I've met people who faced challenges at the Salvation Army, on the streets of Los Angeles, on the streets of small towns, among relatives, among friends, among colleagues, among strangers. I've seen redemptions and also, rather different, gradual edging back from the brink. I've attended funerals, at which people sang the gospel about people for whom the songs were not enough. I've come to learn that we all need all the understanding people can muster, because when the thin veneer wears off, what's beneath is blood and bone. My personal religion is flawed and ineffectual, but it involves something about how we are all here to bandage one another.
A Canadian poet named Ken Munro wrote a prose poem I particularly admire about a man named "Randy".
I want to share it with each of you, in a musical setting I created. Here is a video I made, using Creative Commons samples from flickr.com:
If you are more the "audio" type, then you can hear the song by clicking:
right here, and using the stream or the flash player at the site there.
My original song was called "Driving in Rural Texas on Sunday", about one of my most pleasant memories, the way I whiled away my twenties when I did not while them away at the office. Yet I'm glad this song can serve as a way to share this poem.