JPF Home Page Forums Lyric and MP3 Feedback Lyric Feedback Forum 3 She Dances to Music No One Can Hear

I posted this piece previously, but am doing so again both because I hope to use it as one of my songs for street singing before long, and also because of an experience I had today that I've included below that reminded me of it. Any further critiques by those who didn't see and comment previously are welcome. Thanks!


She Dances to Music No One Can Hear

Just an old bag lady with her load of rags
Huddled over a winter’s grate.
Steam wafts ‘round like an evening gown,
Or the swirling mists of fate.
Can you see Mame now? She takes a bow
For applause that is her due--
And sometimes early, and sometimes late,
She’ll lift a ragged shoe.

Where the Old Ballroom once stood,
Mame dances as she should.

She dances to music no one can hear,
Some folks say she’s crazy.
She dances to music no one can hear,
But maybe they’re just lazy.
Who wants to be bothered to see if its so?
They leave Mame to dance in the mist and the snow.
Passersby near, they move on in fear--
When she dances to music no one can hear.

Just an old rag lady with a crooked hat
Waltzing on a winter’s night--
While traffic roars and the street lamp pours
Its cool pool of blinding white.
Mame can hear great crowds all cheering,
And they’re throwing roses too.
They’ve paid for her dance, so once again,
She lifts her diamond shoe.

Where the Old Ballroom once stood,
Mame dances as she should.

She dances to music no one can hear,
Some folks say she’s crazy.
She dances to music no one can hear,
But maybe they’re just lazy.
Who wants to be bothered to see if its so?
They leave Mame to dance in the mist and the snow.
Passersby near, they move on in fear--
When she dances to music no one can hear.

By grey of dawn its plain she’s gone
Where the spotlights never dim.
Just a heap of old rags, her dreams in bags--
And pure white flakes on her skin.

Where the Old Ballroom once stood,
Mame dances as she should.

She dances to music no one can hear,
Some folks say she’s crazy.
She dances to music no one can hear,
But maybe they’re just lazy.
Who wants to be bothered to see if its so?
They leave Mame to dance all alone in the snow.
Passersby near, they move on in fear--
When she dances to music no one can hear.
Mame dances to music no one can hear.

c2007 Skip Johnson
All rights reserved

Author's Note: I have set these lyrics to music now. The verses are in cut time, and the chorus is in a sort of waltz 3/4 time. The verses are in D minor, with the chorus going into D major. Those contrasts with a fairly complex chord structure seem to match this quite well. The verses are the somber condition of Mame in her current state, with the chorus being the brighter realm her mind inhabits as she dreams of her past glories. (I have a $15 dollar mic and can now make mp3 sound files. Anybody know a good site where I can post them?)

I just returned a few hours ago from a trip on the T line down into Boston to do some street singing and outreach. I went to the downtown crossing, the main thoroughfare for most of the subway lines. They have something like 18,000 people a day that pass through there, and a total of a million a day on the subway system as a whole. In winter weather especially, that's about the only place warm enough to play your music without freezing your fingers—down underground past the frost.

When I began to set up to play, I noticed a sign on the wall that said this was indeed a street performer location. It also noted I must get an official permit from the transit authority to perform. I asked someone who worked in the subway where to obtain the permit. He sent me a long, windy, winter walk across the city to the main office over two streets beyond Boston Commons.

It was cold! The wind was ripping between those tall stone buildings and increasing the discomfort. I walked, carrying my guitar until I was staggering. Part way over, I stopped at a church with its doors unlocked to take a rest. I rested in the warm holy place of those of another branch of the Christian church and tried to make out the meaning of the religious symbolism they used to decorate the most impressive structure with.

Thank God for congregations who keep their doors open at all times so folks can stop in to pray and/or get out of the cold and rest for a bit! I ended up sitting in churches two times more before I went through seven different series of directions to locate the street singer permit office. The actual permit office ended up being exactly in the opposite direction from the T line stop I had started out from. I certainly made up for lack of past exercise today.

Boston must be a very healthy city to live in. There's almost no downtown parking. What exists runs $25 plus for four hours. Who can afford that? One man recently purchased someone else's private parking space for $250,000. This means about the only way to get into the heart of things is to take the T to a subway stop, then walk where you want to go. I don't mind. This winter snow (even though it is mild by New England standards) has put a crimp in my usual outdoor hiking and exercise. That's part of what made that walk so tiring. I was out of shape.

