I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “joy” this week. It kept coming up in songs, movies, and books until I was forced to realize maybe the universe was trying to tell me something.

It all started on Wednesday.  Matchbox Twenty’s “Overjoyed” came on the radio. The song’s protagonist tells his lover that he will understand her when no one else does, but mainly Rob Thomas sings about how happy he would be if she let him come over and see her. It's not about a booty call, it's about getting to be with her in some much more significant way. “I cannot overstate it, I will be overjoyed,” he sings.

I started thinking about that sentence and how cynical we’ve become to true joy. To tell someone that you will be overjoyed to see them is to make yourself really vulnerable to their not feeling the same way. To say it is to express a notion of unbridled happiness that comes from being with someone else and we live in a world where we’re expected to hold back and be too cool to express outright, undiluted glee at something if we’re over four years old. Why is that? 

Yesterday, I watched a screener of “Springsteen & I,” a documentary made by fans about their relationship with The Boss. In one segment, they were asked to describe Springsteen, or how he makes them feel, in three words. The word “joy” came up frequently. Jon Stewart, who, like me, is a massive Springsteen fan, once described being at a Bruce concert as “unbridled joy.” I agree. In the pit at a Springsteen show surrounded by others of my kind as his music, and if I’m close enough, sweat, washes over me, is pure joy for me. Some of my happiest moments in my life have been at a Springsteen show. Nothing exists for me but the music and the feeling it gives me.

This morning, I began reading “Tattoos On The Heart” by Father Greg Boyle. As I wrote earlier this week, I interviewed him on Wednesday for an article I’m working on.  I bought his book while I was at Homeboy Industries, the gang-intervention program he started 25 years ago. In the book, he talks about God’s love for the gang members just as they are and that the distance many of us feel from God comes from our trying to limit him. “It has been God’s joy to love you all along,” he writes. Regardless of your beliefs, what a wonderful way to frame love. Instead of saying “I love you,” think how powerful it is to say “It’s my joy to love you.” Sometimes, love feels like an obligation, but to word it this way makes it an ultimate pleasure. Imagine if every parent told his or her child, "It is my joy to love you" what a better world it would be through that one simple act.

Joy can come in the form of a whisper or a scream. It can come from seeing the first rose bloom in the garden each Spring as a sign of life’s constant renewal or it can come from seeing an old friend or from hearing a song that reminds of a better time or from walking about a city filled with a sense of discovery and possibility.  

Joy is that feeling that your chest might explode, as if your heart has suddenly swelled with too much love. It’s wondrous and unexpected every time we experience it. It comes with a freedom that no other emotion brings in quite the same way, with a weightlessness and light that lets you know that in this very moment, and it may be a fleeting moment, all is right in the world. 

This is joy.

This is really joy.

The Child Welfare League of America builds coalitions between public and private agencies that help children. Since 1920, their goal has been improve the lives of abused and neglected children throughout the U.S. According to Charity Navigator, it is a good charity that has run into financial trouble and needs our help. Help them bring some joy.

July 21: The Child Welfare League Of America

Why I started this blog

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Today was the first really hot day of summer in Los Angeles and it’s going to be pretty brutal over the next several days. 

As I’ve written before, I don’t have air conditioning and I’m already dreading the next few days where I have to position myself directly in front of the fan. Sometimes I have to escape to a movie theater or mall.  It’s not that I don’t want air conditioning, but I live in an old Spanish-style building that doesn’t accommodate it.

As the thermometer rises, the song Santana’s song “Smooth” inevitably pops into my head... “Man its a hot one Like seven inches from the midday sun...”

Though this came out in February, I only saw this “Funny Or Die” video this week and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. I’ve known Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas for 15 years now and he cracks me up. He’s really funny in this clip—and in real life— and he and the other guys in the band bring the funny (OK, I totally hate that phrase) in this clip.

But back to the heat. Last week, I gave to a program in Austin, Texas that provides fans for senior citizens. Today, I’m picking an even hotter city, Phoenix. The Phoenix Rescue Mission runs a Code Red Summer Heat Relief Program. Every Thursday, in conjunction with KUPD, the Mission collects water donated by listeners to distribute to the homeless since dehydration is such a serious problem when the mercury rises. 

