I Don't Want to Live on the Moon

This has to be my favorite artistic project for the summer. A very sweet young man came to me and asked me to letter this song for his mother, as he would be dancing with her at his wedding to this tune.

I recognized it at once -- from Sesame Street -- Ernie sits in the window, gazing up at the moon, singing this song. It was still in my head after more than 10 years. I sang fragments of it for days while I played with ideas of how to best represent it on paper.

You can see Ernie sing the song.

I was thinking that this is a perfect example of how my best work comes out when I don't think too much about the client, instead reacting to the words (and the feelings and images they conjour up). If I make it personal, I can't go wrong. If I have fun with it, play with it, the work comes alive. If, instead, I try to get inside another person's mind, I end up either completely STUCK (more on that later) or making a piece that doesn't ring true. Of course, I want my clients to be happy -- but more and more I realize that by working in a way that is from my heart, I accomplish that.

Chris emailed me after the wedding, and sent a picture of his mother receiving the poem. She cried, he cried, and even I got a little teary... who could ask for anything more?