THEREFORE, I AM

The penultimate song in the proposed musical ROCK&RobYn performed by Roslyn (Robyn's doppelganger) after Rock has lost all hope, any sense of self-worth and his direction in life now that Robyn is gone and Reggie "The Magnificent" Solaris turns out to be not so magnificent after all.

THEREFORE, I AM

One fine day you'll find your way
You'll stand and say,
“Well, I know where I've been”
“And, I know, I won't go there again”

The way ahead
You'll see it so clearly
Until you can nearly
See right through to the end

The twists and turns
The ups and downs
By now you've learned
Your way around

And you'll have found
Who you're meant to be
You'll know the reason
You're unique

You won't ask how
You won't ask why
There'll be no question anymore
You'll know just what you came here for

When you ask,
“Who am I? Where will I go to?”     (Who am I? Where will I go to?)*
You'll see your name on a door
You'll turn that key
And then, “Presto chango, open Sesame!”

You'll be free to be you
You'll say, “Pleased to meet me, not a moment too soon”
And every moment of the day will come alive like it's High Noon!

(instrumental)                               (Who am I? Where will I go to?)

“Who am I? Where will I go to?”     (Who am I? Where will I go to?)
There's no Master Plan
Can't pin the blame on God's hand
Can't blame bad luck, but when your wheels get stuck

Right through that door
There's an untold story
That can end in a blaze of glory
Or go down in flames

You'll say,                                    (Who am I? Where will I go to?)
“I was born to discover who I was born to be,”
“To become that someone somewhere inside of me”

“Therefore,”                                  (Who am I? Where will I go to?)
“Therefore,”

“Therefore, I am!”




 NOTE: * (italics) = background vocals

Words & Music: Kevin Laffey
5/04 – 6/18/11
Laffalong Songs (BMI) ©2011

MR. MONSANTO, YOU HAVE THE SILENT TO REMAIN RIGHT

Judges Roberts and Alito have finally taken off their kid gloves to reveal the cloven hooves of the devil. Stripped naked in a lurid slow dance with Wall Street, they put the final nail on any grade school notion that we are a democracy. We are a corporatocracy:

CORPORATOCRACY

Teabaggers, we are not your enemy. That's the sad, imperial lie. The Left is just a paper tiger. It's not that you don't mean well, but you've been bought and sold like sheep, your own wool pulled over your eyes and, along with the rest of us, are being led to slaughter by those to whom you, even on this night, bow. That's not a Liberty Bell you hear beneath your bleating. It's a death knell to your very own cause being rung by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.


Remember this day and the hundreds of years, lives and careers that have been spent to prevent it. We have shamed our Founding Fathers. To our mothers on whose values we were raised, we appear lazy, spoiled, naive, thick and heartless for taking the short, selfish view without questioning the rhetoric of protectionists.


By bequeathing an unvetted voice to the radical "Christian" Right, we've sanctioned their aggressive ignorance of fact, empowered they who run fearful and loathsome from an African-American President, a Puerto Rican on the bench, a female Speaker of the House; we've cheered on supplicants who entitle the few to riches while denying basic health care to the many. They are no more than call girls and we, their unwitting pimps, are happy to recline, engorge and watch it all on a flat screen Hi-Def satellite TV.


It's the long view that was demanded, the expansive view that speaks of history, of a moral compass, of civil rights, of checks and balances, of separation of church and state, of a government for the people and by the people. But, Oh, the rabid Right! They'll be shouting that we still have all that freedom and more, but whispering breathlessly the inarguable Truth:


When corporations are defined by law as equal in privileges to any one person in our American citizenry, the time will come when your senator, your justice, your President will have a choice to make. For that crucial vote about to be cast with your name on it, who will reap the benefit of their doubt, and who will retain the only right to question it otherwise...you or Mr. Monsanto?

REFERENCES:

On Thursday, January 21, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same constitutional rights as human beings.

