MAKING MUSIC

"The more I read the papers, the less I comprehend
The world and all its capers and how it soon will end."

I FEEL SORT OF GUILTY writing something about fun and funny given the horror and heartache boiling in our world. It's important to pay attention. It's appropriate to feel disgust and fear. It's vital to remember that goodness, truth and beauty exist.

So, that's my justification, now here's what's on the lighter side of my mind.

I love music. Maybe you've played that silly game, "Would you rather...?"

Here are a few examples, I borrowed from a quick search:

1. Would you rather have the ability to see 10 minutes into the future or 150 years into the future?

2. Would you rather have telekinesis (the ability to move things with your mind) or telepathy (the ability to read minds)?

3. Would you rather be forced to sing along or dance to every single song you hear?

4. Would you rather find true love today or win the lottery next year?

Sometimes, the game can turn dark with a question like: Would you rather lose your hearing or your eyesight?

At seventy-something, I'm fortunate to still have both, although some may say my hearing is selective or that the TV volume is set higher than it used to be. Two of the men I admire most, lived with the plague of a degenerative eye disease. They handled it with a grace that I should learn from. I love being able to see, read, drive and take walks by myself. But, not being able to hear music? I can't imagine.

never too young for a music appreciation class

I have a nice Hi-Fi system, and a collection of vinyl albums, some of which I purchased in high school and college. I have an Elton John album that I distinctly remember being the first album that My Amazing Missus and I purchased together as newlyweds, 50+ years ago. It's memorable because it would have been a big expense for our budget. We weren't loaded with disposable income, but My Amazing Dairy Farmer's Daughter's father kept us stocked with beef. So, all we had to buy was an occasional box of Hamburger Helper.

Over the years I've had amazing opportunities to hear really good musicians and to play drums in a variety of settings: studios, orchestra pits, parade routes, high school dances; here and abroad. Today, I play alone, on my drum kit in our master bedroom. Sometimes I wear headphones and play along with Diana Krall or The Beatles. I still try to play the 5/4 beat of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", usually unsuccessfully.

I can spend lots of time watching a certain genre of YouTube videos. There are musicians, aspiring and accomplished that make YouTube their main performance Venue. A few of my favorites: Mona Lisa Twins, twin sisters from Austria, named (you guessed it) Mona and Lisa. Their covers of Beatles music and their ability to play so many instruments is inspiring. Another is Mary Spender, a British singer-songwriter. I love her guitar style. One of my favorite videos of hers is a duet with a kid named Josh Turner. They are playing "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.

Josh Turner is another YouTuber that is so prolific. He performs, usually in his apartment, with different musicians and friends. In thinking about which of his videos to recommend to you, I thought, you know what? It's cool outside and Hobby Lobby thinks it's time to start the Christmas season, so how about this one? CLICK HERE to watch Josh Turner and friends.

Often, I'll go to her sewing room and say, "Come quick, I have another amazing video for you to watch!" As it concludes, I usually say, "I wish I had a few friends I could jam with like Josh and his friends."

Then one day I discovered "Bryan and Friends" and reality hit hard. I realized that it's probably best if I don't gather a few friends for fear we might actually turn on a camera and post publicly. But, way to go Bryan and your friends. Rock on! CLICK HERE to watch Bryan and Friends.

For me, I'm holding out to just simply sit in the corner of a studio and watch miracles like this happen. CLICK HERE to watch Tony [RIP] and Diana.

In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
They're only made of clay
But, our love is here to stay

Tony bennet and diana krall

"Love Is Here to Stay" is a popular song and jazz standard composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin for the movie The Goldwyn Follies (1938).

LUSTING FOR RELEVANCE

"I've still got a lot of tread on the tires.": a line I heard while sort of half listening to an interview with a 31 year old NFL running back in response to a question about how much longer he would play.

There's an ad running now selling something; it features Dan Marino (former Miami Dolphins QB), Emmitt Smith (former Dallas Cowboys RB) and a few others of that ilk. They are watching a game and imagining the possiblity of playing again.

I don't know that I could ever say about anything in my life that "I've got game." I played some decent drums back in the day but I'm not ready to get-the-band-back-together and play the casino circuit. While the temptation or the call to return to some youthful pursuit stirs not in my soul, I still feel like there's a little tread left on the tires.

Vanna has signed up for at least two more years of letter-flipping even though Pat will be making his final spin soon. Maybe the last puzzle will be from the category "Rhetorical Questions", and the puzzle: W_Y, V_NN_, W_Y?

She might as well keep spinning though. At 66, she's a youngster compared to her viewing audience and many of our politicians.

Speaking of, did you see that Mitt Romney is checking it in (for now)? I hate to see this. Mitt is one of the more sane and ethical R's on The Hill (in my highly partisan mind).

One of my favorite writers/observers, David Brooks, wrote:

"I admire him for deciding to step down at the senatorially young age of 76. As we’ve all come to see, the hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old. Romney stands for the valuable idea that there are things more important in life than politics and winning elections."

WAIT! What did David say there?! "...the hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old."

To quote the aging but still highly relevant Steve Martin, "Well, exccccuuussseee me!"

