Voices in the Crisis.

Times of crisis. I flick on the radio. Seems it's all going to get worse before it gets better.

I switch off and turn to the voices in my head. I hear Vince Lombardi telling me: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

Not sure how that works in the time of "plague;" a little invisible, viral entity wreaking havoc across the globe. I suppose try to stay safe & healthy, and don't succumb to the darkness. Also from Lombardi: "Run to daylight."

Yes. Maybe that's closer to the mark. Some say that maybe the virus doesn't do well in direct sunlight. Hope that's true, but who knows?!

We are in lockdown mode. Still going out for walks. Trying to stay on the sunny side of the street, and the sunny side of life. Not easy. Today is cloudy and gray, with a bit of snow on the ground.

Yikes. My father used tell me: "No one ever promised you a rose garden." 

That's true. No promises. We all just found ourselves here on this little spinning blue planet. Doing the best we can.

The a.m. soundtrack - Tom Waits' "Alice." (2002). Another one of those amazing voices I turn to in times of need. Waits sounds a bit like Louis Armstrong, a bit like Howling Wolf, a bit like a raving street preacher, street poet, beat poet. He is supremely dextrous singer and lyricist: musical, jazzy, intelligent, hilarious. That voice is old and crusty, hard as a rusty nail. Waits is a verbal/lyrical trickster and magus. This record was written for a play, directed by Robert Wilson. Waits at his arty best. A bit of that  trashy Bertolt Brecht, European ragamuffin, down and out, vibe. Puts me in mind of the Threepenny Opera. All songs co-written with Kathleen Brennan. A major work in Waits canon. Brilliant, moody, melancholy, inspiring. A dark, twisted, hard beauty. Waits unbound.