Flying by the seat of our pants

"[Y]ou can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
-- Steve Jobs (1955-2011)  from his Stanford University commencement address, June 2005.

Last night we did a very scary thing, and it went off without a hitch. The Capt and I performed a song we learned only yesterday,  even though neither of us had ever heard it before, and certainly hadn't had time to memorize it. It was Michael Frank's song for Antonio Carlos Jobim, "Antonio's Song." One of the coolest things about this song is that the Capt and I sing together on the chorus, a first! We felt we were...um...given permission to have our sheet music onstage when my mentor Leslie announced that she was relenting on the issue. "After all," she said, "if Barbra Streisand uses a Teleprompter now, who are we to have a problem with it?"

I was seriously stressed before we did the song, and afterward I was asking myself why I made such a big deal of it. We will have a regular gig every Wednesday at the Fiesta Hotel (last night we had a full house!) and plan to do some recording too, so I need to lighten up and get some perspective. I am, after all, one of the world's latest bloomers and it's almost ludicrous that I'd even attempt to begin performing at my age (a number which I'll keep to myself, thank you).

And the icing on the cake: our photographer friend emailed the band photos he had taken of us recently, and though I'm sure they were liberally PhotoShopped, I'm very pleased with the results. He posed each of us with our instruments, and I had my acoustic guitar which I had named Kathleen after my mom. It's a definite keeper. They can use it when they publish my obit.

Hmmm, where did that obit remark come from? Well, the Capt's favorite uncle, who introduced us to sailing when he took us out in his boat in Santa Barbara, and probably was a major influence in our moving to Mexico (a good place for boat people), died a couple of days ago of a brain tumor at 87. His obit arrived today (thanks, Jane). The last time we saw Uncle Dave, he and his wife Annie visited us for a day while they were on a Mexican coastal cruise and since we were docked in Mazatlan we met their ship and took them to the beach. Dave was like a little boy playing in the sand. A wonderful way to remember him. Adios y vaya con Díos, Tio David.