Oz the Great and Powerful is a humbug. He is neither great nor powerful.
He can give nothing of value to Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion or Dorothy, except perhaps encouragement. Everything that those four gain, they gain on their own with each other’s help.
Oz will not grant your wishes.
It’s up to you.
The good news: You have what it takes.
As I was settling back just after “lights out” the other night, in my mind I heard a character say, “Heavens! I love an adventure.” She (He?) was so delighted and so adamant, and I so wanted to remember the sweet happiness in that voice, I had to turn the light back on for a minute and write it down.
What story will that adventure be, and in what context that cry is cried, I have no idea, but I look forward to meeting that character and finding out.
Earlier in the day I encountered an informal selfie-video Guy Gilchrist made during a walk. Gilchrist is a cartoonist and musician I know best for his work on Muppets comics and a stint on the venerable comic strip “Nancy.”
One thing he said slapped me upside the head and gave me a gentle shove. It was about the uncertainty of starting down a new path when you’re not sure you’re ready yet.
“You’re never ready. Just go do it,” Guy said to his phone and, in doing so, to me.
“You’re never ready. Just go do it.”
Of course you’re not ready. Just get started. You got this.
Do what? All of it.
How many doubts and obstacles will you have to overcome? All of them.
Nobody said it would be easy, but nobody said it couldn’t be done.
Is it really 30 years since the surviving Beatles added their vocals and instruments to an old cassette recording John Lennon made at home?
“Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” were the first new “Beatles” recordings since the band broke up in 1970, and it was good to hear Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr sharing four minutes of music together again.
And then a couple of years ago McCartney and Starr pulled a third effort out of the vault, which had not been as successful the first time around. “Now and Then” is not as good as the 1995 recordings, except that the technology had since been invented to pull Lennon’s voice out of the old cassette with dramatically improved clarity.
At the time I wrote, “If it were up to me, to tell the truth, I would go back and remix the 1995 songs, armed with the new technology that allowed John Lennon’s voice to ring out clearly from the acoustical depths of a 1970s-era cassette.”
I obviously was not the only one with that thought, as this week’s unexpected release reveals. And the results are pretty darn spectacular.