One of the guys I met who gave me directions was sitting at his computer with Band in a Box arranging extras to go along with his piano playing. He had been a music teacher and a performer for 25 years. He booked Jewel last week in a publicity piece doing her music down in the subway. That's his job. He doesn't sign up lowly street performers, however. He did mention some famous artists whose names I forget got their start singing in Boston's subway by way of encouragement. We had a good talk. He had the courtesy to draw me a detailed map on a sheet of paper to direct me back across the city.

The permit for street performance in Boston is $25. That's a lot less than Santa Cruz, California. When I went in for a permit there, it was $150. Fortunately, that applied to everyone except political, cultural and religious applicants. Mine was a Christian street outreach. So I fell under the same regulations, but wasn't charged anything.

All that leads to this: An unusual thing happened in the downstairs lobby of the main transit building when I was about to leave to retrace my steps across the city. I sat down on a chair in the main lobby on ground floor. I was a bit winded after running up and down elevators, escalators and stairs to four different offices on different floors looking for that permit. I knew I had a long walk ahead of me. I wanted to catch my breath and make sure I was warm first.

I noticed commotion among the seats in the food court area near me. Two guards in uniforms were striding purposefully forward, plainly intent on intervening in a serious matter. The problem was a homeless man sitting at a small table with two chairs at it. Apparently, he caused some sort of a threatening scene. Somebody had summoned security--probably on their cell phone.

When the man in question saw the uniformed officers, he began making loud, hoarse cries and showing great agitation and hostility. The closer they approached, the louder his inarticulate wounded animal noises rose. The guards retreated to call for backup on their walkie-talkies. Plainly, they would have to take this man down. But there was no way they were going to tackle him with only two of them on site. He was simply too violent and dangerous: a whacko, a crazy, an unpredictable and possibly vicious loony.

I could see the man was afraid of the guards. They, in turn, were afraid of him. The people at nearby tables were also showing signs of increasing anxiety. In a minute, there was going to be a major scene right here among the white tables and chairs and folks eating their lunches. It wasn't going to be pretty.

I picked up my guitar and stepped over to the man's table. When he saw me coming, he made the sort of sounds he had been making at the guards, though less intense. I wasn't wearing a uniform, and so was apparently less of a threat. I sat down across from him and set my guitar beside me.

I began to speak with him quietly. I asked him if he were hungry. He made the same sort of unusual sounds, but without the intensity he had to the officers. I asked him his name. Again, he responded with the vocal grunting, but without words. I could see he was dirty and weathered from living on the street. I noticed that both of his hands were bleeding from fresh wounds. He must have received them in whatever altercation that had caused someone to summon the guards. When he grunted, I could see several of his front teeth were missing. He was younger than my 49 years. Plainly, life had kicked him around rather fiercely. He was about to be hurled into center ring again for another pummeling.

Again, I asked the man, "Are you hungry?" He only made those peculiar sounds at me. I said, "I think you may find use for this" and took out the twenty dollar bill I had gotten from the Verse teller earlier in the day. I pushed it across the tiny table top to him. He accepted it. I had brought the twenty along in case I needed it. It was a good thing I had. I did need it. For him. I knew from his appearance this man sorely lacked basic life necessities. I also figured the bill would distract him. It did seem to calm him a bit. But he was still in an unresolved and highly-charged public situation. After all, the watching guards were only holding off until their backups arrived.

Here they came. More men in blue uniforms with their official status as defenders of public safety displayed on badges. By now, however, the scene was much calmer. They hesitated to rush the man's table with me sitting knee to knee engaged in our unusual conversation: words from me, and the guttural groaning from the man. They didn't wish to make the charge to take him down with me in such close proximity. I raised my palm to warn the guards back and said, "Things will be alright." So they held back, but stood watching from the perimeter to see what would happen.

