I CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE 55 Years Apart
Not long ago I started looking seriously at my personal and professional mortality. I celebrated turning 70th with a concert at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle. A little over a year later I was in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery. That was in June of 2018.
After I had recovered I understood clearly that we can’t choose our “sunsets.” At the same time I decided that I could and would choose my “professional sunset.” I had reached a point in my life and career where I was “at home with a lifetime of stories and songs.” The key was to find a way to organize them in a way that people could enjoy them and hopefully find songs and stories that reflected their own experiences. That’s what we’re trying to do with the website.
As I was making sense of all this I realized that the first time I sang in public was at my high school auditorium in the Fall of 1962 for my classmates. Sixty years later, I wrote a bunch of songs for them and sang for my classmates one more time in the auditorium.
The guys I sang with in college recorded in what is known as the Big Room at the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity just off the University of Washington campus. We did it December of 1967. Fifty-five years later we went back to the Big Room and sang again.
As I write this in 2024 I am overwhelmed as I remember how it felt in 1967 and in 2022 and to be watching it now and getting ready to share it. Overwhelmed with love and gratitude and joy and faith in power of song and singing.