What would he have us do? Strive for irrelevance? Maybe what he's saying is that we, of a higher age, should just accept and maybe even embrace our blossoming irrelevance.

I think this is accurate: if you symbolically drive me across wet sand maybe you'll see subtle marking left behind by some remnant of remaining tread. When my oldest GrandGirl thanks me for being in the stands on a Friday night for the sole purpose of seeing her do her Pom Squad thing, I feel relevant. When I'm called on to be a part of an interview by a GrandGirl doing a report on 9-11, when I'm invited to "play" Barbie or Chutes and Ladders, when my youngest Grand hands me the other X-Box controller, inviting me to play some Star Wars game, and all I can do is make my guy jump up and down, somehow I still feel relevant just sitting between him and his big brother.

jeremiah, our youngest grand. photo by his uncle corey.

I get David Brooks’ point. I thought about it as I started composing this blog post. Why am I still doing this blog thing? The hunger for relevance? When I kicked it off ten years ago that was part of it. But for now, it's just fun and it gives me something to do. I like putting words together, shaping thoughts, especially since there is no teacher with a red pencil marking my poor punctuation choices. Circling the participles I may have left dangling, I know they meant well. When I write I pay more attention to life and I think a little deeper. And, who knows, maybe something I write might inspire or humor or disturb; granting a momentary relevance.

That's enough for now.

MORE THAN A FAST CAR

SOMETIMES I CLOSE MY EYES. Maybe if I don't see it, it's not real. Usually though, I want to be able to see. I think most folks do. "I can't see!" is one of the first frustrations we learn to express as kids.

Remember those early TV consoles built to look like furniture, the ones where the picture tube was six-ish inches off the floor? Invariably, there would be a younger sibling messing around right in your field of view just as Lassie was about to save Timmy's backside for the 997th time. "But Mom, I can't see! That's why I gently nudged him out of the way with my foot."

This post isn't about the physical ability to functionally see with our eyeballs, rods, cones, etc. It's about sensing, looking behind the curtain, having a crystal ball, having vision in the big--you might say--biblical way.

We need (or think we need) to see--the whole picture. I also like to be able to see far enough ahead to know that things will resolve well. Fifties and Sixties TV gave us that, but real life is more; real.

I worked with teenagers for most of my adult life. I consider it a privilge to have had that calling. It was not all pizza and volleyball though. The worst parts sprung from seeing the heartbreak; knowing the stories of those who had been dealt a crappy hand. In most all of those lives there was an inability to see: to see what could be, to see a way out or through, to see there is some goodness and beauty somewhere. The lack of vision didn't come from a lack of desire. Sometimes the weight of life makes us nearsighted or blinded.

Whether we can see around the corner, or beyond the moment, or not, we need to know that there's a way out, something or someone that will deliver us somewhere else, something to get us unstuck--call it rescue. We don't know where it might take us, but sometimes we just need to be elsewhere and a way to get there. Maybe we shouldn't think of this as an escape though. When we're trying to escape we might choose poorly, escaping by means of self-harm, self-loathing or desperation.

A while back, March 26, 2023, I wrote a post called GIRL POWER. It is a theme for me to try to do something that is affirming and encouraging to young women. Since then I've written a few times on the subject. Today, I'm writing another. This is for me the tough kind of writing, where each word needs to mean something. I can feel Hemingway's desire to be able to write "one true sentence".

As I oftern do, I want to use the words of another; a poet. Someone who sees this life from a deeper vision than I have. This time the young lady's name is Tracy Chapman. The words are lyrics to her song, "Fast Car". It is a song, that along with Janis Ian's "At Seventeen", is torturous. It is real and raw and paints a picture we need to spend time pondering. My hope is that when I have done that, I will be kinder, more attuned, more resolved, more focused on the things that really matter.

I've included the lyrics here so that Tracy can have the last word. But, PLEASE PLEASE; don't just read these. Go to YouTube and listen to her sing it. CLICK HERE.

---

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living

See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with a bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
When mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said, "Somebody's gotta take care of him"
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinkin' late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together, you and me'd find it
I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

---

For a fleeting moment she felt a couple of those life essentials, the ones everyone deserves: that I belong, that I could be someone.

"Search my heart O God" for prejudice, for misogyny, for racism, for deceit, for arrogance. Help me to see in myself the stuff that I do not want to admit is there. Help me to see the hurting, the injustice, the abuser and the abused. And grant me the courage and honesty to do something and say something.

IT'S LIKE RIDING A BIKE

ONCE YOU'VE LEARNED, you never forget. Funny thing: here at seventy-something, I found there are more and more things that my mind thinks it remembers like it was yesterday, but my body doesn't seem to recall having ever done that. E.g.: Someone told me the other day that old people forget how to skip. My mind knows what skipping is. I know it when I see it. If a kid comes skipping along I might say, "You're a good skipper."

BUT, do I have the muscle memory to do it? After hearing this rumor, I decided to try it. I waited until I was home alone and certain no one was watching. I had my phone nearby in case I needed to crawl to it to call nine-eleven.

