I first saw Jackson Browne in the 1970s. Today, at 70 years of age, he is still writing and singing some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music around.

A Human Touch, featured in this Saturday Soundtrack, is among his most moving.

Written with Steve McEwan and Leslie Mendelson for the Paul Haggis documentary 5B, the song captures the compassion of the caregivers in the 1980s in San Francisco General’s Ward 5B, the world’s first AIDS ward unit. The video of the beautiful Browne / Mendelson duet includes footage of how courage and compassion changed the way doctors and nurses approached and treated AIDS as the epidemic spread fear and hatred throughout the world.

“You can call it a decision
I say it’s how we’re made
There’s no point in shouting from your island
Proclaiming only Jesus saves
There will always be suffering
And there will always be pain
But because of it there’ll always be love
And love, we know, it will remain

Everybody gets lonely
Feel like it’s all too much
Reaching out for some connections
Or maybe just their own reflection
Not everybody finds it
Not like the two of us
Sometimes all anybody needs
Is a human touch”

Beautiful and timely in this age of renewed fear and hatred. There will always be love.

More to come…

DJB

Image by James Chan on Pixabay