Sometime last winter, I played a show in Ft. Atkinson, WI, at The Cafe Carpe. It was a small, attentive group listening, and when we finished for the evening, someone handing me a note written during the set. In the note, I was thanked for my songs (particularly "Better Days" and "80 acres") and their message, and told of the author, David Grayson, and how much my lyrics embodied his sensibilities in "Adventures in Contentment" (written in the early 1900's). I finally came upon a copy of that book-- coincidently signed by it's first owner/reader on Sept. 27-- the day of my birth. I have since read other David Grayson books and marvel at the simplicity of those times in which he wrote. I'm presently reading his "Adventures in Friendship"... "Do you know, the more I look into life, the more things it seems to me that I can successfully lack-- and continue to grow happier..... I like to think of an old Japanese nobleman I once read about, who ornamented his house with a single vase at a time, living with it, absorbing it's message of beauty, and when he tired of it, replacing it with another. I wonder if he had the right way, and we, with so many objects to hang on our walls, place on our shelves, drape on our chairs, and spread on our floors, have mistaken our course and placed our hearts upon the multiplicity rather than the quality of our possessions! David Grayson, 1910.
