Speaking By The Creek
Hey, there everybody? You're going to hear the creek, in this video, because I'm right by the creek. I want to recount. Hey, there I want to recount. how there are so many more than ten, so many more than twenty incredible moments that happened today in the park.
I sometimes am astonished by the beauty of what happens here, and it's not just the beauty of how pretty the place is. It's just the humanity. The crazy, beautiful humanity.
When I arrived today, somehow or other, for some reason I cannot know, the place filled up so quickly I couldn't even believe it. It was like an instant audience of maybe 30 or more people.
And over to my left was a group of young, maybe a little scruffy looking people who seemed to be deeply relaxing and enjoying this experience. Some of my people who are regulars were there. I discovered that the people, the young people, were working on trails in Oregon, spending two weeks at a time, eight to 14 hours a day clearing the brush from trails all over, which is remarkable. They just decided to do this. They got a week off. They came here, and they're relaxing. That was so cool.
I just kept going, playing and experiencing everything that was happening.
There was a discussion later in the set that I had with my friends about one of the people who comes to listen to me regularly, who's going into an independent living place, because that's what he has to do, and that means he's not going to be able to come here so much.
The talk went on about people in our lives who are leaving. That felt like a theme.
It was really quite a gorgeous set. I felt like I was playing really well. And then I finished up. At the very end, a young woman came up to me and said, “Are you just finished?”. And I said, “Yes.”. And she said, “Well, I was hoping that you'd be playing, because this is my bachelorette party, and I used to come here in high school”. and I said, “Okay, so maybe I should play some more for you.”.
She was there with her friend. She said she's having her bachelorette party this evening, and then she'll be gone tomorrow. So I played the piece I wrote called “Deep Inside and Over The Moonbow”, and that was good. She was practically in tears. She said she had some of her first dates with her fiance there.
And then a series of things happened. I got caught up in a conversation with a little woman who's over 80 in Santa Barbara, who comes to see the shows.
We had been talking about the show that the Shakespeare Festival is putting on “Into The Woods”, which I want to go see. She's quite an adorable woman from England who walks with a cane and just had little stories to tell about her husband, who's an engineer that left an unfinished boat, and other projects, and how she had to clean up after him, after he passed - he had so many unfinished projects, she said.
And as she was leaving, I'm not sure why she told me this - she had asked me how old I was and she said I was still young - she said something about, we have to get out and be with our friends, or be with anyone, and maybe…have some fun.
And then I had noticed a woman on the bench, probably in her 40s. She was sitting there, seemed to be waiting to talk to me. She came up and she said she just wanted to thank me because she had been there seven years earlier with her mother and it had made this deep impression and she was back today. And her mother had passed about a month ago, and it meant so much to her to hear the music again.
I gave her a hug, and we talked for a few minutes. I told her how my mother is deeper inside me now - more now than ever before.
Then, up on the hill was a young woman who had come by in the middle of the set and told me that she had come at the right time, because this was her favorite music in the world, and she was going to be painting up on the hill.
And sure enough, she was up there with all her paints, and she had painted this beautiful image of clouds.
I can't.
I can't get all of this down.
I wanted to share this moment, this moment of creation.
( The painting is by Amelia Kay)