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…)

1.    The Heart That Beats – Why does the next beat take place? After all, it’s not like it’s bouncing.  Each beat, each pump of the pump comes because of this thing called ‘life’.  Do we have anything to do with this life essence?  Not that I know of.  I can locate no responsibility for this energy.  It is something that is given.  I do not engender it.  It’s there whether we think of it or not.  It’s there for us.  We have no clue where in space it comes from, how it got there, why it’s just always there.  But it is.  There is always the next beat of the heart.  And you have trouble believing in some higher power?

2.    The Breath You Take – (See above) Also, I think of the complex machinery that activates this life activity.  What a miracle!  We slap a baby’s bottom and it starts.  Then it continues with relatively no input from us for a lifetime. The average respiration rate for a person at rest is about 16 breaths per minute.  This means on average, we breathe about 960 breaths an hour or 23,040 breaths a day or 8,409,600 a year. If a person lives to 80, then that means on average they will take 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime!  That’s you.  That’s me.  Cool.

3.    Those We Love – Why is this?  These are the folks we should appreciate the most, but seldom do.  These are the people we should count in our blessings every day.  But these are the people that we expect to love us back because we love them.  Perhaps it’s the nature of love.  We love and expect love in return.  And you know, it almost always does – return, that is.  In fact, I’ll bet that it always does when our love is pure.  That’s the nature of love.  It’s a circle.  Instinctively we know this and so we tend to take it for granted.

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