Measure Your Treasure

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I VIVIDLY REMEMBER my first dollar of disposable income.

dis·pos·a·ble in·come
/dəˈspōzəbəl ˈinˌkəm,dəˈspōzəbəl ˈiNGˌkəm/
noun: income remaining after deduction of taxes and other mandatory charges, available to be spent or saved as one wishes.

I was probably 7 or 8, walking to a friend’s house up the street. There it was; a dollar bill! You know how in the sketch of George Washington on the ONE he’s turned slightly, facing left-ish, but his eyes are cut back to the right? His look seemed to say to me, “I’m yours now, let’s do something fun.” So my friend and I walked to a little neighborhood grocery store, bought a can of vienna sausages, a loaf of bread and a couple of Tootsie Rolls. It was an impulse purchase spawned from hunger. Once I was full of bread and little weiners, I wish I had bought baseball cards.

Thumbing through my vinyl records, trying to decide what to listen to next, I started estimating how much I had invested in just the records in this one box. From the early days of having a few dollars to spend, often I chose music: records, 8-track tapes, CDs, digital music, concert tickets, drumsticks, stereo equipment, headphones, turntables, speakers. Throw in the guitar in its case behind where I’m sitting right now, a set of Ludwig drums and Zildian cymbals in another room, you could label one large treasure chest “MUSIC” and find a huge piece of my heart.

My love of music is not unlike a hunger. It’s different than that feeling that leads you to use your found money to buy vienna sausages. Music is an experience without end. How can you take a limited number of notes like the eight of an octave and add a few half tones and make endless melodies? Consider a song that you’ve heard many many times before. Play that song from a quality vinyl record on a good turntable with a good cartridge, into a phono pre-amp, to a powerful amplifier through quality cables and into well-designed speakers or headphones and you will hear things there you’ve never heard before: soft strings, the rumble of a distant bass drum or the ting of a triangle, a voice in harmony, all adding layers and more layers.

My dad had a young friend named Ken. He was a school teacher in Tulsa. After school he made pizzas in a little joint called The Pizza Parlor he owned on 11th Street in Tulsa. For several years he taught school and made pizza but finally took up the pizza business full time. He changed the name to Ken’s Pizza Parlor and later expanded to a brand he called Mazzio’s.

I spent a lot of the disposable income of my youth at Ken’s. His original pizza sauce and thin, crispy crust are something I still long for. If you had enough friends to share the cost of a pie, there would be enough left for a few songs on the jukebox. I can close my eyes and picture the checkered table cloth, the red glass candle holder, the smell of the pizzas cooking and I can hear Otis Redding singing “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay…”

So, in the years of my first coming of age, you could measure my treasure or the disbursment thereof and guess that my heart longed for round things that came in square packages like a new L.P. record album or a Ken’s pizza to go.

A really good pizza and a classic record share more than their shape. They are both like a package deal—a complete meal, a complete experience. Together they cover the all the senses: touch, sight, smell, sound and taste.

I’m not an expert in either music or pizza, but I’ve had my share of experiences. I’ve heard live in concert a range from Led Zeppelin to Rene Fleming. From Diana Krall to Jars of Clay. The Beach Boys to Elton John. Vanilla Fudge to Pink Martini.

I’ve had pizza from Ken’s on 11 Street in Tulsa, and pizza in Florence, Italy. A slice or two from Saluggis in New York City to Uno’s in Chicago. Which is better Chicago deep pan or New York City pizza? It’s apples and oranges. It’s Miles Davis and Blake Shelton.

PIZZA AT UNO’S IN CHICAGO WITH OUR BEST BUDS—CHARLIE AND SHIRLEY

It’s all nuanced. Whether it’s a good slice or a cool L.P. you need to enjoy in just the right setting, at the right time. You need to be open to something new. You need to listen and taste slowly and attentively.

Memories and music, treasures and matters of the heart.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO

IF I SANG OUT OF TUNE? I don’t know where I was 50 years ago today but it wasn’t Woodstock. Oh, to be there though.

August of 1969 was the end of the summer after high school for me. Probably, I was giving some thought to heading off to college in a few weeks. Along with my release from high school in May, was the release of the album, “Crosby, Stills & Nash”. One thing I know for sure about the summer of ‘69, that album was my favorite and it’s still in my top five in the category of “albums by bands other than the Beatles”.

Seems like the best, credible estimate of crowd size at Woodstock was 400,000. And the line goes: if you count all of those who said they were at Woodstock the number goes up to 4 million, give or take a million.

