Cash and Carry

Over and over again, I am reminded how very NOT alone we are here on this vast earth. This life, despite the hundreds of thousands of buzzing bodies that seem to swarm around an uncertain center, can just feel so isolatory sometimes. And then the natural courses of our lives bring us to junctures, points of choice. Do I raise my hand? To say help me? Or do I go quietly to the darkest corners of the cave to lick my wounds?

Both choices are valid. Both are necessary. But there are certain wounds we cannot self-heal. There are certain wounds that take the tribe to attend to. Bringing on the medicines. The prayer. The passionate asking for relief and expression of true grief, should things not go as hoped.

I'm struck by the nature of the human heart that makes tragedy such a unifying force. It is hard-wired in us. Whether you see it as a little programming gift from God or the universe or just a happy accident of evolution: our natural network kicks in when the need becomes apparent and it carries us to a safer place.

I have been asked to emcee a fundraiser by a mother and father who lost their tiny son in the spring of last year to a genetic disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). They're working to raise the funding for a small little pocket of trees and garden sitting area on the Children's Hospital campus -- a lack of which they noticed when they were searching for a quiet space to spend stolen moments with their baby son during his last weeks at the hospital.

To talk to them is to remember how helpless we are in determining what harm befalls our families, but how very in control we are about how we deal afterward. They are inspirational to say the least. Among the many life-seizing ways they've dealt with the loss of their son (Visit their blog to read more, but be prepared to stay a while. It's unbelievably moving.), these folks have also become regular attendees of Freak Train within the last year. It's their opinion that Freak Train is free therapy, where they can connect to a larger spirit of goofiness, human kindness, and entertainment. And that's where they stumbled on to the idea of asking me to help their special night along in January.

I am honored to have been asked to contribute to this event and, if you are in Denver, I hope you'll come out for it:

Cash's Garden Benefit Concert

featuring

The Railbenders

with

Long Road Home

The Oriental Theater
4335 West 44th Ave.

tickets $20

silent auction

All proceeds go toward Cash's Garden
at the The Children's Hospital

Multimedia Macbeth

I should've put this link up a while back, but I've been off my blogger. So, now that this is about ME, how appropo that I should remember to blog, yes? (Jeez.)

Denver Post critic John Moore conducted several interviews with the cast of Macbeth before it opened. A different one has launched weekly during the weeks just prior to and all during the run. I'm featured in this week's:

http://www.denverpost.com/theater