Sign the motion to amend the Constitution to affirm rule by the people, not corporations. Go to:

MOVE TO AMEND

US GOVERNMENT FOR SALE

SUPREME COURT ROLLS BACK CAMPAIGN FINANCE RESTRICTIONS

POWDER BLUES

We have a love/hate
It's-never-too-late-to-stop
Relationship

But I awake
And I'm lying in wait
For our table for two

        When the workday is through
        I pull the blinds
        And spend my time with you

                We're hand in glove
                The color of love's
                Not rosy red
                It's powder blue

I have a friend here
And family there to share
Companionship

But for the rare
Break
There's never exceptions to our rule

        It's how high the moon
        You're so pretty I could
        Eat you with a spoon

                But you get stuck in my head
                And the color of love's
                Not rosy red
                It's powder blue

                        Come, my darling
                        We'll dance 'til morning
                        To the beat
                        Of my speeding heart

                        Until the light pours in
                        And you've up and gone again
                        And the vicious circle begins
                        And like a circle
                        Never ends

                                Powder blue
                                It's all a man can do
                                To see a life worth living
                                Without you
                                Powder blue

(instrumental verse)

They say that all good things
Will come to an end
Eventually

But like my dad
And preacher
My teachers spoke only of bad

        And good God forbid
        They'd have shown a little kid
        That love comes true

                I learned instead
                The color of love's
                Not rosy red
                It's powder blue

                        Come, my darling
                        We'll dance 'til morning
                        To the beat
                        Of my speeding heart

                        Until the light pours in
                        And you've up and gone again
                        And the vicious circle begins
                        And like a circle
                        Never ends          

                                Powder blue
                                It's all a man can do
                                To see a life worth living
                                Without you
                                Powder blue
              
                                Powder blue
                                It's all this man can do
                                To see a life worth living
                                Without you

                                Powder blue
                                Powder blue
                                My powder blue

 





Music and Lyrics: Kevin Laffey
12/17 to 12/20 2009 c. Laffalong Songs (BMI)

Cloud and Paper Inter-Are

This is it, 
why I love 
this man. 
We, every 
one of us, 
and the 
world we 
navigate 
inter-are:

"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either...

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the tree cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too...

You cannot point out one thing that is not here -- time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper... As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it."

Thich Nhat Hanh

Hats Off to Mel (for Melanie Penny)

We became very close when Melanie was still in Art Production on the 4th Floor of the Warner Bros. Records "Ski Lodge”. I was a gopher in Merchandising on my best behavior except for every Friday afternoon when Hale, my boss, had me rolling joints in the Conference Room. He’d pass them out with his business card, but I digress. 

I couldn’t help but be smitten by an almost hourly flash of blond past my desk, an art board in its wake. Mel could turn any hall into a runway as she’d glide her way down to solicit yet another Curly-Q of approval and sashay back. She certainly had my approval, but we hadn’t been properly introduced until one day she abruptly stopped in her tracks to compliment me. I wasn’t used to that, so I just punted and squirmed, but by the time I regained my balance, there went that blond flash again! I don’t think I’d ever been caught in the sights of an authentic come hither look before either, but Mel was nothing if not authentic. 

She lived with lovely Linda Allen in Silverlake just down the street from me; no other dynamic duo could compare. We briefly dated then, in only the blink of an eye to be honest. It was my bad, I know and I'm here to say so. She taught me two things that, to this day, always make me smile, place my virtual hat against my heart and bow deeply to her with respect: Nick & Nora Charles and the word "Haberdasher". 

That was her dream, one of them, to be a haberdasher, in its original use: a hat maker. I love saying that word. It's like all that joy, hope, promise and self-belief she retained through thick and thin was embodied in one pure ambition: to make the perfect hat for just the right person, never mind that no one we knew, particularly then, would even consider wearing a hat! But, she was convinced she could find that person and he would appreciate it, darn it, and that hat would mean the world to him. Well, by all accounts, though I haven’t had the pleasure, I believe she did find that person and how he must cherish his hat, a hand made ten gallon hat, and even that not large enough or deep enough to contain all the love she put into its making and all the love that, as I write, must indeed be pouring out. 

