more about music...roberta flack

By chance, I heard that Roberta Flack was returning to Melbourne to do a Bush Fire Appeal Concert. It was last night at Hamer Hall and I went with my sister. We both agreed it was one of the best concerts we have ever seen.

Roberta must be in her early seventies yet you wouldn't know. She has the most beautiful energy. She is calm, generous and has a great sense of humour. She happily shared the limelight with all of her band members even giving three of them solo performances. She frequently turned the attention to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra - and even invited them to sing at one stage. She engaged with the audience with humour and admitted to tears when thinking about the bush fire victims.

We laughed and cried and sang with the rest of the audience. It was a moving tribute to all of the people who lost loved ones and homes in the fires and an inspiration to see someone of her age still doing great things with her life.

thinking differently

Watch til the end...it's clever.

take a moment - extend a hand

The stories coming from Kinglake and Marysville and all of the other areas of Victoria devastated by bushfire this week are harrowing.

It is impossible to imagine how those people must be feeling. It's difficult to grasp the terror they have experienced or the grief at having lost their homes and all of their possessions let alone trying to sense what they feel at the loss of loved ones.

The response has already been overwhelmingly generous from the Australian community. People have heeded the calls from the Red Cross to give blood, others are donating time and money and even offering to share their homes. The generosity is wonderful. Just reading some of the posts at the ABC blog website is a reminder of the good in people http://blogs.abc.net.au/victoria/2009/02/offer-help---or.html.

sponteneity

Just a few months ago, one of my school friends moved back to Melbourne from London. She'd been away for years but as often happens with the best of friends, we slipped back into a conversation that had never ended.

I remember how spontaneous we once were. When we were 19 we stopped her car a few doors from my house in the small hours of a winter morning and turned the radio up as loud as it would go and danced on its roof til her battery went flat.

In the past two weeks she and I have embraced some of that spirit of spontaneity (in a more mid 40's kinda way). On a hot weeknight, she arrived for a last minute dinner with her teenage daughters and nephew in tow. We went to a concert at the Spiegeltent on a balmy Friday evening, wandered through Birrarung Marr back to the city and had a late dinner in Fed Square with the tennis on the big screen. And last Wednesday, we braved 44 degrees at the Myer Music Bowl to see Neil Young play.

As the last of the light left the sky there was little reprieve from the heat. The silhouette of the city sat between the gardens and an unusually star filled sky. I pointed out a falling star and Jack told me it was the first she'd ever seen. We listened to the music that we'd listened to together at 15 and remembered bands and songs and people from then. The ageing hippies next to us passed around a joint and as the smoke wafted our way, I felt young. Spontaneous. Free.