I wasn’t the only one not there who would like to have been there. Joni Mitchell, the folk singer was not there either. She did, however, write the song that has sort of become the anthem for the phenomenon called “Woodstock” and most famously recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

(first verse and chorus)

I watched a special about the festival on PBS the other day. It was done as a day by day chronicle of the “Three Days of Peace & Music”. As they got to day three, I found myself feeling a bit wistful; not because the final scenes were mainly of bedraggled kids in a muddy mess, but because the festival was drawing to a close, and somehow it seemed something else was closing too. I don’t know what it was. Probably something that could not have endured anyway.

One of the bucket list stops on our extended Airstream roadtrip when I retire is Bethel, New York, to visit Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, to stand where the festival took place. I don’t know why, but I want to stand on that spot.

For now: how best to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Woodstock? Maybe I convince my Amazing-Missus to put on a pair of bell-bottom jeans and we’ll stand in the backyard, turn on the sprinkler and listen to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, of course, Crosby, Stills and Nash with the bluetooth speaker turned all the way up.

Or maybe we’ll string some beads, tie dye a shirt and watch “Wheel Of Fortune”.

DISTURBED

WE HAVE A GENERATION GAP. The first time I reckoned with that cultural reality, I was 15ish and wanted long hair. My parents, the Jenks Schools Board of Education, and most other “adults” in my sphere said, “No! And tuck in your shirttail.”

Today the Gap still exists, but I’m on the other side of it.

A few years ago, my youngest son, Kyle said, “Hey Dad. There’s a heavy metal band called, ‘Disturbed’. They’ve done a cover of one of your favorite songs, “The Sound of Silence”.

GRAPHIC BY COREY LEE FULLER

Isn’t it interesting that the generation gap often shows up in musical tastes. No doubt, adults back in the day found Elvis to be disturbing, as did parents of my day with The Beatles.

Now I am proud of my sons on many many levels, one of those being their breadth of musical appreciation and understanding. I’m especially grateful that they know that I hold the writing of Paul Simon and the music of Simon & Garfunkel in high regard, reverence even, so much so, that when Kyle used the words heavy, metal, cover, the, sound, of, and silence in the same sentence, I was disturbed, and he knew I would be—until I listened to it.

(I can picture right now, my old writing professor, Dr. Spears, writing “DISJOINTED” across the face of this essay in red pencil.)

(Stay with me.)

A friend recently sent me a link to a video of a person watching the video of Disturbed’s cover of the song. Believe it or not, it is a YouTube thing for people to video themselves reacting to music videos. In fact there are numerous reaction videos to the “Disturbed” cover. I have watched several of them and have drawn two conclusions:

1.) It’s scary how many young people have never heard of Simon & Garfunkel or heard their music. That pesky generation gap.

2.) People seemed to be totally flummoxed by the lyrics of the song. Or, worse yet, they don’t seem to be interested in a closer look.

I certainly don’t claim to know the “meaning” of the lyrics of the song, but I’ve had about 50 years to ponder them, and I have. If you have time, let’s see if we can peek inside Paul Simon’s mind:

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VERSE ONE:

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

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THOUGHTS:

There has been speculation that Paul Simon wrote these lyrics in reaction to the assination of John F. Kennedy. The problem with that theory is that he wrote the song before that event.

Why the “sound” of “silence”? Isn’t that an oxymoron? I like to think of it as being lonely in a huge crowd. In this midst of the cacophony of life there is no discernable Word, so it might as well be silence.

---

VERSE TWO:

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

'Neath the halo of a street lamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

---

THOUGHTS:

I listened to commentary about the song on a website. The analysis was that this could be someone overwhelmed by social media, email, and blogs like this one, etc. Then something happens that breaks through all of that. Seems reasonable—except the song was written in the 60s, before any of that.

There is a jolt, like an awakening or enlightenment. It cuts through. You have to take a moment to picture this guy, in the dim glow of a street lamp, with his collar turned up and all of a sudden: BOOM. A flash. “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me.” —Acts 22:6. That kind of flash.

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VERSE THREE:

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

No one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

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THOUGHTS:

Sound familiar? A mass of humanity, lots of words but no one “speaking” or “listening”. Are there sage voices today? Is there a “song” written worth sharing. I’m talking song in a metaphorical sense. For my generation that “song”-writer, that voice would be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He spoke so powerfully, so relevantly, so prophetically. How did people respond? “No one dared disturb the sound of silence.”

---

VERSE FOUR:

"Fools" said I, "You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you"

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

---

THOUGHTS:

There is the word and there is the messenger, but too often there is no one willing to receive the words and they fall like “silent raindrops”.