Melanie, my own hat, these last few days, has been off to you again, you who were always determined to be bigger than this world allows a woman to be and will be, easily, as big and bigger still in the next world. I'll know for certain when I get there should Gabriel be wearing a natty, felt bowler hat, for instance, tipped at just the appropriate angle, not to suggest a bowing to this long, sad "goodbye" we've all been giving, but a salute, a celebration, a continuation of a line that has not and will not be broken as if to say, with your same sense of humor, welcome and joie de vivre, "Hello, good friend, just this way! You can't miss her. She'll be right over there with Asta, Nick Charles and Nora mixing a martini. You're just in time."

 for Melanie Penny 

11/21/53 - 9/03/09

Tonight, Venus. Tomorrow, The World

He
hates
the
rain.
He
can't
pee.
He
can't
poop.

He can't curl up on his favorite chaise lounge outside on the balcony watching for critters, for coyotes while licking himself head to toe and all points in between.

Whoa! Wait a minute; that could sound so wrong, sorry! It’s all G-rated. "He" is Arrow, my Border Collie mix, a rescue dog, sweet as Tupelo honey and smarter than your average bear. It's just that he's a woeful wimp when it comes to the rain. If he can't go for a walk, he plants his snout on his outstretched paws, pouts, sighs loud enough for me to hear and engages in a stare contest as if I have the power to go out and part the dark clouds for him.

I'll peek through the curtains and doors regularly out of compassion for my poor pup, put my hand up and feel the air for moisture, debating the size of the drops if they come, the rate, the space in-between and how quickly he might be able to get his duty done while suffering the least amount of collateral damage. Tonight, he was in luck.

When you see an opportunity, seize it, don't wait for a better one, that's our motto, mine and Arrow's, that and when you gotta pee, you gotta pee. So when we heard the silence, and you do hear it, tested gingerly the atmosphere for the elements and saw only the length of a smooth, dark, glistening street ahead of us, we burst through the front door and out into the crisp night at a gallop, minding the run off, the puddles soaking our feet and proceeded to complete a most worthy mission.

It's in those moments that Arrow becomes King for A Day, ruler of the roost, navigating his damp frontier like Vasco de Balboa, befriending the bushes with his John Hancock and leaving me trailing close behind amidst a street of steaming leaves. He never lets on that only a few minutes before his wet nose refused to pass beyond even the threshold of our safe-house for fear of his old arch enemy - the rain. At once he becomes his natural canine self, happy, as am I, empowered and relieved in every sense of the word.

The air smells sweet, elusive, something to savor like a delicacy in this combustible town. Its gray blanket has lifted. Even a hint of deep blue pokes through and within it, one bright beacon of light like a laser and it finds me. Venus, how beautiful and proud you look alone above, determined and shining, paying no mind to this weather.

We share a moment together and in that moment, we make a private resolution, a promise, a pact: Tonight, now that we’ve shared this quiet connection, you’ve agreed to be my muse, Venus, if tomorrow I agree to see my world illuminated in just as clear a light, as full of the romance that I’m compelled to project onto you. I agree to walk upon this Earth in the daylight, to succumb to its embrace, to see it within me, grounding me and to realize it as my own, to know that I am not just on it, but of it, that I am it, the Earth, as much as you are Venus.

With due respect, with the inspiration of your good grace, my distant muse, tomorrow night I’ll return in trail of the Wonder Dog to this sweet spot marked in red, "'X' You Are Here", and search for your brave face. And I will shine as brightly back, just as proudly, with as much clarity and determination as you’ve shone down upon me. I’ll light your sky in kind enough to allow you this same clear vision as would a mirror from a still pond reflecting, quietly awaiting a solitary breath, a singular pebble to make a ripple, to reveal this space between connecting us and give it purpose: that one twinkle in the dark of night, one whisper on the breeze can become an invitation to another man and his dog out walking to awaken to his moment, to the opportunity to stop, to recall a sense of wonder and look up.