There (Michael Smith)

I am presenting the extremely talented and very dear Sam Pacetti at my concert series this evening - Sam's personal and musical experiences in the last decade have only served to make his music that much more soulful and heartfelt. In the words of Andrew Calhoun:

"Sam Pacetti's first CD, Solitary Travel, was released nearly ten years ago, when he was 22. It got airplay on NPR, Sam was voted best new artist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, everything was in place for a grander success, and... Pacetti disappeared. Well, not if you lived in St. Augustine, Florida, where he performs Monday nights at the Mill Top Tavern, and there was an occasional Southern festival gig. He hung some drywall and did some surfing, but the real journey involves the simple truth that no matter how much the world loves you, if you don't love yourself you have no home. His latest recording [Union, with Gabe Valla] reflects that journey, through loss and rapture and loves too fragile to survive, all the more passionately embraced... stating so elegantly that all we need for love and wonder is already in our hands. Yes, indeed. And welcome home."

Sam does a stunning version of my blog-titled song, and I intend to request it this evening - I made a compilation CD for my husband on our 27 (or 28th) wedding anniversary of love songs... not the typical "moon/spoon/June" variety but more like the "it ain't easy, baby, but it's ours" philosophy of Brian Joseph's Cal's Chevy (also on the mix).

Included too is Johnsmith's Iris Blue, which I've always related to since our anniversary is in September as well, and my favorite flowers are daisies (not roses) - on a related note, John wrote an incredible song for/about Dave Carter, not too long after Dave's death, and I requested it last night. He said he'd recently been performing it as a spoken word piece so as to focus on the lyrics - I told him that, although I'd always liked the melody, I truly thought it was more powerful without (who knew?... :-)

John also shared a very cool story with me - last year he played a house concert series in Lawrence, Kansas and the hosts told him that one of the locals asked if she could come by and visit with John alone before the concert. Turned out it was Elise (Dave Carter's sister), who said she wanted to meet and thank him for the loving tribute to her brother - she gifted John with a beautiful Buddhist bell that had belonged to Dave... and they both cried...

So much live music, so little time - love, in all its diverse and delightful incarnations, abounds...

SONG: There by Michael Smith

BOOK: The Truth About Love: The Highs, the Lows, and How You Can Make It Last Forever by Dr. Patricia Love

POEM: Scraps of Moon by Denise Levertov

Scraps of moon

bobbing discarded on broken water

but sky-moon

complete, transcending

all violation

Here she seems to be talking to herself about

the shape of a life:

Only Once

All which, because it was

flame and song and granted us

joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,

turns out to have been what it was

that once, only; every invitation

did not begin

a series, a build-up: the marvelous

did not happen in our lives, our stories

are not drab with its absence: but don't

expect to return for more. Whatever more

there will be will be

unique as those were unique. Try

to acknowledge the next

song in its body-halo of flames as utterly

present, as now or never.

QUOTE: "Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway." ~ Judith Viorst