In this spoken excerpt, the narrator describes a typical day that begins with an early commute on the F train into the city to earn a wage, followed by a walk in the park, coffee, and a dedicated writing session that leads to the birth of a new song. He emphasizes how travel and meeting new people broaden his perspective, and shares his evolving spiritual outlook—though not traditionally religious, he possesses deep faith and turns to prayer for guidance. A vivid night scene portrays him drinking coffee, unable to sleep, praying for direction, and eventually channeling his thoughts into a poem and piano chords, staying up all night until the song materializes. The passage intertwines daily routine, creative process, travel-inspired inspiration, and a nascent spiritual quest, illustrating how music serves as a conduit for personal discovery and expression.
occasional matinee.
Or two or three.
I get up in the morning, take an early F train, go into the city, make my daily wage. Then I take a walk in the park, if the weather was warm, get some Coffee and write until a song was born. Well, I like to travel. It opens up my mind. I like to meet new people, hear about their lives. I've never been too religious, but I have a lot of faith. Using my music to help me find my place. One night I was thinking, And my thoughts, they traveled deep. Drinking so much coffee, but I couldn't fall asleep. As I lay in bed that night, well, I began to pray. If anybody's out there, help me Find my way. All right, take it away, one more time. It was a stormy night, I was sitting alone in my room, and all piano singing out a tune. I had a poem I wrote and I started to play it chord. Sat there all night long until this song was born.
All right, song is born. Anyway, it's an old song. I mean, you probably recognize— I mentioned that I'm not too religious, and now you see I, I look a little more religious. That was a long time ago. And, um, if you're interested at all in my journey that, that I went through from being a secular musician in the Village to, uh, becoming more spiritual on my trip to Israel and how changes in my life happened, there is a book that just came out called The Silence Between the Songs: Becoming the Folk Rock Rabbi, which is on Kindle. And if you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. We also remember I'm also the director of a nonprofit, A New Song USA. We're visiting prisons around the country and just started a new event called On the Heels of the Messiah, which we'll be pulling up in different places. We don't know where yet, but kind of taking the spiritual pulse of America. If you wanna be a part of that, you can come to the website too. There's a questionnaire. We're trying to get a feel for what different parts of the country, how spiritual people are these days. 'Cause we really, we feel that there's a lot of changes happening in the world. And I've noticed personally more people coming closer to spirituality, and I'm kind of wanna follow that journey a little bit.
