Boundless Gratitude: News

(continuing the story from last month...) the camel gets stuck in the eye of the needle (of course). so the rich man dismounts and walks the rest of the way to heaven. he arrives just in time to slip discreetly onto the tail end of a jolly parade of saints who just happen to be marching in. in perfect rhythm with the marching saints, the pearly gates swing shut behind the formerly rich man's eternally adventurous good old soul. but before the gates can close completely and cutoff wi-fi access for another month, the sacred empire's newest citizen makes a quick assessment, pulls a palm-top computer from his pocket and fires off a quick podcast: "a lot like earth, only harder." (more to come ....)

hi there,

this month's song of the month is called "East Oakland Pride Touch the Sky." you can listen to and read about it at this link: http://boundlessgratitude.com/music-28.html.

speaking of east oakland, if you've been waiting to check out the Poetic Groove poetry-and-music open mic in the House of Unity at the Eastmont Mall (73rd and Foothill, upstairs entrance next door to the police station), this is your last chance. co-hostess Indigo has just informed me that the Poetic Groove is having it's last session on this Friday 9/12/2008, starting at 7:30 p.m., and intends to go out with "one big bang." be there or be square.

on the following saturday, September 13 at 2 p.m., the radio-free frank bette original music open mic will feature the inspirational singing, songwriting and guitar playing of michael e, along with our cast of regular suspects.

and speaking of final sessions, this will be the final session of radio-free frank bette using the current name. we are looking for a new name to start with the october event, and would appreciate your suggestions. we want something snappy that describes what is particularly appealing about this open mic: acoustic music, in a sunlit room full of fresh air and the latest monthly art exhibit. oh yes, and congenial company....

also starting in november, the frank bette music open mic will move from the second saturday of the month to the first, for reasons to be explained immediately below.

at 7 p.m. that same evening, saturday september 13, the poetry and prose reading at frank bette will feature the east bay women's poetry salon. since no one on the planet is crazy enough to attend both events (except for moi of course), we're moving the music open mic to the first saturday starting in november.

in the morning on friday september 19th, i'll be the featured musical storyteller for an assembly of 2nd graders at East Oakland Pride
Ellementary School (the school that the song of the month is about).

and on saturday september 27, starting at 7p.m., rhythm & muse (co-hosted by moi and friends) will feature Alice Templeton and May Garrison.

that's it for this month, except that i almost forgot to mention that one of my poems, "Black Professional" has been published in the September issue of "Conceit" magazine
(http://www.myspace.com/conceitmagazine). Hey-hey!

blessings of ramadan,
bg

Hi there,

Tomorrow afternoon (August 9) from 2 to 4 p.m., the Radio-Free Frank Bette original music open mic features Nick Z (http://www.myspace.com/nickzubel), along with a suspiciously talented lineup of regular attendees. Details at (http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/calendar.html).

The following Saturday evening (August 16) from 7 until 9 p.m., the Rhythm & Muse poetry and music open mic features Paradise (http://cdbaby.com/cd/paradisehip) & horn player The Ambassador of Trouts. Details at
(http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/calendar.html).

The song of the month is "Where Did the People Go?" (http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/music-27.html) from the Acoustic Light CD (http://cdbaby.com/cd/bgratitude6).

Much change is afoot: A camel is entering the eye of a needle.
Details next month.

Ciao for now,
BG

Greetings,

Come and join us tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon if you can at the Frank Bette Center's monthly music open mic (http://www.frankbettecenter.org/FBCA-radio-free-program.htm). The regular suspects are all expected to be there as well as a new guitar and voice or two.

Eliza Shefler is this month's open mic feature. Nick Z (http://www.myspace.com/nickzubel) will be the feature in August. And this week's Boundless Gratitude song of the week, "It's a New Day" (http://boundlessgratitude.com/music-26.html) will be the last one. But first, more on Eliza:

Singer/songwriter/pianist Eliza Shefler is my co-host at the monthly music/spoken word open mic series Rhythm & Muse in the Berkeley Art Center. She played classical piano as a child, has been playing jazz piano since the 80's, and currently sings & plays jazz originals & standards, as well as improvises with piano & voice to poetry. She has also taught music to children in the Bay Area, and loves folk music as well. Her influences are classical, Middle Eastern, jazz, and other forms of American music; she also likes to write lyrics to jazz standards that either have no words, or words that she doesn't care for.


So do check out the open mic tomorrow afternoon if you can. It's bound to be a treat. As for songs of the week, they are one of several extracurricular tasks that I'll be giving up to pursue my latest adventure.

