❄️❄️ John sings/plays "White Christmas" (featuring SNOW!) ❄️❄️

This last week leading into Christmas has been SUPER dark & depressing for me. 👎 I was originally SUPER excited to host/perform an "atheist Xmas" concert for about 20 people in my living room 2 days ago (on Dec. 22nd), but I ended up having to cancel the show a week ago (just ONE day after I made the concert program/details public on Facebook...UGH) due to extreme family tension, religious trauma, & other mental health issues. 😭
I spent over a dozen hours planning & practicing for this concert (during the 1st half of December), so yeah, I've been wading through A LOT of devastation, grief, rage, isolation, shame, heartbreak, & Grinchy feelings in the last week. 💔 But thank you SO much to the 50+ beautiful people who reached out to me w/ love, support, & empathy after I trauma-dumped about this whole messy situation through a Facebook post on Dec. 17th. 🙏
I finally started feeling somewhat better today, so I decided I'll try to salvage my failed holiday concert a bit by filming/posting a few of my concert songs from today until New Year's. 💪 To kick things off, here's a video of me singing/playing Irving Berlin's classic song "White Christmas" (from the 1942 film "Holiday Inn"). 🤍 This lush piano arrangement is from Phillip Keveren's "Christmas at the Movies" songbook. 🎹
"White Christmas" was going to be the heartwarming, fun finale of my Dec. 22nd concert, & I was going to sprinkle confetti snow on my audience members toward the end of the song (during a section where I pre-recorded the accompaniment onto my electric piano). ❄️ So I fully hammed it up for this video (w/ sunglasses, leis, a Santa hat, my new Christmas sweater, Christmas tree, snowman decor, Santa cup, & LOTS of snooooooooooow)!!! ☃️
Utah has been pretty dry for most of December, but I'm excited that there's hopefully SOME snow in the forecast JUST in time for Christmas morning tomorrow! 🤩 I honestly have a love/hate relationship w/ snow (I LOVE snow from Thanksgiving until New Year's Eve, but I HATE snow for January, February, & beyond)! 🌨 Hopefully in the next 2-3 years, I'll FINALLY fulfill my dream of moving to the sunny Los Angeles area & start playing piano on cruise ships (after living as a gay man in the homophobic state of Utah for the last 25 years...MEH)! 🌴
Here's a video I posted EXACTLY 5 years ago (on Christmas Eve 2019) of me playing this same "White Christmas" piano solo at a fancy holiday party in Orem: • John plays "White Chri...