Album Notes

Everybody loves and requests "Life is a Game." It's probably the most universally popular song I've ever written or recorded. This particular recording was made on a sunny Saturday afternoon in July with the windows wide open to ambient sounds that included children playing outside. Playing this song is always fun, but listening to it with the sound of children playing in the background seems to send the fun over the top. I wrote "Life is a Game" while meditating on the fact that most of the people who play the lottery (or what used to be called "the numbers game" years ago) don't win. Everybody knows this, but lots of people still play and have always played various lotteries (even when they were not legal), while happily dreaming (often out loud) about the great things they planned to do with their winnings. Rather than simply chalking all of this up to the evils and addictiveness of gambling, I wanted to really understand the positive side. Why do we play? What is the underlying perhaps even sacred wisdom? It occurred to me that the lottery is a metaphor for life. No one lives for ever. Everybody dies. So in life there are no "winning tickets": everybody eventually loses. But we all play anyway, because the real winning is in the playing. Understanding that, enjoying our friends and families, telling funny stories and singing lively songs about all of our various little adventures -- and choosing to go on an adventure is just like buying a lottery ticket -- makes us all rich. So that's what the song is about. "Life is a game. The game is called love. Are you willing to play it?"