Limited Perspective

I am in a musical right now. It's called  An Incomplete List of all the Things I'm Going to Miss When the World is No Longer .  The other day, before the show, I asked the band to listen to my rendition of the old Skyliners song from 1958,  Since I Don't Have You . I don't write music and read it in only a rudimentary way (go up, go down, rest, etc.) But I can follow the rhythm. I played around with the song one slow weekend last fall. I gave it a bluegrass beat. It's a sad song about yearning for love. I thought giving it a peppy vibe would be fun, and it was. I sang it in my apartment for hours, seemingly, that afternoon, drumming my fingers on the kitchen counter to keep the time. Fun. The inspiration to do it came, at least in part from stumbling on a bluegrass cover version of the old Bryan Adams song,  Heaven . It's by Chad Darou.  You can hear how it does the same thing. It takes an almost weepy love song and gives it a hay ride. There's a wh...

 Here's something I wrote eight years ago today after seeing the movie Her. The movie Her is brilliant science-fiction Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words. - Eliza Doolittle At its best, science-fiction asks a speculative question and answers it. In the case of Her, the question is what if technology, a computer operating system, really became interactive? What if we could really talk with our devices the way we talk with the people in our lives? What would be the impact on our lives? Our culture? The machines themselves? The film explores those questions and like all good science-fiction, drives at a deeper meaning. The key to unlocking the meaning is a tiny part at the very end where Amy puts her head on Theodore’s shoulder. It is a simple, wordless gesture. It is there for a reason. Early in the movie, we see Theodore at his workplace, Beautiful Handwritten Letters dot com, composing love letters, condolence letters, thank you letters, all sorts of letters amountin...