HANDSHAKE DEAL (NPR Tiny Desk Entry)
When all you can do is pray to the winds!
Ready to release in March 2023, Handshake Deal is one of our son Antonín’s favorite sing-alongs and so he naturally claimed a spot in the frame while we recorded this NPR Tiny Desk video in the Saguaro Desert in Tucson.
I wrote the sketch for this song while evacuating from wildfires in August 2020. I loaded our possessions & pets while carrying our then 5 month old son in a kangaroo pouch and took breaks to nurse him.
Listening to firefighting airplanes taking off and landing at the nearby airport, I learned the forecast had another night of 80+mph gust winds in store for us. We were in double trouble. The pandemic had been ravaging our lives for months and now on top of it wildfires showed no mercy.
Feeling completely helpless and vulnerable, the only action left for me was a prayer. So I sat by a piano they had at the shelter and wrote this Prayer to the Wind as my son fell peacefully asleep in the kangaroo pouch on my heart filling me with hope.