Suddenly it occurred to me that the man's vocal sounds were very similar to a deaf and dumb woman I had met and baptized years before when I was a pastor in California. Perhaps this man was deaf and dumb. I knew from experience with the woman that those with the frustration of not being able to communicate often had violent and public expressive outbursts of emotion. They can't hear themselves, so they can be quite noisy. It is as though their emotions are not hidden like most people, but on public display at all times. Dumb is a good word for people’s perceptions of those who cannot hear. They seem to be stupid or crazy to those who don't understand their disability. How could I communicate?

I reached into my pocket and took out the map the man in the office upstairs had drawn for me. I fished a pen out of the inside of my long coat. I thought, "I'll write out a message and see if this man can understand it." I didn't get a chance to do so. When the man saw the pen and paper, he reached across and immediately took them from my hands. I asked him his name again. He wrote it out eagerly, along with part of his medical ID number. Probably he had needed to write that information out so many times it had almost become part of his name. So, he could hear me, or at least read my lips.

Then he wrote, "Hate wheelchair!" I said, "My wife has had to be in one, too. They aren't much fun." He wrote, "Hate hospital!" I said, "I've been in the hospital, also." He wrote, "Hate jail!" The only time I've been there was to do jail and prison ministry. It is one of my favorite places to go, so I remained silent. I'm sure I've been to prison in my lifetime oftener than any inmate incarcerated, only they parole me at the end of the evening.

Then the man picked up the twenty dollars and the things he had written on the paper. He walked over to a nearby large table. The guards tensed. At the table sat 8 to 10 Wall Street executive types in expensive suits, salon-groomed hair, shined shoes and ramrod straight very-successful-business-men's postures. The ragged man showed them the twenty dollar bill and also what he'd written on his paper. Apparently, they were the ones he'd gotten into the conflict with who had summoned the guards. He had tried to tell them something, and they hadn't understood him. He needed badly to communicate, but hadn't been able to. The circle of executives sat as frozen as statues in the public park until the man came back to my table.

When the man handed me back the map, I saw bright, fresh blood from the cuts on his knuckles. It had mixed on the page with the ink. Whatever had happened before I had arrived had drawn significant blood. His. He had presented the businessmen a bloody message. No wonder they didn't know how to respond. Plainly this homeless man was not ignorant. He could read and write. He could express his deepest hurts and emotions. He simply had no ready means of communicating with other people. They had mistaken his disability for insanity. Now he was about to be treated as he had been so often before: as a rogue, a madman, a danger to society and to himself.

I motioned the guards back again. There wasn't going to be a problem. Then I asked the man once more if he wished to get something to eat. He nodded. There were food stalls around the perimeter of the seating area. The guards were still on site, hovering like blue falcons. I figured I had better stay with the man until he had successfully exited the building.

He didn't choose to get his food where the disturbance occurred. Apparently, he had only come inside to get out of the freezing wind. The two of us began walking through the tables toward the door, him leading and me a few steps behind carrying my guitar case. He stopped at two tables to shake hands with the diners to show he hadn't meant any harm. I wonder what they thought when they looked down at their hands and saw his blood on them?

An older woman rose from her table as I passed. She took my free hand in hers and said, "I just wanted to shake your hand." I smiled at her. I accompanied the man to the doorway to the street and sidewalk. As he was exiting to the street, I turned and walked back across the lobby to my own exit. The man had the twenty. He could find his own food. I nodded to one of the solemn, silent guards as I passed back through the lobby.

I had no idea what would occur when I got up this morning. I think that's why God had me make that long, cold, windy walk clear across the city looking for my street singer permit. The Bible says we don't do good deeds in order to be saved. But we most certainly are saved to do good deeds. The book of Ephesians puts it this way in speaking to Christians:

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not of yourselves, it is a gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

So today I lugged my 12-string all over Boston, and didn't even strum its strings. Still, it was a very good day. I've got the papers to sign up for my permit. I look forward to getting down to the heart of Boston again and beginning to mix and mingle. There are a lot of most interesting people to meet.


P.S. There is a post script to this story. A few minutes ago, I finally located my long coat that I was wearing that day that had the man's bloody note and message written on it.

After taking a closer look at the blood stained paper than I had opportunity to do at the time this all happened, I am able to piece together more of what was going on. The deaf and dumb man had, in fact, written more than I knew, and what he had written was specifically for the benefit of his primary adversaries: the table of businessmen.