"It's a New Day" (http://boundlessgratitude.com/music-26.html) was written back in 2005, when I was first imagining the idea of teaching in a so-called "low-income" school in Oakland, and of making a significant difference. Well currently I'm teaching math enrichment classes in a middle school summer program in East Oakland as well as doing some math tutoring and mentoring at a juvenile detention facility in San Leandro; and a couple of things have happened of late that make me think my dream of "making a difference" could actually come true. There's a lot of work between dream and reality, of course. So I'll be "clearing the decks" as much as possible in the coming months to pursue what I hope will be a very worthwhile and fulfilling goal. Wish me luck!

Ciao

Greetings,

In addition to a sparkling feature by Soul of Sparrow (photos to come) and open mic gems by my songbird co-host Sarah Dunham and the multi-talented Eric Golub (http://myspace.com/ericgolub), Radio Free Frank Bette was further enlivened last Saturday afternoon by the slide guitar wizardry of Carl Weingarten, whose upcoming gig this Friday evening (check his website http://www.mphase.com/ for details), will be competing with many other tempting possibilities in a very full Summer Solstice weekend.

One of those competing events this Friday evening will be an Artist Party and Public Opening of the exhibition Double Exposure: African Americans Before and Behind the Camera at the Museum of the African Diaspora in SF (see MoAD website http://www.moadsf.org/index.html for details).

On Saturday, I'll be playing on the family stage at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival, and will co-host a young performer's night at Rhythm & Muse that same evening (see http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/calendar.html for details).

And on Sunday, June 22, a tribute to the late James Byrd, Jr., of Jasper, TX, will be held at the Herbst Theater in SF. Details can be found in a recent Oakland Tribune article (http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_9606549).

The song of the week "A Black Man's Prayer" (http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/music-25.html) is offered in memory of James Byrd, Jr.

Abiding peace, abundant blessings, one love,
Boundless Gratitude

June appears to be a month of pairs.

Tomorrow night, June 5, I'm the feature at Oakland S.O.U.P. co-hosted by the ever tasteful Selene Steese and Paula Farkas. And the following night, June 6, I'm the live background music at the opening gala for the "schisms" exhibit at the Frank Bette Center, in Alameda. (I've also got a photo hanging in that exhibit, by the way).

Next week on Saturday, June 14, after hosting the singer-songwriter open mic at the Frank Bette Center starting at 2 p.m., I plan to come back at 7 p.m. to play a song or two in the delightful Jeanne Lupton's poetry and prose reading (featuring Judy Juanita & Grace Grafton). The songwriter open mic, doesn't have a feature this month, but a couple of very talented and colorful regulars have promised to be there and help make it one more memorable afternoon.

The following week on Saturday, June 21, I'll be playing a 50-minute set starting at 2 p.m. on the family stage in the San Francisco, Free Folk Festival. And that evening at 7 p.m., I'll be co-hosting a Young Performer's Night at the Rhythm & Muse open mic in the Berkeley Art Center (featuring Maurisha Williams, Ryan Woo, and more).

The one exception to the rule of pairs this month is on June 16th at 6 p.m. when Jean Ellison's enchanting stories at the Frank Bette Center will make the Cathy Dana's magical story swap enchantingly magical. I normally attend and play in this event, but have a scheduling conflict this month: A Siamese pair? In any event, attend if you can. It will definitely be worth it.

Calendar details are online at http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/calendar.html. And songs of the week (this week and previous), which continue to be updated weekly (even though I don't send out weekly e-mails anymore) are online at http://www.boundlessgratitude.com/music.html. This week's song of the week is "Walk for Peace" from my 2004 Homeland Security CD. I was inspired to post it this week after visiting the American Forests (http://www.AmericanForests.org) and Bicycle For A Day (http://www.BicycleForADay.org) websites. It occured to me (in the midst of this election season) that the most effective way to bring about positive change would probably be for everyone to start planting lots of trees.

The good news and the bad news is that freelance writing and photography are beginning to compete with the time and energy that goes into my music. Good news because (unlike music) people pay me to do hose other things (of late I've had people just walk up and ask if they could buy photographic prints). Bad news because, I'm still writing new songs faster than I have the time to learn to play them really well, and am trying to learn so much new stuff that I find myself forgetting parts of the old stuff. But when you think about it, that's not really bad news.

So, I guess the news is all good.

