Before I get into this post I'd like you to know that I forget my password to my website every time I login. It takes me a few tries. Eventually, I have to look it up in my saved passwords, and most recently I reset it. So now I just reset it every time despite thinking I will have selected a password that I will remember. I share this in the hope that it brings you some solace as you probably do the same. If you somehow don't always do this to yourself, please contact me to help me stop doing this. It's like minutes. Every. Time.
OK. So Downtown.
I sang "Downtown" for the opening of the San Jose City Hall in 2005. I've never really thought about that again until I wrote a song with lyrics that included the word downtown.I like walking downtown.Most people do I guess, if it's a good downtown, and even if it isn't. I think people will go to a downtown even if it isn't good, hoping it's good or looking for a glimmer of some new element indicating it's about to be good.
I think this article has some interesting points about it. One excerpt discussing struggling small towns says:
"You have to change the business model of the community . . . not just attract one assembly plant that creates 100 jobs,” he said. “You really need a concept of where the town is going.” He envisions a new economy in the Rust Belt that is focused on growing healthy foods — what he calls “high-tech agriculture” — and more environmental tourism.
In his new book, “Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump,” Stiglitz argues that economists missed something important about these towns: They have social capital. Trust is what you might call the “magic fairy dust” that helps economies thrive. When people trust each other, they work better and harder and they tend to live happier lives, as Harvard professor Robert Putnam's research has shown. Overall, trust has eroded substantially in the United States in recent years as fewer and fewer people have a bond with their neighbors, let alone the government, businesses or civic institutions. But trust still exists in many of these smaller towns where people talk to and watch out for each other. That can be harnessed to transform the town for the 21st century, Stiglitz says.
This new song popped in thinking about downtown where I live, that magic fairy dust of every downtown I've ever loved, and the trust that lives in this moon town I somehow found magically and live in now.
Lyrics:
Walking downtown [Walking downtown],
Walking downtown [Walking downtown],
Feels...feels...
Walking downtown [Walking downtown],
Walking downtown [Walking downtown],
Feels nice.
Feels right.
That little piece of you,
That little piece of me,
That little piece of everybody.
What it takes to make a great community.
Downtown. Downtown.
Been a long time. [Been a long time]
Since I've been 'round.
But I'm not feelin' down.
I'm not feelin' down.
Took the long road,
Where the moon glow didn't look back,
What's better than that?
What's better than that.
That little piece of you,
That little piece of me,
That little piece of everybody.
What it takes to make a great community.
Downtown, where I can see your face,
Downtown, where I can find some space,
Downtown, where I can make or break,
Downtown, where there is no mistaking me.