The gist of his somewhat fragmentary written discourse (those who speak primarily in sign have a much more abbreviated means of symbolic communication than we who speak verbally)is this:

"Massachusetts Health is a toilet. I have burned my Social Security Card and all my identification papers. I hate being confined to a wheel chair. (Probably after being drugged into a stupor, a practice that makes patient care easier.) I hate being put into a hospital. I hate being thrown in jail. I like to walk alone."

The usual structures of society weren't working for him. He simply chose to go off the grid, and in a way that would allow no one to track him, or if they caught him, make it more difficult to know who he was. The man's blood stains are smudged on that message presented to the table of business men with whom he had clashed. They had bought into the system. He had opted out. It was a conscious choice, and made based on his life experience. He wasn't asking for their pity, or their scorn. Only their understanding.

On the back of the same sheet is a bit of writing of my own, copied from above a small altar with a crucifix in one of the churches that allowed me refuge from the freezing cold when I was literally too weak to carry my heavy 12 string in its case further. It is by one of my favorite of the Catholic saints, Saint Francis of Assissi. It reads:

"Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me, Lord a correct faith, a certain hope, a perfect charity, sense and knowledge, so that I may carry out Your holy and true command."

If you are unaware of Saint Francis' story, you don't know how fitting this saying is in connection with the experience cited above.

St. Francis was the son of a wealthy merchant who underwent a profound religious conversion as a young man. This took the form of a revulsion for the greed he saw motivating people around him, both in his own merchant father's life, and also in the lives of both the people of his day, and even the clergy.

Saint Francis, like the man I met, determined to reject the system and renounce all worldly wealth. I believe it was at the point of a confrontation with his father following his conversion that he stripped himself naked, dropped his clothing on the floor of the room, and walked away from all worldly wealth, intent on devoting himself solely to doing the will of God. So he rejected all the marked priviledges his wealthy upbringing would have afforded him in exchange for a life of devotion to God.

In doing so, Saint Francis became a symbol of solidarity with the poor and destitute of this world, and also a standing rebuke to the excesses of his fellow clergy and those of his own social class. Authorized by the church of his day to begin a new religious order, he gathered others who shared his convictions and would adopt his approach to life.

It is said that his compassion for all living things even extended to the animals, and that he took literally the Biblical command to "preach the gospel to every creature". He would preach to birds, and beasts, both tame and wild. The bond he held with these creatures was extraordinary to those who looked on.

Perhaps my favorite story of St. Francis is when he was invited as the honored guest to a lavish banquet hosted by the richly robed and gold and jeweled dignitaries of the church. This invitation was due to his hugely popular appeal with the masses. They hoped by appearing with Saint Francis to glow in the reflection of his fame. Perhaps the were also intreged by the story of his unusual conversion and even secretly coveted the enormous influence this peculiar monk increasingly weilded with the people.

Saint Francis arrived in the coarse, brown robe someone had given him, his waist tied with a piece of old rope for a belt. They directed him to his seat at the banquet table. There the wealth of offerings given to God provided his human representatives with a rich bounty of the finest wines and delicacies.

But before the first course could be served, Saint Francis reached into his robe and pulled out a rag wrapped bundle containing the crust of dried bread someone had given to him. He began offering these to all of his fellow clergy who would accept them.

Makes me wish my own denomination would establish such an order. It would certainly take away the stress at tax season not to own any worldly wealth. Who knows, perhaps God will call me to minister at that level at some point in my own future. But one must do small things before those that are large. And all great things take time.

Hi Skip,

This is beautifully written and deeply touching. Thanks for sharing it again. It's the first time I've seen it.

Lisa

Hi Skip
I loved this one when I first saw it...it's a great piece

It is a wonderful song and such great imagery, Skip. I love that she dances to music that others can't hear.

What a moving experience you had today, you certainly had a higher purpose. I'm sure the lady who shook your hand knew that too. I think your song will get plenty of people thinking about their opinions of other people. Sometimes we just need to be more merciful as you were today.

