Riffs #1

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent. -Miles Davis

This series of photos, which I call Riffs, resonates like modern jazz. Since I’ve been in Florida, I’ve made it a mindfulness practice to carry my camera or phone and wait for a photo to come to me. I’m not hunting. I’m listening.

I’m listening, with my intuition, through my eyes, awake for something subtle — a shift in light, a tension in a line, a mood that hovers just beneath the surface. It’s like having music in my mind, but instead of playing an instrument I’m using a camera. The frame becomes the measure. Light becomes tone. Angles become rhythm.

I’m not interested in representing the thing itself. A palm isn’t about botany. A street isn’t about traffic. A building isn’t about architecture. A shoreline isn’t about geography. I want the image to act like a riff — structured but loose, slightly bent, unfinished on purpose. Something that lingers, hums, and leaves a little space for the viewer to improvise.

Weather inside the Weather

I’ve never trusted the loud surface of things,
the noise beyond the headlines
hijacking my attention.

I turn instead toward the weather inside the weather,
light breaking out of its own shadow,
a chord held longer than it should be,
almost refusing to resolve.

I wait for the hush after the ferry horn
when the harbor keeps breathing anyway.
Kapuśińki walking through Accra dust —
not filing copy, listening.

Noir light slipping through blinds,
everybody marked, nobody simple.
Deep thinking feels like this palm at night —
fronds flaring out of blackness,

structure rising from dark without announcement.
At this age I resist the easy answer.

I grow outward into depth.

Ambition has fallen away.
What remains is home.

St. Simons Island, Georgia

And A Man Comes On And Tells Me…

Think different.
Just do it.
Open happiness.

Begin before the narrative.
Immersion first.
Explanation later.

Priceless,
but somehow always available.
Technology as magic.
Presence, no proof required.

Belong anywhere.
Stand still.
Buy less.
Feel more.

Real beauty,
threaded through generations,
stitched quietly
behind the noise
and the pitch.

Timeless.
Legacy-approved.
Edited, then rescued
by what feels authentic.

Silence as value.
Sound as identity.
Your year, your taste,
your data,
remembering you.

Motion equals meaning.
Energy you can trust.
Flow over mastery.
The body knows first.

Life as fuel.
Life as current.
Life as something
you almost control
until it moves you.

Show, don’t tell.
Stream, don’t stop.
Touch the object.
Feel the surface.
Call it real.

Expand the horizon.
Ignite the instrument.
Turn emotion into action.

Belong.
Resonate.
Find your voice.

And underneath it all—
a soft insistence:

You are enough
but not quite
until this moment
arrives
and lets you feel
already here.

Reykjavik, Iceland

…This is a found poem, constructed from advertisement taglines.

Nothing To Get Hung About – A Dream

It is dark, yet I see the physical world as a collection of possible thoughts and ideas. For them to become real, I need to pinpoint them with a red laser dot that seems to emanate from what may be my third eye. I am getting used to moving this red dot across different physical objects. When I blink, the image in my mind switches to some aspect of the Beatles. This time it is the word Yesterday, and the song begins to play. The vision holds until I blink again and find myself back where I started.

I focus on another object. These objects seem solid yet fleeting, and I’m not sure the red dot itself is stable. I blink, and the album cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appears. I keep my eyes open long enough to detect movement among the figures on the cover. Some of the heads seem to be whispering to one another. I blink inadvertently, and once again I’m back where I started.

None of this makes sense. I wonder what the Beatles have to do with the material world where I believe I am grounded. Or perhaps I’m not grounded at all, and both worlds are being manufactured entirely in my mind. The mystery frustrates me—until I wake up and write: 

You can think anything with your imagination—that’s a wonderful right. But there’s an inherent danger in mistaking what you think for what is true.

REFLECTION:

The dream shows how powerful imagination can be—and why that power needs to be handled carefully. In the dream, attention works like a laser pointer: whatever it focuses on turns into a whole experience. But none of these experiences last. Every time I blink, one world disappears and another takes its place. This shows how easy it is for the mind to create something that feels real even if it isn’t stable or true.

The Beatles appear, I think, because I’ve just finished reading John & Paul – A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie. It’s a reminder that the mind uses familiar and emotionally strong images when it builds meaning. Songs and album covers already carry memories and feelings, so they seem important right away. The whispering figures suggest thoughts talking to each other—ideas piling up without being checked against reality. The dream becomes frustrating to me when I realize that both the “real” world and the imagined one might be coming from the same place: the mind. My quote at the end, that appeared from my unconscious when I awoke, sums up the essence of the dream. Imagination is a wonderful freedom, but the danger is believing that just because something feels real in your mind, it must be true in the world.

In my dream, the Beatles songs and album covers feel completely real—I see them, hear them, and even notice the characters moving and whispering. That experience is real because it’s happening to me in the dream. But it isn’t true in the outside world—the Beatles aren’t actually appearing in the room, and a red laser isn’t really controlling reality. This dream shows how something can feel vivid and convincing while still being created by the mind. That’s the difference: the experience is real, but the idea that it represents what’s actually happening is not true.

December 29, 2025 – Those We Lost in 2025

As the year comes to a close, we take a moment to remember some of the musicians we lost in 2025—artists whose voices and instruments shaped the music we carry with us, often without realizing how deeply they’d settled in.

There were so many losses this year that I could have easily put together more than one show. The music you’ll hear tonight is a culling—not by importance or influence, but by resonance. These are the songs that stayed with me, the ones that surfaced when I sat quietly and listened back.

Today’s show isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s personal. This is dedicated to all the people we’ve lost in 2025.

We’re living through a time in this country marked by noise, confusion, and a kind of willful ignorance and cruelty that makes everything feel louder and harder than it needs to be. The challenges are real. The suffering is real. And some days it feels like we’re drifting further from one another instead of closer.

In moments like this, music doesn’t fix anything—but it reminds us that care, imagination, and human connection have always existed alongside the madness. These songs carry evidence of that.

The show ends with Brian Wilson performing “Love and Mercy.” As 2026 approaches I believe that choosing to practice love and mercy in the new year is a rational response to a complex, wounded world, because they reduce conflict, preserve human dignity, and create the conditions in which real understanding and change can still occur.

Happy New Year my friends.

Dave

December 8, 2025 -Greenwich Village Folk Scene – 1960’s – Part 1

Dear Friends,

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting my dear friend John Abramson in Boston to collaborate on a show. John and I had been friends for over fifty years, sharing countless moments and, always, a deep love of music. Growing up in Forest Hills, Queens gave John a direct line to both the Doo Wop tradition and the folk music of Greenwich Village in the 1960s, and he spent much of our friendship turning me on to both genres. His knowledge was encyclopedic, his passion endless. This show grew out of that collaboration.

Just a few days after we recorded it, John was hospitalized, gravely ill. He returned home on Friday to be with his wife and passed away on Saturday night. This show is dedicated to John— to our friendship, to our shared passion for all kinds of music, and to the love I carry for him.

Thanks for listening,

Dave