Why THIS Blue Heaven?

The philosophy:

Why This Blue Heaven?  Because this is the life -- the one life I know I've got.  

This is what I know I have:  this crazy, mysterious, chaotic, marvelous, baffling, ever-changing world -- the forests, the bums, the subway stations, the nuns, the schoolhouses, the soldiers, the carnivals, the movie stars, the cemeteries, the folk singers, the mountains, the professors, the oil rigs, the grandmothers, the rivers, the clowns, the reservations, the heads of state, the truck stops, the farmers, the mosques, the artists, the casinos, the junkies, the museums, the babies, the towers, the gods, the canals -- the daybreaks, the twilights, everything in between.

And the most curiously awesome part about it?  None of this mess means anything until I come along and see it, name it, paint it, sing it, choose it and tell it in a bedtime story or on reality TV.  It's up to me.

I don't know a thing about any afterlife.  What I know is this life, my life -- wide open for me to make of it what I will; why await a personalized heaven when life itself is my personalized chance to define and create paradise?  I have my two hands, my hot beating heart, and all the possibilities a world filled with 6 billion other hearts and hands can hold.  This is it.  This is everything.

The story:

Once upon a time, in the beginning, I became the singer for a band called The Fair Enough, which had been playing shows around New England for a couple of years.  As the line-up changed and the music evolved (and most alarmingly, since I was suddenly having to nix the phrase "fair enough" from my conversations), we decided:  new band, new name.  

We tossed around tons and tons of names.  (Other candidates I recall were Super Rosa, Waking Danae, and Surrender Dorothy...guess we were stuck on women's names there for awhile.)  After weeks of brainstorming and debating and googling band names, one night after rehearsal, Mark -- who had recently been invited to play bass for the band, and who had thus far mostly been responding to other folks' ideas -- dropped this on us:  "I've kinda always liked 'This Blue Heaven' for a band name."  

We collectively blinked.  What did it mean?  

Mark said, "Well from outer space the earth looks blue and I think it's a pretty cool place."  Then he shrugged.  Then I decided I officially dug our new bass player.  And then, after sleeping on it, we all agreed the next morning (give or take a few days for certain members, whose, erm, approval processes will most certainly be the subject of future entries) that we would be This Blue Heaven.  

"Make it so," said the band.  

And it was good.  The End.