Always great to help others. It makes God smile

Skip, the song is great, I hear almost a Mr. Bojangles feel to it, the story of the encounter today even better, hope all is well for you my friend...Moker

Skip

I had time to read your story this time.....you are an amazing man. How people react in situations all depends on their PERSPECTIVE on life. If there were more people in the world like you, the world would be a better place. Peace

Herbie

Thanks for taking a look, guys. It does have a bit of a Bojangles feel to it, doesn't it? As for the incident down in Boston, that sort of an opportunity is a gift from God. I thank Him for it.

Skip

Skip: I always admire your efforts, whether they hit me or not, you have a great talent. This song is a wonderful portrait of a person most of us would shun which is not Jesus's way, of course. I wish you had included a little back story to this character, like a part of a verse that might say something liek, "They say she used to dance on Broadway, till she got too old to keep up" type of thing. In any event I wish you well with it. GBY /Glen

Glen,

I have no only visited your site, I've bookmarked it so I can go back later and explore it thoroughly. If I'm not mistaking those shifting graphics are keyed to the instrumentation and rythms of the music being played. Very cool.

We've got a 15 dollar starter mic and figured out how to create an mp3 file to submit a few songs for a praise book an old college classmate is putting out that will be used in our denomination's churches all across America. Now I need to know a good (and possibly free) site to post such. Any ideas?

Thanks for taking a look here.]

Skip

Skip: That isn't on my site (shifting graphics) but thanks for dropping by. You could upload you MP3's to a site such a soundclick or song ramp. Just create an account and they take 'em right off your computer. Otherwise, you'll need a domain and a webhost if you want to have your own exclusive site. Email me off this list if you need any help with that. /Glen

The lyrics are beautiful. They paint a picture that is very moving.

The story afterward was very moving too. Keep up the good work!

Hi Skip

Thank you too for reminding me about the little old lady who used to sing round our backdoor when we were young - My mother always invited her for a cup of soup. She wore an old fur coat, a felt hat, umbrella and workboots. She used to sing and try to dance even although her boots were heavy. Your words just made me smile. We were always taught to be kind to those less fortunate that ourselves.

Luckylady

Hey Skipper

Bridge rocks to high Heaven!!!

Hi Skip,
I recall this one, and that saying something, since I only recall a small percentage of my own! It's well written and touching.
If I were gonna make one suggestion....I probably wouldn't, since it affects you're hook.....but since you ask

Think I'd have it;
She dances to music only she can hear....

Otherwise it says she's a no one, though that's OBVIOUSLY NOT what u r saying.
Ben

Skip,
if you're looking for a site to post a collection of mp3's for free try

www.soundclick.com

Hey Skip,
I'm new here. I hang out mostly on Christian Songwriters Network (CSN). Love you song and your story. 'Perfect love cast out all fear'...your story was a good demo.
Blessings,
Anthony

I loved the title of this. That's what drew me in to read it. I was not disappointed by the lyric. Very touching, very beautiful. Thanks for sharing it, Skip.

- James

Skipper, are we gonna get to hear this?

Glen,

I discovered where those fancy shifting graphics that go along with the music being played came from. It wasn't from your site. It was from my own new laptop. Apparently it has a program that makes the screen do that whenever music is played.

I do want to get the specific info for a site for mp3's, but will have to delay that. This Friday evening, my 60 mostly first time preachers will be beginning four cocurrent 14 evening patriotic/Christian events that I've been prepping them for since before Christmas. I won't have a lot of extra time until that is finished--which will be about the second week of April.

Jerry Seinfeld quipped, "It is well known that in America fear of pubic speaking exceeds fear of death. That means at a funeral most of the audiance would rather be in the coffin that up front giving the eulogy." Keep my kids, God's kids, in your prayers. I'm asking them to do something more terrifying than going into live combat. Literally. And they are going to do fine.

Keep writing until I can get enough time to get back to it again myself.

Skip

Moker,

I've bookmarked the mp3 site you suggested to investigate. Thanks for the tip!

Skip

Ben,

I've thought through your suggestion and see merit in it. That was the part of the lyric that a bunch of us struggled with when I first posted it for critique. We had about six versions, as I recall. I think I'll keep it as is, however. From your perspective (a sympathetic one), she is somebody, and shouldn't be considered a nobody. From the perspective of most (not necessarily as sympathetic), she is considered a nobody. The song is written primarily for folks who might consider those such as the Mames of this world nobodies.

