David Crosby

I turn to Crosby’s music when I am feeling melancholy. His sweet voice is like an old friend who had been there, understands, and tells you how events fit into the broader universe. His perspective came from a kind soul who was perhaps too trusting and suffered for it. “Honest to the point of recklessness” as the song goes.

If you want to listen to some pure Crosby magic, take a listen to this solo concert from a small theater in Berkeley in 1981 – it’s very intimate, just him with his guitar and about 100 people in a beautiful wooden building designed by Julia Morgan.

Now he is gone. I like to think of him soaring above us, finally free of the weights that held him down, like his mother in his song Carry Me.

And then there was my mother:
She was lying in white sheets there and she was waiting to die.
She said, “If you’d just reach underneath this bed
And untie these weights,
I could surely fly.

She’s still smiling but she’s tired,
She’d like to hear that last bell ring.
You know if she could she would
Stand up, and she could sing, singing

Carry me, carry me
Carry me above the world
Carry me, carry me.

Carry Me – David Crosby

If Only I Could Remember My Name was on repeat when I was in boarding school, especially when it was rainy and cold outside, like is in NYC today. Press play and remember David Crosby.