Hope is not a plan. So?

Somewhere, sometime I heard that one of Anderson Cooper's favorite sayings is that hope is not a plan.

He's right, of course, but what's a plan without hope? Further, what good is a plan period? In this world, where the only thing you can know for sure is that something will happen to you that you didn't expect, I submit that plans are, at best, overrated.

You need hope. You need to believe you can do something despite good, solid evidence to the contrary.

Throughout my album project, I have gradually gotten better at planning less and hoping more, no easy task for an atheist, such as me. But as progress on my album has continued, despite the constant presence of dive bombing Black Swans, how can I NOT have hope? I've been too lucky.

Where to start? First, there was my call to Jaime Durr at Hyde Street, who led me to drummer Andy Korn, who brought The Mighty Sam Bevan aboard for bass duties, who, lo and behold, turned out also to be an incredible keyboard player, arranger and composer, all of which resulted in my first successful (by my measure) co-write (Here Comes The Weather), which made other music types, such as Tim and Eryn Young, take me seriously and agree to work with me and...

No mere plan could have led to all that. Nope, I needed hope, hope that I would find the players, singers and engineer to enable me to make my songs to, for lack of a better phrase, be all that they can be.

And right now I'm hoping to have my album done by the end of June. Stay tuned.