Thanks for making me think this through carefully again, friend.

Keep writing until I can get time to begin doing so again myself.

Skip

Moosesong, Sweet Joyce, James,

Thanks for your encouragement.

Keep writing until I can get back to it myself. Also, please remember in prayer 60 of my students who will begin four cocurrent 14 meeting public programs in this area this coming Friday evening. The series is a new patriotic/Christian program designed to celebrate the best of American history and culture and to present the great stories and teachings of the Bible. The speakers are mostly first time ever preachers. As public speaking is a greater fear, according to psychologists, than death itself for the majority of Americans, this is the emotional equivalent of going into live combat.

The youngest speaker in this series is in 5th grade and the oldest are young adults. The majority are 7th through 12th grade students at our local Christian grade school and academy here in Stoneham. They can use all the prayers from anyone who is willing. Particularly from those of you who haven't prayed in a while, if ever. God hears from me all the time. I talk His ear off. If He gets a request from you, I know He'll sit up on His throne and lend a special ear.

Thanks again for a look at this lyric.

Keep writing until I can get time to do some again myself.

Skip

Anthony,

Glad you dropped in here. I don't get over to the Christian site much. Can't be two places on a regular basis, and I've got a lot of dear long time friends whose faces I've mostly never seen here at Just Plain Folks.

Part of the reason I post mostly here is because while I am a Christian and a pastor, I write both secular and sacred music. All the music I write is from the Biblical world view. It just doesn't happen to all be on specifically religious topics. Rather like the book of Proverbs, in fact.

In that book, there is a flea market of great pithy two liners on every sort of life wisdom topics, along with a cast of intreging characters. But it is "God in overalls". You can read four chapters running, and not find God mentioned a single time. When He is referred to, it is in the same tone of voice as everything else that has been being talked about.

My basic philosophy as a Christian songwriter (as well as in my life in general) is summed up in the words I asked my wife to paint in calligraphy around the sound hole of the most recent guitar I wore out. It is this:

"For the glory of God and the good of man".

Those are the stars I aim for in my writing, not the heights to which I habitually soar, of course.

Thanks for stopping in here. Tell the writers over at the Christians site to do the same.

Keep writing.

Skip

Herbitunes,

When will you hear this? Sooner rather than later, since I now have purchased my $15 starter mic and actually produced some mp3's to forward for possible inclusion in a new book of praise songs a college friend is compiling. They will pick the 25 of what they consider to be the best of the best submitted by composers throughout our denomination and print a book that will be distributed to all our churches in North America.

Don't know if mine will make the cut, as I have nothing but me, my 12 string, and my $15 mic sitting beside my wife's computer by way of recording studio. We'll see. Hope to upgrade for quality as we can. But I am not ashamed to post what I can do now until I can improve.

I may have to delay until the Let Freedom Ring series I have referred to further up in this thread is completed, however. That is taking my time just now.

Keep bugging me, buddy.

Skip

Skip,

This is a beautiful song and an even MORE beautiful story to go along with it. It truly is a blessing when we can actually see the plan God had for us at a certain time. You had one of those. Most often we are simply "walking by faith, not by sight" and we find ourselves wondering just what plan God has for all we experience. I for one love it when a plan comes together...and His plans always come together. I'm glad you had the chance to write about this. Again...beautiful.

Also...did you mention you needed an inexpensive website? I have just the place. It's not free...but the closest thing you'll find with great quality & it's user friendly. Try www.1and1.com - you won't be disappointed at 2.99 per month.

Bree

Bree,

I'm glad to share that story. I was a gift to me to experience it. There is a postscript. I finally located my long coat that I was wearing that day that had the man's bloody note and message written on it.

After taking a closer look than I had opportunity to do at the time this all happened, I am able to piece together more of what was going on. He had, in fact, written more than I knew, and what he had written was specifically for the benefit of his primary adversaries: the table of businessmen.

The gist of his somewhat fragmentary written discourse (those who speak primarily in sign have a much more abbreviated means of symbolic communication than we who speak verbally)is this:

"Massachusetts Health is a toilet. I have burned my Social Security Card and all my identification papers. I hate being confined to a wheel chair. (Probably after being drugged into a stupor, a practice that makes patient care easier.) I hate being put into a hospital. I hate being thrown in jail. I like to walk alone."

