Sparks from the Fire

I sat at a table having lunch with 8 men all in the prime of their lives, all stricken with AIDS. None of them are with us anymore today. From the experience, only the song, “I Want My Life Back” and I remain on Planet Earth.

I had been commissioned by the Manhattan Plaza AIDS Prevention organization to write a song for their upcoming benefit about AIDS. Not at all the usual request. Not at all a subject that I was excited to write about.

But having lost over a hundred friends to the disease back then in the middle of the epidemic, I took the job because I knew I had something to say; I was qualified. Then, when I started to write about it, there were so many conflicting ideas that I lost my point of view and was struggling to write a single line. I did not want to write something morbid, but could not write something happy, promising or, at the time, particularly hopeful.

Aids was a killer and young artists were dropping like flies all around me here in NYC. Those of you in the hinterlands of America were shielded from the experience and many of you probably never even knew a victim, but here in NYC, it was a whole different story – especially in the theater where a couple of generations of fine young artists – actors, directors, designers, costumers, choreographers and dancers were lost. (more…)

It is a time of gratitude.  So many of you have written in regarding the Siyahamba Project and Sparks From The Fire.  It’s all worth the long hours of writing when there’s so much feedback.

I’ve spent the weekend trying to answer the stacks of mail.  I’ve got several days to go.  In fact, I’d better get back to the task before me right now.

In the meantime I’m…

Grateful
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

I wake up every morning
And I am grateful
I’m alive
And every time I count my blessings
I realize that I am here with You

And when each night
I turn the light down
And thank You for my life
Sometimes it is the only way
I know how to pray
I’m grateful for this day

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Yesterday was an amazing day.  The Siyahamba Project that I’ve been working on for the past 4 months and that has recently been performed at the Annual Meeting of the Christian Science Church in Boston was posted on YouTube.  I sat at my computer amazed at the outpouring of gratitude and affection coming from hundreds of people as their letters poured in from across the world for both my wife, Julia Wade, and myself.

Norm

Many people worked together to make this project become the success that it is, but one man was its leader – and very few know about his work because he took no credit.  He is the Producer of the Annual Meeting for the Church and the Executive Producer and visionary of the Siyahamba Project.

I have known Norm Bleichman for over 4 decades now and am blessed to call him my good friend.  We were roommates in college and shared many of the same interests in music, sports and show biz in general.  We also had a popular college campus radio show back then called The Blinkman Show where Norm and I with a cast of total morons would perform send-ups of Superman and Batman comics complete with musical underscoring.

We laughed a lot.  We discovered the Beatles together.  We MC’d many of the campus shows as a stand-up comedy act – he the funny guy, me the straight man.  I say with complete sincerity that Norm Bleichman is the funniest guy I’ve ever known.  He has kept me laughing throughout a lifetime and that’s a lot to say for a friend.

After college he went off to fight for our country in the Viet Nam war while I became a draft dodger.  After the war, he came home to work at his dad’s plastic factory while I came to NYC and started a successful show biz career.  I’ve always said that one of the best things I’ve ever done was to help convince Norm that he could be funny on a national scale and get him to finally quit plastics and go to work as a successful comedy writer in Hollywood.  Doing this, he kept millions of people laughing for many years.

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