Forgotten forest
fondly remembered, only too late

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It’s the type of forest …

Nobody cares about until it’s gone.

Ugliest Forest, the Song

And if we’ve seen it once we’ve all seen in a thousand times. It’s that patch of trees that looks pretty enough, although it may be infested with invasive trees, and littered with trash. And no it’s never that big patch of woods, just a remnant of a larger contiguous mass or woods that got gobbled up by housing developments of various types.

Ugliest Forest, the Interview

Why and how that patch of woods escaped development is anyone’s guess. Maybe it got held up in a real estate dispute, or maybe the owner was holding out for a higher price, or maybe the zoning laws were still being hashed out. Whatever the case, the patch of woods survived, and even thrived as judged by the birds and the bunnies and the mice (and maybe even a bobcat). And then just like that, in move the bulldozers …

And the woods are gone.

Campfire Questions
And why the answers don't matter

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Some questions are best asked …

Around the campfire.

The answer may surprise you

The reason why depends on a number of things. What’s said around the campfire stays around the campfire has to be high on the list. Part truth serum and part ring of trust, there’s an unspoken rule around the campfire that whatever you say there is between the people present and the crackling embers, and rendered in the end to a pile of flakey ash. Another reason may be the ambiguous nature of the answer, or its complexity, or a general acknowledgement that whatever was asked could never be fully solved or understood, just pondered out loud around the popping embers and flame. Maybe, too, it’s the relaxation reflex that kicks in, allowing the conversation to twist and turn in any number of directions without care or concern if the question gets fully explored, or maybe instead opens doors to new questions or quandaries that weren’t directly asked. The truth about the campfire: It has a mysterious way. It lends itself to nonlinear thinking and pregnant pauses of saying nothing at all.

A campfire question is less about the answer than allowing the mind wander to wherever it needs to go.

Old school angel
And why it took 14 years

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Believe it or not …

I sang my first song in 1999.

Playing to a packed audience at The Pavilion

It would take another 15 years to record my first song. The reason? For one, smart phones didn’t become ubiquitous until sometime around 2010. Another reason might be that my songs were never planned events. Sometimes it would be a day before a farewell party and I didn’t have a song. Or I had a song that was half cooked and still being very unsure if I would be ready for show time. But I learned my lesson quickly: People preferred any song to no song at all. And I was pretty much a persona non-grata if I showed up empty handed without a song to play. The question still needs to be asked: How many songs did I sing in the great “blacked out” period between 1999 and 2014. If I had to guess — and just counting farewell songs — I would say a good two dozen, maybe more.

Many of them I wrote down. Just as many I forgot the chords. But maybe that’s the most incredible thing. One song called The Ballad of the Florida Panther I only sang once, and really even then when I sang it I was just trying to follow the chicken scratch page of lyrics I’d scribbled together in the day before Krista left. The year was 2005. How I managed to reconstruct the song (and the chords) fifteen years later is anybody’s guess other than I’m 100 percent positive I remembered the correct chords. I’m not saying I’m a great artist, but twenty years after singing my first song and barely being able to play more than a few chords I have a pretty good webpage. Next steps: Live performance. Ready or not world, Bobby Angel is ready, willing and able to tour. But not until I get done my third album, yet to be named.

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