AL'S COMMENTS: Bill Moyers asked legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell if he felt he had been helped by hidden hands. He replied: "All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that ... if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you."

I worked for about 10 years at Countrywide Home Loans, a giant mega-mortgage lender, as a technical writer. I fell into it when money was short (during the recording of "Gift") and it eventually became very comfortable. However, my musical aspirations, as well as any dreams beyond having a family, languished. (The family-having dream didn't languish but didn't succeed either). With each passing day, I grew weary with the feeling that if I made no big changes, I would find myself 50 years old, kissing some executive's ass, and telling my children to follow their dreams with a tragic irony.

In 2004 I quit, and ritually burned my business-casual work outfit in the embers of the Man at the Burning Man festival. Shortly after quitting, driving down a desert highway in Arizona, this song came to me. I wrote it to myself.

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FOLLOW YOUR BLISS (Click HERE to download/preview the song.)

Have the fluorescent lights burned out your eyes, son?
When's the last time you saw the sun slip under the horizon?
Have the columns and the cells become the hallways of your hell?
Are you waiting to be saved by an imaginary bell?

CHORUS:
So count the cost, seize the day
Pay the man, and walk away
Look back once, blow a kiss
You must do no less than this
Follow your bliss

Have the long and plodding hours turned to years?
Do you disregard your dreams and do you stem the tide of tears?
The child was a dreamer and the dreamer went to work
The worker pays the doctor to see where his anger lurks

BRIDGE
Will you own your own life, will you heed the call?
'Cause if you play it safe then you don't play at all
The value of your life equals what you dare to pay
What you get from life is what you give away

So count the cost, seize the day
Pay the man, and walk away
Look back once, blow a kiss
You must do no more than this
Follow your bliss

Musicians:
Al Polito: Vocals, Background Vocals, Acoustic and Electric Guitars
Chet McCracken: Drums
Scotty Manzo: Bass
John "J.T." Thomas: Piano, Hammond Organ
Jimmy Greenspoon: Keyboards
Joe Hamilton: Background Vocals

Recorded at Rocky Road Ranch Studios and J.T's place
Produced by Scotty Manzo and Al Polito