How am I ever going to explain this to my kids?
That’s the purée of dread, outrage, fearand head-shaking I have with every new headline and tweet that’s catapulted from Washington these days. And really, not just Washington. So much of what we’re seeing and hearing from all corners is the exact opposite of the earliest lessons we teach our children. How to speak kindly to others, how to treat people with respect, how to share. Compassion, decency, fairness – the basics! Did we forget everything we learned in kindergarten?
That’s the purée of dread, outrage, fearand head-shaking I have with every new headline and tweet that’s catapulted from Washington these days. And really, not just Washington. So much of what we’re seeing and hearing from all corners is the exact opposite of the earliest lessons we teach our children. How to speak kindly to others, how to treat people with respect, how to share. Compassion, decency, fairness – the basics! Did we forget everything we learned in kindergarten?
That question led to the series I’m launching today… The Birds and The BS, a kids show for adults! The catalyst of each episode is a letter from a confused “kid” asking for help making sense of the disconnect between what they’ve been taught and what they see “grown-ups” doing every day. Have all the rules changed? I along with an especially animated celebrity guest explain it all in our super-catchy original songs, like our first episode’s Tiny Hands.
Now you may think you know where that one’s headed – and yeah, there’s a lot of that – but the real lesson here is that we should know better than to make fun of people’s appearance, even the people we don’t like. We should make fun of the reprehensible things they do. On The Birds and The BS, we’re breaking down the grays of the grown-up world for you and me, with a big tip of the proverbial cap to Mr. Rogers, Pee Wee and our friends who live on Avenue Q.
Can we laugh when there’s so little that’s funny about the state of our world? Laughing opens me, opens my heart. And the strongest tool of resistance is an open heart.
Following Carrie Fisher’s golden words, I tried to take my broken heart and turn it into art. But not broken heart art. I took my anger and turned it into laughter, I took my dismay and turned it into music, I took my isolation and turned it into a collective of artists – a group of people creating for the sheer joy of creating. That’s how we heal, that’s how we understand, that’s how we push forward. As Jonathan Larson told us in Rent, “The opposite of war isn’t peace… it’s creation!”
Come create and laugh and sing and open your hearts with us. Welcome to The Birds and The BS!
Watch the first episode here.