The Phoenix Rescue Mission has an excellent overall website that has great pointers on how to help the homeless year-round, no matter where you live. But it’s during the extremes, winter and summer, that the homeless need our help the most. 

June 27: Phoenix Rescue Mission

Why I started this blog

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I studied improvisation at Second City several years ago and, as anyone who has ever taken an improv class knows, the prime rule of improv is “Yes and...”   If your improv partner says, “Things really got weird when the man wearing the tutu and tiara served me Communion yesterday,” your only option is to go with that and build on it. Otherwise, if you say, “That didn’t happen....” or something similar, the scene comes to a dead stop. 

I now think life comes to a dead stop if you don’t say “Yes and...” to the ideas that are presented to you and I have the blog to thank for that.

Part of my journey this year is to say yes more. Though you wouldn’t know if unless you knew me very, very well, I can be a bit of an Eeyore. I’m not gloomy or depressed or have my tail attached by a nail and a bow, but I often think of why something won’t work before I think of all the reasons why it will.

Three weeks ago, I wrote about how letting go of that kind of thinking led to my getting a beautiful new (to me) bed for free. Two weeks ago, I let all that go again. My friend Cathy and I were on the phone talking about the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The SHOF takes a number of songwriters each year and salutes them. It’s a private banquet and it is one of the best evenings I have ever attended. When I was at Billboard, the SHOF and MusiCares were my two favorite annual events. Any artist will tell you that he or she wants to be remembered as a songwriter more than as a performer or recording artist because a song lives on forever. It’s always a magical night, with songwriters saluting their own kind all in celebration of song. 

Cathy had written about SHOF’s upcoming induction for Billboard and I had told her that she had to get herself from D.C. to NYC for the ceremony no matter what. So three days in advance, we were talking about her trip and I was making her promise to text me all during the event. I was in North Carolina visiting my dad. It must have hit us at about the same time, but next thing you know, we were figuring out if I could meet her in New York in less than 72 hours and go with her. She emailed the SHOF to see if they had a press place for me (tickets are normally $1000/pop), I started scouring the web for a cheap airfare and texted my neighbor in Los Angeles to see if she could overnight the dress I wanted to wear to me. The old me would have said there was no way it could all work out and we still had to leave some major parts up to good luck and chance, but with a framework in place, by the end of Tuesday, I was set to fly to New York on Thursday morning. 

Of course, that day, storms came through the Northeast and flights were getting canceled and delayed left and right. Somehow, my flight, even with a change on D.C., managed to get in only an hour late. It was supposed to be pouring in New York. It was only overcast, not a drop in sight. I was supposed to be confined to a separate viewing area, I was at a table behind Billy Joel. Ever star that could possibly align did and it was all because I was willing to say yes and go even though there was a great deal of uncertainty around some areas of the trip. 

The evening was, as always, magical. I got to see artists and songwriters whom I adore like Elton John, Steven Tyler, Rob Thomas, and Joel. Seeing Lou Gramm and Mick Jones reunite for the first time in more than a decade to perform Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is” with a choir,  hearing Petula Clark sing “Downtown” to the tune’s songwriter/inductee Tony Hatch and watching Alison Krauss breathe angelic life into honoree J.D. Souther’s “Faithless Love” were all supremely wonderful moments. 

This year continues to change me and I’m convinced the blog is leading the way by opening my heart every day. The connection between the blog and my willingness to jump on a plane may not be readily apparent, but it’s there and it’s something I’m tremendously grateful for. 

And I’m thankful for music and songwriters. The SHOF doesn’t take donations online, so, instead, I’m donating to a British organization called The Songwriting Charity.

Through a variety of partners, The Songwriting Charity presents one-day workshops that teach children how to write songs and record them individually and as a group. Guy Fletcher, who has written songs for everybody, including Elvis Presley, the Hollies, Cliff Richard, Ray Charles and many, many more, is the group’s main patron. Who knows? A kid who attends one of their workshops today could be getting inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame a few years from now. 

June 24: The Songwriting Charity

Why I started this blog

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