Showing posts with label Andrew Newberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Newberg. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2007

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... :-)



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