Greetings,

Unana, a powerful mother in Zulu mythology, and Eleanor Roosevelt, a powerful mother in American history, provide the subject matter for the songs of the week (http://boundlessgratitude.com/music.html) this week and last week, respectively. Both are on a new CD, released today and called Acoustic Light, which should go live on CD Baby in about a week.

Eric Golub's (http://www.ericgolub.com/) feature performance yesterday at the monthly Radio-Free Frank Bette music open mic was great! We were also treated to the elegant and moving keyboard, guitar, vocals and songwriting of Chie and Steve Treagus (aka Soul of Sparrow). This coming Saturday at 7 p.m., poet and playwright Charles Blackwell is the featured performer at the Rhythm & Muse open mic in the Berkeley Art Center (http://boundlessgratitude.com/calendar.html).

The Muse has been keeping me too occupied of late to keep up with e-mail or even to go places and play music. But I am writing a ton of new stuff and try to keep my website calendar and song of the week pages updated. There's not much point in going to my MySpace page, however. Trying to keep that page updated also, nowadays, turns out to be an inefficient use of MyTime. :-)

Abiding peace, abundant blessings, one love and happy Mothers Day,
BG

Last night, as the clock ticked past midnight and into the 56th anniversary of my birth, I was still awake, which is unusual for me. I had just finished watching the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith and son. When the hero's eyes filled with tears at the end, so did mine. I am an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person who neither owns a TV nor is a movie enthusiast. But my (now grown) kids, who know what I like, lent me the DVD with strong and repeated recommendations that I watch it. So I did. And today I'm doing, guess what? Pursuing happyness, of course! The re-release of my first CD, Musical Storytelling, appeared on CD Baby today, and I'm letting the world know about it. There's a lot more going on, or I should say, that needs to go on today. So now, I'm off to quit yakking about it and to make it happen in high hopes and expectations that major portions of it will soon appear on this website and elsewhere.

Inspired in part by stuff I've been reading about something called "Web 2.0", including an article about a "geek" who turned himself into an "Internet Rock Star" by publishing one new song a week, I posted my first "Song of the Week" today: First of what I hope will be many. I say inspired in part, because the major inspiration comes from an immediate need to do something productive with all of the music I've been learning and writing for the past couple of years. Without writing or learning anything new at all, I've already got more than enough to post a song a week for a couple of years. But rather than just a dumping ground for old stuff, my intent is to go live with new and emerging stuff, which for some reason, seems to be just flowing out of me so quickly nowadays that it is almost scary, or perhaps would be scary if it wasn't so exciting. The idea of course is for me actually share the excitement, rather than just gabbing into my computer. So when you get a chance, please check out my song of the week, and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Greetings,

I invite you to begin 2008 by accompanying me on a stroll through the following 5 scenes, which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I have enjoyed writing.

New Beginnings

#1. Bundled against the morning chill with sweat stinging your eyes, you stride into the sunrise like an Olympic sprinter capturing a gold medal. Your fallen forehead sweatband pokes, perspiration-soaked like a soggy ascot, through the tightly zipped neckline of your hooded sweatshirt. The southeastern sky, earlier a uniformly deep indigo dome crisscrossed by fuzzy contrails gradually glowing crimson in the growing light of dawn, now seems to have collapsed -- under a volcanic eruption of screaming, bright, white, baby daylight -- into an intense yellow contour along peaks of distant mountains: a burning carpet rolled out for the rise of morning sun. As if the breath of Earth herself was taken by this vista, the only sounds, other than your breathing and your footfalls, are the soothing wash of gentle surf along the sandy shore and an occasional bird cry (to or perhaps about you) sometimes overhead, sometimes taking flight at your approach. The cleansing sound of surf and the penetrating fullness of moon suspended in a cavernous night sky, now behind you, seem to have dispersed all of your cares as if they were but childish fears of darkness.

Still, there have got to be more reasonable times of day for cardiovascular exercise outdoors. Leaving the natural gravity of sleep and the sense pleasure of awakening leisurely in a warm bed, particularly on wet and cold mornings such as this, requires a strenuous burst of cognitive escape velocity that certainly rivals the violent energy expenditure of a space shuttle launch. Yet you do it without the assistance of “Mission Control”, without the support of a national space administration and without the hero worship of millions of live TV viewers around the world. Your motivation is simply the feeling that arises in you now, as the sun appears above horizon. You feel that same sun rise within you with more power and hope than you could possibly express. Your whispered “Thank You” for one more opportunity to participate in the creation appears in front of you in puffs of breath made visible by the morning chill, as you complete your morning run and walk home briskly, in gently apologetic disregard of aching muscles, before the cold can fully penetrate the sweat-drenched layers of your now clinging clothing.

