Now we use words…

I was really looking forward to Chaise Lounge’s gig in Charleston, West Virginia, in two weeks. This morning I got a call from Donna Graham, a woman who has supported me and the band for years. Donna is the president of FOOTMAD (Friends of Old Time Music and Dance), and she informed me that the group had cancelled the gig. The coronavirus, of course. We lamented the necessity of the new normal of just bumping elbows as a greeting, and she told me a short story of one of their members who just can’t not hug. I’ve been looking for any silver lining in these flu-like storm clouds, and here’s what I came up with this morning. I said, “Donna, we are just going to have to use our words more if we can’t touch. We are going to have to look right into the eyes of the person we would have hugged and say the thing they need to hear. Mostly that is ‘I love you.'” She said they will re-book our gig as soon as she could, and before we hung up I said, “I love you, Donna Graham,” and she said “I love you, Charlie Barnett.”