The Present is a Gift....

A confession. When I worked at a daily paper and was producing clips at a fast clip, I often found myself torn between wanting to share a piece I was proud of and a desire to refrain from huffing and puffing too much, a desire to leggo my ego.

Similarly with this blog: I vacillate between using the most public of forums to promote it and then hanging my head over the shameless plugging [laughs]. Ideally, you'd feel comfortable to come to it as you please - be it once a week or once a year.

Well last Monday, I had one of the most BEautiful nights I've had in a long time, seeing Maxwell and Common in concert on the same night. I was reminded of Common's liner notes for the '05 album Be.

If you build, defend, make, heal, bridge, or connect things, people, or moments for a living and ever feel conflicted about recruiting soldiers to your movement, luring captains to your street team - just gotta acknowledge the source. Regardless of where/how/to whom you bow your head.

Maxwell Covers GIANT

Ummm...speechless.

A Little Sumthin' Sumthin' Bout Maxwell's Time Away From the Industry

Someone's Gonna Love You on a Black Summers' Night

I'm almost afraid to download the entire Maxwell album. Frightened that the disc, BLACKsummers'night, out now after an 8-year respite, couldn't possibly live up to the large expectations set forth by the lingering lead single, "Pretty Wings."

I wish all men got better with time the way this neo-soul singer has. I've had two Maxwell sightings in the last half decade or so. The first was at an Urban Outfitters in the West Village and he was chatty with me when I went up to him giggling and giddy.

The second, last year, in TriBeCa, was just around the corner from the Cary Building where my newspaper's offices were situated.

He had shorn his thicket of locs by now so I had to give a second look, and as he unchained his bike from a railing, I looked again. He seemed serious, far off. I wanted to say something meaningful.

But what? Thank you for recreating Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work"? That Urban Hang Suite was the soundtrack to which I fell in love with a boy and "Reunion" played as it came to a halt?

I said nothing. I watched him mount his bike in dark cargo pants and a ratty black t-shirt, riding down West Broadway, perhaps a version of these lyrics forming in his mind: "If I can't have you/ Let love set you free / to let you flap your pretty wings around."

How to describe his face, every visible muscle? Mmm...he was heartbreakingly handsome, the stuff of sonnets and rambling soliloquies.