“In the beginning was the Word… He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” —from John 1, The Message

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VERSE FIVE:

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, "The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls"

And whispered in the sounds of silence

---

THOUGHTS:

So many times we look in all the wrong places and listen to all the wrong people. Sometimes we think it must be in the cockiness of contemporary culture, or in the arrogant shriek of politics. Sometimes though the message is in a still, small voice, or the words of a child. Sometimes the real truth is right in front of us but not seen or heard.

Simon & Garfunkel’s version of the song, in my opinion, is styled in the voice of a 60s era poet. It is sung, as sort of a lament. Disturbed’s version to me is more the voice of a prophet. It has an urgency to it.

In the 50 years between the two versions culture has drifted and decayed to the point that both versions are relevant for their time.

Here is a link to Simon & Garfunkel doing the song live. Listen to it first because it is the version of the songwriter himself, Paul Simon. It is done with only an acoustic guitar; again, as a poetic lament.

Then listen to Disturbed’s take. It’s almost as if he is saying, “You didn’t listen to this 50 years ago, so let me be a little more emphatic.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL VERSION

CLICK HERE FOR THE DISTURBED COVER

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“Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture-makers -- and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction.” ― Frederick Douglass

I'm With Her

REMEMBER THAT SONG BY THE NEW SEEKERS? The one the Coca-Cola® marketing department borrowed and mashed up with their own theme song? It seemed so hip in ’71, now it looks like maybe their coke bottles could have been filled with “Kool-Aid”. No wonder the Greatest Generation thought the Baby Boomers were all going to march off the cliff together.

I'd like to buy the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company

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Let’s dial back the idealism for a minute; forget about the apple trees, honey bees and snow white turtle doves. Let’s just shoot for a bit of harmony, even if it’s not pitch perfect. 

Before we can talk about metaphorical harmony, we need to spend some time listening to the magical, musical world of real harmony. Let me suggest:

Pentatonix: “Can’t Help Falling In Love”
The Beach Boys: “In My Room” and “Good Vibrations”
The Beatles: “Because” and “Nowhere Man”
The Everly Brothers: “All I Have To Do is Dream”
Crosby, Stills & Nash: “Helplessly Hoping” and “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”
Simon and Garfunkel: “The Sounds of Silence”

I want to give a shout out to my main music sage, Gene “Pops” Chapman. The musical tastes of Gene and myself are in near-perfect harmony, so whenever he makes a recommendation like the one to check out this all-girl trio, I did and was amazed. Click and listen to the NPR Tiny Desk Concert of “I’m With Her”.

Now, can we draw some lessons from the beauty of musical harmonies and apply them to our worlds and the world? Here are a few thoughts I’ve had: 

You must have at least one other person to harmonize with, am I right? Sure soloing is great sometimes, but we’re talking harmonies here. All of the people in the group have to sing the same song for a few minutes at least. They have to sing in the same key and at the same tempo. The notes though, while different, the common notes of the correct chord, have to be present. This is the magic. It’s as simple as one note and the note a third above it and maybe the fifth, and somehow it just seems right, and rich. There is a peace to it all, you can sense the beauty of the divine design of it. 

Unfortunately, today, at times at least, it seems people only know one note, and even if they know more, they just want to sing their one note, really loud. I’m that way sometimes. There are some people I just don’t seem to be able to harmonize with and others I have no interest in harmonizing with. I don’t like the song they’re singing. Usually my song is better (or so I think). 

When you watch a really good vocal duet or ensemble singing in tight harmony it’s sublime. They are synched and connected. And, at the end of a song, there is, at least for me, a sense of purpose, of completion, something worthwhile that makes us all better for having been there.

Sometimes though, singing or playing in unison can be harmonius. Yesterday for example, one of our Grand-Girls, Harper, and two of her friends comprised a cello trio. They sang and played “Jesus Loves Me” in “big church”. There was no harmony, yet there was nearly perfect harmony among the three. You could see it in their six year-old silliness before the service started, in their total trust and dependence on their teacher, and in their common mission. Banded together, there was no stagefright or limelight. Just harmony in unison.

Not to say there isn’t a place for occasional dissonance. This is where I often come in—sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally. 

One thing about dissonance: it is so sweet when it resolves, steps back into harmony, and even still amazing when it doesn’t. Listen to “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles. Click this and watch if you want to geek-out on all of this.

One more thing: Watch this video. It’s two sisters from Stockholm, Sweden, singing together a song they wrote, a song about having someone to sing with like Emmylou and Gram Parsons singing “Love Hurts” or Johnny and June singing “If I Were A Carpenter”.