My dear friend Bobbi, who has been helping me edit my posts, sent me an award-winning HBO documentary called Searching for Sugar Man. If you have not seen it, it is a “must see.” The story tells of a folk singer from the sixties who went by the name Rodriguez and was discovered while living in the slums of Detroit. When the music agents discovered him, they thought they had found the next great music man along the lines of an up and coming star of the time by the name of Robert Allen Zimmerman. If you don't know Robert, like maybe you don't know Rodriguez, it's because they both had one thing in common. They transformed themselves into something they were not. Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan and Rodriguez became a construction laborer. Why their two stories were so different is what makes Rodriguez's the miracle that it is. When the two albums he recorded in 1968 flopped and sent him back to the labor pool, one of his fans, an American hippie girl, moved to South Africa and somehow her recording of his music from Detroit landed right in the middle of South African apartheid. There were a couple of things Dylan and Rodriguez had in common. Their songs incited young people to the streets in protest, Bob's to the streets of America in protest of the war in Vietnam and Rodriguez's to the streets of Cape Town in protest of apartheid. The Powers That Be in both places had something in common. They loved conflict, they loved money and best of all they loved it when conflict made them money. I think many here know how Bob Dylan's music changed the landscape of the United States at the time, and when you see how Rodriguez changed the landscape of South Africa, you will feel as if you were there.
OK, I hear you out there, “Cowboy, why are you telling this story and what does it have to do with the RV/GCR?” Well, Rodriguez's story is a lot like many of ours. We all found our way into this blessing by the hand of God, by some act of supreme intervention, and though we might not have been living on the streets when it happened, many of us were darn close. No matter how long you have been in this thing, it feels like it has been many lifetimes, because in a way it has. We all know that someday by the Grace of God we will reach our dreams. When we do, most of us understand we will be ready to do whatever is necessary to step up on whatever stage we decide we want to be on and we will perform like we have been waiting all our life to do. Rodriguez waited fifty years to get on his main stage and when he did he knocked it out of the park like I believe many of you will do as well. Now for the real miracle of this story. Through all the tears of Joy that were shed last night as we watched this movie, I saw myself standing on the crossroads of one of the most important times of my life and I knew with all my knowing that somehow, some way, Rodriguez and I will meet and when we do we will have some amazing stories to tell. So, tickets found, a venue set, I am on a mission from God, I will see the RV/GCR in soon and then I will see a man who waited fifty years to sing his songs to me. My four years of waiting for the RV/GCR seems like forty-six years not long enough after watching this documentary. We have all arrived and if we open our eyes and see the miracle that is about to unfold, we will know God had this all along, She has set the stage and it is time for all of us to perform.
I will be in the front row cheering all of you on and crying my tears of joy.
Cowboy
I introduce you to Rodriguez and I hope you will watch his story I do believe it will help you see everything is happening in a Perfect timing for us all. How we handle the waiting is what the real story is all about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFlBQqNK_Wo