The usual structures of society weren't working for him. He simply chose to go off the grid, and in a way that would allow no one to track him, or if they caught him, make it difficult to know who he was. The man's blood stains are smudged on that message presented to the table of business men with whom he had clashed. They had bought into the system. He had opted out. It was a conscious choice, and made based on his life experience. He wasn't asking for their pity, or their scorn. Only their understanding.

On the back of the same sheet is a bit of writing of my own, copied from above a small altar with a crucifix in one of the churches that allowed me refuge from the freezing cold when I was literally too weak to carry my heavy 12 string in its case further. It is by one of my favorite of the Catholic saints, Saint Francis of Assissi. It reads:

"Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me, Lord a correct faith, a certain hope, a perfect charity, sense and knowledge, so that I mayh carry out Your holy and true command."

If you are unaware of Saint Francis' story, you don't know how fitting this saying is in connection with the experience cited above.

St. Francis was the son of a wealthy merchant who underwent a profound religious conversion as a young man. This took the form of a revulsion for the greed he saw motivating people around him, both in his own merchant father's life, and also in the lives of both people, and even the clergy.

Saint Francis, like the man I met, determined to reject the system and renounce all worldly wealth. I believe it was at the point of a confrontation with his father following his conversion that he stripped himself naked and walked away from all worldly wealth, intent on devoting himself solely to doing the will of God alone. So he rejected all the priviledges his wealthy upbringing would have afforded him for a life of devotion to God.

In doing so, he became a symbol of solidarity with the poor and destitute of this world, and also a standing rebuke to the excesses of his fellow clergy. Authorized by the church of his day to begin a new religious order, he gathered others who shared his convictions and would adopt his approach to life.

It is said that his compassion for all living things even extended to the animals, and that he took literally the Biblical command to "preach the gospel to every creature". He would preach to birds, and beasts, both tame and wild. The bond he held with these creatures was extra-ordinary to those who looked on.

Perhaps my favorite story of St. Francis is when he began to be invited to the lavish banquets put on by the richly robed and gold and jeweled dignitaries of the church. This was due to his hugely popular appeal with the masses. They were intreged by the story of his conversion and perhaps coveted to some degree the enormous influence he had begun to weild with the people.

Saint Francis arrived in his coarse robe someone had given him, his waist tied with a piece of rope. They directed him to his place at the banquet table where the wealth of the offerings given to God provided them with such a rich bounty of the finest wines and delicacies. But before the first course was served, Saint Francis reached into his robe, pulled out a bag of dried bread crusts someone had given to him, and began distributing them to any of his fellow representatives of God who would accept them.

Makes me wish my own denomination would establish such an order. It would certainly take away the stress at tax season not to own any worldly wealth.

Skip, that is a beautiful and haunting portrait. I, too, would like to hear it performed.

In my experience, soundclick (www.soundclick.com) is the best place to post music for free. (It's also the biggest, which may mean your stuff will reach a fairly wide audience.) I have over 30 songs there--there doesn't appear to be a limit, even for freeloaders like me.

And Soundclick is one of the few OMDs (that's what they call themselves--I'm not sure what it means) that still accomodates people on dialup--which until recently included me. It used to take me about an hour to upload a song--but at least I could do it.

The Artist Formerly Known as Moonless Joe

Skip, that is a beautiful and haunting portrait. I, too, would like to hear it performed.

In my experience, soundclick (www.soundclick.com) is the best place to post music for free. (It's also the biggest, which may mean your stuff will reach a fairly wide audience.) I have over 30 songs there--there doesn't appear to be a limit, even for freeloaders like me.

And Soundclick is one of the few OMDs (that's what they call themselves--I'm not sure what it means) that still accomodates people on dialup--which until recently included me. It used to take me about an hour to upload a song--but at least I could do it.

The Artist Formerly Known as Moonless Joe

Hi Skip,
I think I saw and commented before, but it is certainly worth
another "Wow!" Really moving and well done.

Diane

Skip, will you check your private message and then email me at s.j.harris@tcu.edu

I want to talk to you about an old post of yours called "Oh Jericho".

Thanks
joe

s.j.harris@tcu.edu