2. A few lines from a song that you have always loved lodge themselves within your head. You were listening absentmindedly to the radio, and suddenly the world around you has receded into the distance and distant memories have drawn intimately near. You feel and inhale every single moment, so perfectly sweetened by the passage of time that they make you laugh and cry in successive sighing breaths, each rhyming with its predecessor. The moisture in your eyes betrays deep grief at long lost sight of whatever or whomever you so deeply feel and breathe. Normally, under such a spell, you stumble around in a nostalgic daze, until sobriety returns. Then you shiver helplessly, on slipping back into the cold light of bright but somehow empty present reality. But this time you find your shaman drum (some, the unaware, would say guitar) before the drunkenness can pass. Then time slips away instead, as drunken fingers navigate unsteadily, a slow but dogged path along the taught feel of guitar strings, toward an object of desire that every drunk seeks naturally, but without knowing.

You slowly accustom (reacquaint?) your fingers to unaccustomed (forgotten?) patterns of movement across fret board and sound hole, to initially create and eventually elaborate the melody. Perhaps you sing some words, and later mingle vocal harmony with fingered chords. Weeks, months, years later, a listener praises your interpretation and the richness of your singing voice. What interpretation? What singing voice? Your fingers played your memories; your heart sang what it felt. Instead of betting on the lottery of radio station playlists or purchasing your feelings from an online down load service, you pour your own. Not just into memory, but in present reality with body, mind and soul. Synapse by synapse, from the innermost feelings to the open spaces just beyond your lips and finger tips, you leave nothing up your sleeve until loves and lights that disappeared in time and space are visible once more. You share not just some sounds, but the creation as well. Your whispered “Thank You” for one more opportunity to participate dances with the sound of your guitar and brings a smile to someone whom you may have never met before, may never meet again, but will always be connected to from this moment on.

3. You feel supremely unsuccessful. The harder you try, the less (worthwhile anyway) happens, or so it seems. A former co-worker that you supervised, 15 or 20 years ago, approaches unexpectedly and thanks you for advice that still helps her to succeed today. Now you feel supremely successful, as if making the deadlines of the moment, or even the truly big issues, such as getting your life together or making a difference in a troubled world, don’t really matter. You don’t even remember the advice you gave. Knowing you, it was probably something like, “Relax, do your best and move on to the next thing.” So your advice has just returned when you most needed it. A “Thank You” escapes your lips in a chuckle at not only participating in the creation, but at also having the creation participate in you.

4. You attend a class reunion, for the first time since your graduation 30 years ago, from a school steeped in tradition that has played a major role in shaping your personality and life. While there, you revel in hours that seem like minutes of one-on-one conversation with your class mentor, a conversation you have dreamed of for the last 30 years. You share your music with him. Not the old stuff you’ve already done, but the most challenging new stuff that you are still working on: inspired by precious memories and breathtaking sunrises. You leave the reunion feeling as if you have re-established a sacred connection that you never should have let go of and never will again. Shortly after the reunion, however, the school closes and the mentor dies. Your “Thank You” emerges in a barely audible and absolutely reverent whisper, for having actually participated in this particular moment of the creation, and for realizing that every moment whether you choose to participate or not remains precious, irreplaceable and (mercilessly in some cases, mercifully in others) fleeting.

5. You notice that most of the people you encounter day to day are younger than you, unlike in youth when most them were older, and unlike in earlier adulthood when most seemed about your age. A hint of dismay at youth and opportunities lost immediately dissipates as if chased by an irrepressible excitement. Your family is growing much faster than it did back in the day when you were falling in love, getting married, having and raising children; and much faster than you can keep track of now. Your children and all of their friends are falling in love, getting married, having and raising children. You also realize that your parents, no matter how old they are, no longer seem as if they are that much older than you, because they aren’t. You have literally become your parents, for better and for worse, as well as your mentors. Participating in the creation feels like a school from which everyone eventually graduates. You feel as if you have entered the upper classes, not due to age or achievement, but simply by noticing the sacred opportunity in every moment to participate in the creation. The moments keep coming of course and each and every moment is a lifetime in and of itself. You smile “Thank You” on entering the New Year and realizing that in any given moment, all you can possibly do is also the most and least that you can conceivably do: Relax, do your best and move on to the next one. Happy New Year.

Abiding peace, abundant blessings, one love,
Boundless Gratitude