Good Relationships are Made, Not Inherited
Five practices for creating and continually enjoying deep intimacy:

5) Continually developing a vision of the relationship/friendship you both want together.

Whew...Just got finished reloading my copy of Finale Songwriters onto my desktop, yesterday.  Thankfully, I have retained all of my music software AND maintained the registration numbers as well . I will be adding composing to my other musical labors. You may realize I was dissapointed that I wasn't able to use all these great composing tools after my laptop was destroyed last year.   "Everything Must Change!" has often been stated and sung by countless singers. And so we always have behind us, thoughs who have lived a great while, a great amount of life that we COULD of have lived but did not.  Every choice naturally implies exclusion of other choices. I find it is really important to commemorate tradition as a way of recovery.  The time honored and true ways of doing things are sometimes the most natural ways of doing things...and when that doesn't even work??? You just have to laugh! And start over!  I guess that is what being a musician has taught me.  In that spirit, I commemorate a BMI concert/awards ceremony I attended in 2007.

The funniest thing about the BMI evening
(By Jeremy Michael Miller)

The funniest part of the BMI evening had to have been when they were announcing the winner. There is a  huge $3000 commision for next year's ceremony that is honorifically entitled "The Charlie Parker Award." So, of course, it is a very prestigious award with a lot of tradition and fanfare that generated press reviews. It also means you get to work some more in the field you love the most for another year.  The winner had already walked up to the  church auditorium podium and was waiting for the announcer to call the award presenter to the front.  After much shuffling, the announcer for the evening was pleased to have the presenter of the award come to the podium.  So, notwithstanding, the winner had to step aside for a moment. An 85 year-old venerable musician who has been in the business all his life bravely totters to the stage.  He is one who is cognizant of the great tradition and the energy in this work. There is no work equal to it. He gasps a little and he tells some more about the history of the award. And then he gets to the part where he says, "And the winner is.. And the winner is, Uh... Uh... for the great piece that was played uh.... uh in 4..."  He stopped! And I am almost sure somewhere in the back of his head he was silently hearing the composer's music and had totally forgotten the winner's name! Ah! The suspense... Even though "Jose" was standing right behind him, I believe somebody had to prompt the announcer before he could get it right. Very amusing. Chuckles and laughter everywhere and a general consensus that the evening was beautiful.  They always are.

Hugs,

Jeremy Michael Miller

I was just taking a retrospective look at my time in N.Y.C. after finding an old letter written to my Family and Friends in 2001.  Every cell in the Human body reconstitutes itself every 7 years.  That means every cell in your body is different than what it was 7 years ago.  I was impressed with N.Y.C. at the time, in 2001, and I still am in 2008 and I might as well always will be.  It will be a MAJOR and life changing decicion if I ever decide to leave to leave New York. 

I just closed a book on the speeches of Winston Churchill.  Tough guy, you know?  And things are looking up here, where I am quite comfortable on the third floor of this New York Public Library surrounded by the greatest architechture.  There are paintings and baroque engravings on the spacious ceiling some one hundred feet above me.  The 100-yd. long room, itself, has eighteen of these twenty-foot-high, arched windows that let in light from both sides of the room.  There is also a chandelier, some ways inward from each window, hanging from a heavy chain.  Each chandelier holds around 150 bulbs.  And each bulb emits a soft yellow light that suffuses the room with the color of an old, well-read book.

It all has the feel of a well-funded monastery.  I sit at a 30-foot long oak table, of which there are several around me.  And each one of these tables supports 4 standing, brass lamps and has connections where on can plug in a laptop.  Every once in a while, the acoustics are such that, I will hear somebody echoing from the opposite side of the room.

The first two of just three rows of bookshelves outlying the entire room are offset from the stone cut walls.  There is, above the first rows, one unobtrusive walkway around the entire room where one accesses a higher third row of inset shelves.  This narrow walkway is completely lined by thin, iron guardrails.  There is a visible hierarchy of natural and social order in this whole room.  Near the right of me there is a librarian reshelving books and as she bends ever lower, her G-string becomes more obvious above her blue jeans.  So, right now, I'm reading all the books that I can.  If everything happens according to schedule,  I will be attending City University of New York.  there I'll be pursiung my music studies and song writing to my heart's content by fall of 2003.

Why music? Without getting too personal about it, some people were into music before they ever thought of asking the question.  But for me the decicion was one of conscious choice and deliberation that still has the force of revelation.  I suppose it is natural for one who approaches life like an anthropologist and poet to be attracted to Jazz.  The world is filled with people who have already produced words about everything in the world; books to hold these words; shelves to hold the books; rooms to hold the shelves and buildings to preserve the books through the ages.  There is an innate desire to express, to historicize, to commemorate seen in every drawing, great work or monument from the beginning of time.  Music is the least plastic of the arts. It is also the one that best presents the passionate urgings of what it means to be alive. It is the most flexible of the arts and capable of expressing every shade of meaning and feeling.  There is a great divide between living one's life and expressing one's life: between selling a dream and building one.  A divide that everyone, including musicians, must bridge with countless activities. The greater the musician, the more exposed and familiar they are with this territory. There is nothing that is more direct than song. From the inside out it is like a map that says "X" you are here.  Jazz is not forgetting. It is remembering who we are.