“So Many Stars” is a song I have heard performed by many different singers, and I have always thought to myself, “I need to learn that song.”
This past summer I visited a pianist/songwriter friend and his family while attending a Music Together training session in Manhattan.
One evening we were brainstorming about possible future collaborations, and I mentioned that I have long wanted to do an evening of songs about stars — both the amazing energetic phenomena that we see at night and the human-created idea of “star” — as in “movie star” or “Broadway star.”
To get us started, he gave me the sheet music for “So Many Stars,” which I promptly began learning.
Pianist Doug Hammer and I recorded the version I have included at the top of this post — and then I went camping for two weeks with family on Cape Cod.
One of the things I love about getting away from the city is gazing at the sky on a cloudless night.
A couple of times I walked down to the beach after dusk and sang “So Many Stars” over and over again while the universe beamed light across unimaginably vast distances to trigger the rhodopsin in my eyeballs — and awaken a sense of wonder in my mind, body, and spirit.
The deceptively simple lyrics of “So Many Stars” were written by the wife-and-husband team of Marilyn and Alan Bergman for a wonderful melody by Sérgio Mendes, a Brazilian pianist and songwriter.
There are so many ironies about the lives that we “modern” human beings have created here at the beginning of the 21st century on planet earth.
One of them is how — in the interest of sense of safety and security and advertising — we have erected vast numbers of exterior lights, which means that we are less and less able to experience the truly amazing sight of a starry, starry night — along with the humility and curiosity and mystery that it can evoke in us.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Hurrah for rhodopsin, and thank you for reading and listening!
amusicalifeonplanetearth 
