Welcome to the website.

Hey! Thanks to every single one of you who came out to Central Park on Saturday. Hope the rest of your weekend was wonderful.

I'm hoping to back out in the park this coming Saturday, but as of right now I don't have the paperwork. I'm gonna make a few calls today and let you guys know as soon as I know what's what.

I gotta say -- I promise, promise, promise to leave this whole 9/11 anniversary business behind me after today. I'll just have a few thoughts in the update today and then that's that.

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JUST A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS

It's kinda funny. I wrote something very simple on Facebook yesterday... something just for me, just a decision I had made for myself. And a bunch of people picked it up and ran with it, sent me email that made me think the meaning of my very simple statement wasn't very clear to some. So let me try my best to speak plainly and then leave this alone.

I don't mean this in a negative or judgmental way, but I hope everyone got all their "Anniversary of September 11th" stuff out of their systems. If you needed to get it out, hope you did. If you needed to immerse yourself in all the reminiscence and emotion of the date on the calendar yesterday, hope you got it out in a healthy way. I really do.

Me?

Maybe that's why I'm writing about this today. These things get me wondering... about all kinds of things.

I discovered that I was behaving in a most hypocritical way in the last few days. (Ha! It's the kind of unpleasantness that one discovers with honest self-reflection sometimes.) But I'll get to that in a minute.

For me, the jury is still out on the whole "10th Anniversary of 9/11" thing. Here are some thoughts I'm still kickin' around. One of the most basic things I'm wondering about...

Why is the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 significant in any way?

Why is it more or less significant than say, the 9th anniversary or the very 1st anniversary, or the 7th anniversary? Is it more significant because it's a number that's divisible by 2? What is it that made people feel so intensely about this particular day? Is the memory more vivid after 10 years? Is the pain more real at 10 years? Will the 11th anniversary be less significant for some reason?

Just a question.

Anyway, yesterday I posted on Facebook that I was not going to participate by watching all that stuff on TV. I still feel very good about that decision for my own personal reasons. I never suggested that anyone else might make the same decision, or that anyone was "wrong" for watching all the televised ritual. Still, one friend suggested that I was "boycotting" the memorials. I guess in a way I was, although I wouldn't use that word with it's negative connotations. I've spent the last few days thinking a lot about "anniversaries", both good and bad, and haven't come up with any definitive feelings about them... except that one Truth about anniversaries is very clear to me.

Anniversaries, by their very nature, can keep us from truly living in the day... living in the moment. As human beings, of course it's in our nature to remember beautiful events as well as tragic events. And of course that's cool. Then we mark them, create rituals around them, sometimes embrace them so closely we forget that each moment in our lives is brand new. Every moment, every day in our lives is unparallelled by any other moment. The events or days we are marking do not exist anywhere in the Universe except in our minds and in our hearts. So in that way, they are always, always there... not just in a particular box on the calendar. Nostalgia for pleasant moments, and remembrances of tragedies can keep me focused in the past... and I guess there's always a danger that when I get caught up in the sentimentality of moments that no longer exist, I am not living in the day.

In regard to yesterday's wall-to-wall television coverage of the pomp and ceremony, I guess to be completely honest, I also didn't want to be angered in any way and I knew I would be. I'm sure there were many beautiful moments. I was certain that I would see beautiful and heartfelt musical tributes and hear inspiring words being spoken by good, good people. But, I didn't want to see the cancer cells mixed in with the healthy and pure. I could not watch a spiritually-bankrupt individual like George W. Bush, who was occupying the office of the presidency when the most complete failure of homeland security occurred... I couldn't watch him dishonor all those killed by Osama Bin Laden and all those who lost their lives the direct result of his immoral, historically ignorant and criminal actions in the years following 9/11/01. The worst attack on U.S. soil, the most heinous act of mass murder happened on his watch. I couldn't watch him dishonor the memory of all those injured and maimed... all the Iraqi men, women and children killed and wounded as the direct result of his subsequent actions and decisions. I couldn't watch him dishonor anything good or decent by his very presence.

