down with them.
The sky calls it quits,
or so I believe,
when air, or earth, or air
has had enough.

I believe in disquiet,
the pressure it plies, believe a cloud
to govern the limits of night.
I say I,
but little is left to say it, much less
mean it--
& yet I do.

Let there be
no mistake:
I do not believe
things are reborn in fire.
They're consumed by fire
& the fire has a life of its own.

QUOTE: "What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it." ~ Ezra Pound