The Greatest Website on the Web

YouTube is a magnificent place that allows us all to safely get an answer for almost any question in the world while also being able to put you in touch with some of our most intimate feelings with help from the likes of a Dudley Moore and Stevie Nicks or a Ron White or wisdom from Warren Buffett. YouTube lets us live in the moment and experience a private audience with true brilliance. From Andrew Lloyd Webber to Crosby, Stills and Nash and from Andrea Bocelli to Tony Robbins; we get to sit in the front row anytime we need help or entertainment.   

Today, I needed help. I was writing to my daughter about her recent breast cancer diagnosis. As much as I write, you would think I could easily write to my own daughter, but every time I started, my keyboard got a little damper.

I almost always start on YouTube when I need to listen to some “writing music” with Dudley Moore playing one of the most beautiful piano pieces ever written: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOuE4fsqKQ  I can never get enough by listening just once, so I hit replay. 4 minutes x 2 of some of the most beautiful notes ever strung together played in a bar in Mexico, nonetheless. 

The times when I hit a wall and find myself wrestling with writer’s block, I then go directly to something with a little more energy and turn to one of my favorite rockers; Stevie Nicks. I am now spending the next 17 minutes listening to a guitar player and Stevie create magic:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3DhXcQepbY  If this doesn’t get you thinking; “what if I would have played the guitar” when you were young, nothing will. 

So, after Stevie got my tears to stop, I then called on one of the most gifted artists with a guitar that has been my privilege to listen to; Carlos Santana. His collaborations have changed the way we listen to rock. I started with While My Guitar Gently Weeps. George Harrison would be proud of what Carlos created with India.Arie and Yo-Yo Ma. Where else can you find those three together in a video and have the luxury to watch it anytime you feel like it?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5M1_DKvb0   Listen to that collaboration. I think this kind of grace can take the pain away even if it’s only for 3 minutes and 58 seconds.

Now I wanted to leave Carlos, but didn’t have the heart because the young kid on the ledge always calls to me when a pigeon and a lovely dancer save his life and talks him down off the rooftop. Chad Kroeger, Carlos Santana and a lovely dancer saves us all from a life of quiet desperation. If you trust yourself to love again, Santana will never leave you empty; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ9nQNx0KEs  

I’m off the ledge, too and my belief in the strength that comes with unconditional love and faith is renewed and I am almost done with this note to our little girl. So, what artist will get me back to my writer’s garret so I can finish telling her how much I love her and that she’s given a meaning to my life that I had no right to expect? Ah, of course, some melancholy. Let me find a talent that matches my daughter’s. 

Note; All of the places I traveled to today were not of my choice. You see YouTube’s algorithm lets you travel along the slipstream of your previous preferences. So, one of the options down the righthand column was Roy Orbison with K.D. Lang. Oh, my. There’s a transatlantic flight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_KlSpZOO1I (this piece is not a video per se but the quality of these two voices demonstrates the places you can go on YouTube at the speed of whimsy)

Okay, enough or I’ll start “Cryin” again. How about some levity? Ah, Rodney Dangerfield is the next video up. Self-deprecating humor. The gift of great comedians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SVZvWaMWsA (He ate me alive one night 44 years ago at the Tropicana when I took the liberty to sit in the front row with a “young lady”.)

Speaking of Freedom, this is a dandy that takes you onto the emotional rollercoaster of YouTube’s travel agent to George Michael: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYAc7gB-0A

Since I have not put in a search or amended anything since I started with Dudley Moore 90 minutes earlier, what does YouTube have for my last leg to get me home?  Please remember that we actually guide the options in that right-hand column by our previous behavior and what other people with the same preferences choose on their playlist. 

Please don’t tell me that bikini waxing might be my last suggested option.  Oh, Thank God. I don’t have to lie about my last post. It brings me back to two other men who burned brightly on stage but the rest of their lives were a bit out of control. So, here are “two of the greatest” that both died of excess but they burned so brightly. Thank you for taking me home, fellas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb-B3lsgEfA

So, the wrap-up is; I was going to write her this longwinded letter and needed some musical accompaniment to help me rhyme poetic, yet I wound up spending over an hour trying to find the best words to say the one thing I had in mind before I started: I’m so proud of her and who she has become.

I’ve been trying to figure out just why I wrote this but maybe it’s a simple message about this website. YouTube can help you through almost anything. Here is a free website that has answers for everything. Put in a search anytime and you’ll find the answer. How to increase your sales revenue, fix a leaky sink or inspire you to share your feelings with some help along the way. I never thought I’d think of an algorithm and some artificial intelligence could be my friend but so it has become.

P.S. My daughter is going to be fine; with early diagnosis and great doctors, you can survive a lot.