Facebook Scrabble Song for Alex

Back in September, 2008, I wrote a song inspired by "Scrabulous", the online word game that was threatened with extinction over copyright issues.  The matter was resolved (the game is now called "Lexulous") and "The Facebook Scrabble Song" seemed destined for the scrap heap of topical songs that are no longer topical.

Then my talented songwriting friend Alex Hickey mentioned in my class for songwriters that she and her mom play scrabble on Facebook.

I said, "I have a song about that!"  (It's one of those golden moments all songwriters hope for.) 

Now Alex has announced that she's moving home to Nova Scotia.  I think her mother may live there.  If so, I hope they get to play lots of Scrabble in person--and Lexulous online, too.



P.S.  I've written a couple of other songs that comment on our relationship with the Internet.  "Twitter in my Heart" is one and "Embrace Me" is another.  On the whole, I tend to favour face-to-face experiences over online ones...but here we are on the Internet!  Paradox is beautiful.

Piles of Leaves

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
- Buddha

Nothing is perfect, nothing is finished, and nothing lasts
- Japanese concept of wabi-sabi

I started this post on a beautiful fall day in Toronto, about a week ago. On that Friday, it was warm enough that weathercasters were using the phrase "unseasonably warm temperatures" a lot. Our happy enjoyment of the warm breeze had a shadow side to it: the thought that maybe climate change was responsible...that darker days are coming and that the beauty may not last. Meanwhile...

Over coffee, a friend confided that she does love the messed-up guy who can't be fully present for her...

A woman leaves her job in the midst of a conflict she is unable to resolve...

An artist recognizes that her career may never bear fruit the way she had hoped...

A caregiver comes to terms with her elderly friend's decline and acknowledges her own limitations.

Meanwhile leaves fall from the trees today: graceful golden pages against a blue sky, numerous and silent, falling without fanfare. No one loss more particularly sad than another, and piling up in crunchy ways that are strangely satisfying in their abundance. The losses add up to something both sad and reassuring, and we can't avoid walking through them.

Over coffee, my friend remarks that so many stories do not end neatly...perhaps are never really finished.

Another leaf gracefully falls through blue sky.

My song,  "Pile of Leaves"

Election Sign

It's been a few weeks since the Toronto municipal election when Rob Ford was elected mayor.

It's still a little bit of a shock to realize that he won: a man so evidently out of his depth, whose ideas  reveal such lack of insight, sophistication and compassion.  My teenage children were especially shocked and dismayed by the outcome.  But we told them the sun would rise the next day...and it did.  I remember my dad saying something like that to me when George W. Bush won...twice.

'How could this happen?' we wondered.  It's an imperfect world. 

The election signs are down now and we'll have to live with Ford for awhile.  But at least we live in a democracy.  At least we can talk openly about what we feel needs to change in our communities.  At least we can still agree to disagree.  

If the guy at the top ends up making a lot of mistakes, maybe it will mobilize the rest of us to keep talking to each other, keep working together, keep standing up for our beliefs.

Keep changing what we can, from our own little patch of green.