First order of business...I started a new blog that will hopefully be a group effort. It's hosted at theobamanation.com. I bought the domain a couple years ago, but you can check it out that story there. (I'll cross post this, too.) Anyway...

If you were there last night in Aliso Viejo, thank you so much! And if you were there, you witnessed this thought process going on while I was playing. I was realizing how the wish of so many of my songs is being manifested by this candidacy and its success. My mission when I was 9 years old was to make sense of my world, the integration of the North and South, new and old, and speak the truth in an engaging way that filled me with a sense of love...and made me giggle a bit.

What the heck? Here it is, my first song:

"Way down south where the cotton grows
Way up north where the cold wind blows
Eastside, Westside, Northside, South
I love all the world around my house

Something old, something new
I love everything if it's true
I loved singing this song for you
And I think you've enjoyed it too..."

So, yep, I was cocky back then. And I didn't really understand that South and North probably represented "White" and "Black" for me. But I knew that I wanted to embrace the differences around me, within me, in a spirit of truth. And the commonality in those differences is truth united in a spirit of love. I feel pretty lucky for my parents, because this stuff was definitely encouraged. There were definitely discouraging moments, too, but that's not this blog or this moment.

Singing last night in Orange County, close to the ground of much of my youthful angst, I sang 13 (or Seventh Grade, as I called it...which would've been 11...long story...), a song about all the grief and ambition I had growing up brown in the O.C. And again, not Brown in the "I had a community nearby in Santa Ana" way, but in the sometimes I'm Black, sometimes I'm White, but really my skin is this ambiguous beige that says nothing about the music or films I like, but separates me from the majority and even a lot of the minority in my safe suburban hometown. And that song is also about the drugs I used to escape... (OK so I tried to push the age up to seem slightly more responsible... but the majority of that stuff was all done by 13. Kids, don't try this at home or talk to your parents about it before you even think about it!)

Of course the thought is, will this angst be alleviated for the post ObamaNation generation.

Then I was singing Stir it Up, Daydream, Miracle, All I Love and closed the show with Celebration. I didn't consciously plan it this way, but all these songs were framed in such a different light looking at the end of Bush and Cheney, and the real possibility that a biracial "Black" man will be the next President of the United States.

There are so many discussions to have about what this all means, but for now I'm just excited that a dialogue that I've been engaging for years is gaining more and more participants in a real spirit of hope.

Go Barack!