LARRY’S BIKE SHOP. SHAWNEE, OKLAHOMA

What do you know? I can still skip.

I can still feed myself. I can still play my drum set, including the marching cadences from my high school days in the Jenks Trojan Marching Band. I can still type and play a decent game of ping pong.

BUT, what happens if we forget rudimentary stuff?

In a book for tweens called, NEVERFORGOTTEN, the idea of forgetting-how is explored. Here's a portion of a review I read of the book:

In this dual-language novella, the Colombian author Alejandra Algorta tells the story of Fabio, whose mother, a baker, trades eight bags of homemade bread for a girl’s salmon-colored bike. She removes the handlebar ribbons and gives the bike to Fabio. His bus driver father teaches him to ride, assuring Fabio as he runs behind the bike, “Even if I let you go, I won’t let you go.”

Fabio overcomes the stigma of the girl-bike provenance, and discovers his worth and identity. On the bike, he delivers his mother’s bread, empowered. He has been released from Bogotá’s outskirts and from his pedestrian neighborhood to the dust and danger of the monster city, his world new and exciting. “Strangely for Fabio,” Algorta writes, “the neighborhood through which he journeyed on his bicycle was much more illuminated than the one he walked, was warmer, more fleeting, softer, more bird than cage.”

Now, on wheels, he is flying and free, and often trailed by a pack of children on their own bikes. Within a few years, as he grows stronger and his intuitions on the bicycle flourish, he becomes a mythical leader. It is whispered that he is “half boy and half bicycle.”

Unexpectedly and without explanation, he wakes one morning and has forgotten how to pedal. In front of an audience of bicycle-children, he falls repeatedly. Puzzled and humiliated, he hides beneath his bed, trying to determine the cause. Has he forgotten the mechanics of pedaling because his father taught him to ride on an inauspicious day — Wednesday? Or because the bicycle is a pinkish orange, a color meant for girls only? Could this new inability be the result of never having learned to ride with training wheels first, like other children, a step that might have been integral to memory? No matter the reason, he is now inept and defeated, his power replaced with fear. His father and mother reassure him that “what the body knows, it knows forever.” But Fabio declares that this is a lie. He is proof. When he forgets the thing that everyone says is unforgettable, he begins to question everything known in his world, including how to carry on.

---

I'm reluctant to share the source of this review for fear it will waken some fundamentalist who will question why a boy is riding a "girl" bike and then gather up all the copies of the book and burn them. Oh well. You can read the review in the NYT by clicking here.

Apparently, sarcasm and saltiness are unforgettable skills as well.

Here's the next question. Just because I still remember how to ride a bike; should I? I'm not as agile, responsive and quick as I once was. My core strength should no longer be called a strength. I'm pondering these deep issues because I'm thinking of getting one of these new-fangled electric bikes; e-bikes.

Is this just a pedal-assisted road on a fool's errand?. I promise to wear a helmet and something in a nice florescent green. If things don't go well; according to my driver's license, I am an organ donor. Not that I have anything anyone would want.

We just made a road trip through Iowa. The rolling hills of corn on farm after farm are beautiful. Why are the farms and homes of Iowa so neat and maintained? Just curious.

Occasionally we would drive through an Amish settlement. Clotheslines displayed an artist's pallet full of pastel garments drying in the sun against a backgound of deep green meeting deep blue at the horizon line. On the shoulder of the highway black buggies were pulled by single horses. And look. There's an e-bike store. WAIT! What in the barn-raising world is an e-bike store doing out here in the middle of modernity-rejection?!?!

Turns out e-bikes have been approved for use in many Amish communities. The young people have fully embraced them. If you're wondering: they wear their straw hats instead of helmets. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Where is the line for this old curmudgeon when it comes to buying and riding an e-bike? It could be healthy. Some pedalling is required. It could be severly unhealthy. I hopefully have set my affairs so that my family will be taken care of. As I'm typing this the outside temp is 99F with 110% humidity, which according to my calculations means a "feels-like" temperature of hell. This whole e-bike thing sounded a lot more fun that day in Iowa when it was in the seventies.

I'm compelled to do something that feels like moving forward, even if it's downhill or pedal-assisted. Inertia is heavy and I can't let the new and different paralyze me. Remember the last line I shared from the review of the book about Fabio and his bicycle: "When he forgets the thing that everyone says is unforgettable, he begins to question everything known in his world, including how to carry on."

I can't remember ever not-knowing how to ride a bike, or swim, or drive a stick shift, or tell if a watermelon is ripe before cutting it open. It seems a shame to not put all that knowledge to good use.

Back in my early bike-riding days I was given certain limits. I was not to leave Quincy Ave, the street where we lived and go out on 71st street. I was not to ride my bike to the river.

Did I ever cross 71st or go to the river? Of course.

Today, my bike riding limits are set by my endurance and energy level, and abhorrence to heat. I have a very cool cruiser style bike but it's a single speed. Our house sits on a rise. No matter which direction I ride I have to climb a hill to get back home. An e-bike would allow me to ride to the metaphorical river once again. It sounds so fun and transgressional. Why not? After all: once you learn...