It has been way too long since I posted here. Not for lack of love,  I've been distracted yet active.

I will refrain from delving into the current chaos that 2020 has brought us on so many fronts, for the moment, and just catch you up.

Marco and I have been collaborating, online session making, composing the follow-up to NoteSpeak, writing essays, songs, and sonnets. 

As we near the end of this historic year,  thanks to one of those collaborations with the wonderful multi-instrumentalist Viktor Haraszti whose upcoming work focuses on this concept, I find myself reflecting on the Buddhist sublime virtue of equanimity. How can we maintain our equilibrium when being buffeted by so many opposing forces? So many that it's easy to lose our sense of direction. People the world over seem to have fallen into an ever more powerful division - how do we resist the tide and marry ourselves to the concept of an inclusive, loving, human family living in peaceful respectful concert with our planet? How do we continue to work towards the realization of this in the face of division? 

I find what's keeping me hopeful are the many many many people out in the world committed to leaving this planet better than they found it.

I am much inspired by my friend Michelle Chalmers, who commissioned a song from us to help fundraise for her non-profit Ampersand Families. Please check out their website and support them in their endeavor to aid, in the most meaningful of ways, youths whose lives have been disrupted by trauma. Michelle helped us out tremendously as well, there is nary a gig in sight so we depend on things like this to help us to continue creating art. You can stream our song "We're Gonna Change It" on Spotify and/or support them by buying the song on Apple Music where half of the proceeds go to Ampersand Families.  If you need a song we'd love to write it for you, just swing by my Downwrite profile or Marco's Airgigs profile. Or if you need an essay I've been side-gigging with those and you can find me at Medium and for a more complete list of the writing I've been doing, head over to my ClearVoice portfolio. There are quite a few things on there, which explains why my presence on the blog has fallen off a bit!

Speaking of being hella inspired by the folks around me; as I wrote in my last blog post in October I'm in love with and veneration of the Afro-Italian community. One of the women mentioned, the fascinating artist Alessia Robin Petrolito, asked me to participate in her project for National Adoption Month. You can learn more about her and hear my contribution right here.

Another nugget of joy every Sunday is this gorgeous newsletter called Brain Pickings that my good friend CEO of Ropeadope Records Louis Marks, a big ol' burst of joy in my world, introduced me to. I highly recommend subscribing as Maria Popova will fill your inbox with light every time without fail. Here's yesterday's ray of joy and a bonus - on this day in 1993 the sublimely gifted Toni Morrison accepted her Nobel Prize in Literature - the first black woman of any nationality to do so. Read her monumental speech here.  

There is so much light amidst the darkness and I send my eternal love to each of you.