I also didn't want to be angered by watching the same shallow, un-American people who I encountered when I was downtown in support of Cordoba House months ago.... I didn't want to see these same people waving flags with the words "God Bless America" on their lips. I know they would be there... I knew the blindly patriotic who still have such hatred in their hearts would be mixed in with those grieving.

I didn't want to be angry yesterday.

So, I thought it best to spend the day... quietly.... reflecting on things like this and wondering about human nature surrounding anniversaries.

Oh oh, oh!!! The reason I said I was acting hypocritically is because... I was.

Last week, I was asked to do an interview with the BBC about the general feeling in New York City surrounding the anniversary. And... I did the interview.

The radio guy in the UK, Dominic King, is a friend and a good guy. So I'm sure he would have understood. I probably should have politely declined and shared some thoughts with him another day.

I hope I learned the lesson of that experience.

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If you feel like sharing thoughts or comments, you can always...

EMAIL ME HERE

(Actually you can email me for any reason at all!)

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* Oh... just as an afterthought -- last week I kept hearing people speak with such pride about the new "Freedom Tower", soaring to the sky... 80 stories high and "nearing completion".

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I'm sorry. That's a fucking disgrace. It's 10 years later. The Empire State Building was erected at the height of the depression and it took 410 days... a little over 1 year. The Empire State Building!!! The tower downtown is about 80 stories high today. That's an average of 8 floors a year!!! There was so much bickering about the money that would be made from that real estate, I guess the Port Authority had to decide where the Starbuck's would go and where The Gap would be located ... but everyone's forgettin' that in the midst of all the sentimentality of the day.

The Truth will set us free.

Moving on!

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I'll be back tomorrow with a more ordinary update!!!!

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Here are some images from last week.

Click on photos for larger images
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Y'know, honestly -- what a very cool thing it is I get to do with my Life and my music. I'm so, so grateful to every single one of you who are reading this right now... every single person who's ever hung out with me even once in that park. It means so much to me to know that there are people who "get" what my music and my stories have to say to the world. It reminds me... I guess, it reminds all of us that we're not alone and that there are others who "get it".

Y'know what? I always say that when you do what you love for a living, when you do what I do for a living, every day of a Life is a vacation day and every day is a work day. So I think filmmaker Dean Love and I are gonna shoot a pitch video for an idea we've been kickin' around for an interactive, internet TV show called "THERE".

I'm really getting to work on a couple of things... one of them is this new Broadway project. I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more tomorrow as well. I really feel that it's time to take the whole feeling we get in Central Park to a much larger audience. I'm just about to enter a new place where this little "Broadway" piece will really begin to come together. Now I'm just in the "dating" process... to find the right producers to make it a reality... and the right director/co-writer/co-creator to bring this thing to life.

Seriously. This is getting exciting. But then again.... it's what I do. This is the kind of stuff that makes me live.

In a nutshell, we're putting together something that we hope is headed for Broadway or... Jupiter... or... I don't know. But it's gonna be done someplace. Broadway legend, TONY WALTON, a man who has more Tony Awards and Academy Awards than I have socks, is behind it 100%... so now it's just about getting the right team together and working it.

Here's a little 10-minute video from Tony and his wife... explaining the project.

Click to watch the video

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Are you new here to this website? Now, you might be one of the people who's checking in here for the first time. (There are always a bunch of newcomers here at the site, especially in the Summer season. Bookmark it every day and check back. I'm gonna start bring more video to this page again very soon.)

GIMME A SHOUT HERE!

(Actually, gimme a shout for any reason at all!)

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If you're new you can always go back and browse through THE ARCHIVE as far back as you wanna go. I mean... thanks to my friend, my webmaster, and resident evil genius James Marino, you can historically go back through this website all the way back through the Bush years right up until the present. It's really kinda freaky how much content is here on this site.... cartoons, free songs, Photoshop images. Very cool.

And the Photo Galleries just keep growing. (Maybe you're in there!!!).

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AND HERE'S A REALLY FUN GALLERY FROM LAST SUMMER!!!

Click to visit last year's gallery

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Here are a couple of different fun galleries to check out.

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HAVE FUN TODAY!!!!!! (And be cool to each other, okay?)

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Thanks for everything.

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Peace ☮