Author: Bob

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Let Go

Reverb 10 Prompt (from Alice Bradley): What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Come on Alice, that’s not fair. I’ve already blogged like, thirty-nine times about turning forty, and nobody wants to hear anymore about it! But what can an old guy do. The expiration date on my youth is only a week past, so maybe it’ll be okay to go there one more time. So for now, keeping in mind I always reserve the right to ramble off in any direction imaginable, I’ll give some further consideration to the letting go of my youth.

Okay. Fuck that. I changed my mind already. I don’t want to let go. What’s the next prompt?

Alright, that was a bit rash. But “youth” is just too broad, too amorphous to get my arms around (and then let go of). I suppose everything I write over the course of this month will boil down, in the final analysis, to my big blobby issues, like that I don’t want to die and that I want everyone to love me and all that crap, but what I’m resisting right now is digging into the specifics, the nitty gritty of it all. Like Friday night, for instance. A favorite local band of mine, Transportation, was playing at The Reservoir, and I met up with Eric for a rare night out. I hadn’t seen Eric for a while. He had just returned from a few weeks of touring with his band, Minor Stars. Shit, there are already too many layers for me to keep track of. You see, until a few months ago, Minor Stars was also my band. I quit because I couldn’t go on this fall tour. Because I didn’t have the time and energy even to continue practicing every week and playing local shows. Because I had so many other projects I wanted to pursue. Because I couldn’t afford to quit my full-time day job. Because I had to support my wife while she finished up her Ph.D. Because my wife was about to go on the job market and we’d probably be moving away. Because being a rock star is Eric’s dream, not mine. Because I was avoiding facing my own destiny.

The Reservoir was where I played my first local show with Minor Stars, back in August of 2009. I’ve got the pictures to prove it! (I’m the bass player, the elder of the group who at that point was just three months shy of thirty-nine. Oh to be young again…) The Reservoir was also the club where I played my last show with Eric’s and my first band, My Dear Ella. That was back in 2003, and I remember thinking then, “This is it. I’m letting all this go. It’s really over.” Then I moved out of state to be with my girlfriend, now wife, who was just beginning her Ph.D. program at that point. Five years went by and we moved back here to Chapel Hill for my wife’s year of dissertation writing. You see, digging into the specifics can be dizzying as hell.

So it’s Friday night, as in the night before last, and I meet up with Eric at The Reservoir to see Transportation. We’ve been going to Transportation shows together on and off for that past ten years. Ten years! And they still rock. Eric and I grabbed a couple of beers and caught up. The Minor Stars fall tour was a success, but things didn’t work out with the new bass player, the guy who replaced me. I told Eric that, of course, I would be happy to step in if he needed me to play a really important local show. After all, as it turned out, my wife didn’t get an academic position for this fall, so it looks like we’ll be in town for a while longer than expected. And then there’s always the possibility that she will get a job around here, and then, well, who knows…

You see, that’s the fucked up thing. I did let go of Rock and Roll this year! I swear, I really did! And I have the video to prove it! It was on June 3rd, my last last show, at the local NBC television station. It was a tough night. I had just separated my right shoulder a few days before, so I was in some pain. I was sad to be leaving the band. I was terrified of those damned TV cameras. I had finally come to terms with the fact that Rock and Roll is a young person’s game. It’s done. Buried. I’m old now. It’s official. Bobby D. has left the building. Total letting go to commence in 10, 9, 8, …

Ahhh… All better now. Now, what to do with the rest of the afternoon? How about a little session with the old guitar. We’re talking an acoustic guitar mind you. Don’t want to disturb the neighbors. Yeah, there’s nothing like rocking out… er, I mean strumming out some nice folk/adult contemporary music on a Sunday afternoon.

I wonder what I’ll let go of next year?

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Wonder

Reverb 10 Prompt (from Jeff Davis): How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I walk to and from work every day. From my house to the office takes me about an hour, depending how late I’m running. If I leave the house at 7:30am, I can enjoy a leisurely stroll. This rarely happens, since I found out I can leave at 7:40am and still make it to work on time, if I haul ass the whole way and get lucky with traffic-light timing. I could sleep in much later and get home a lot earlier if I drove or took the bus, but my walks keep me sane.

Anyone who knows me (or reads my blog) knows about my leaf catching tradition. About ten years ago I was sitting on a rock in the middle of the Eno River here in central North Carolina. I had recently broken up with a woman whom I’d loved very much, and I was mourning the loss of that relationship. She and I had hiked the trails by the Eno countless times together. Sitting on that rock, the sound of the water rushing by put me in a peaceful meditative state. I felt a sense of openness and clarity much like the “most alive moment of the year” I wrote about yesterday. It was sometime in the fall, and the sky was full of floating leaves. I noticed one leaf in particular break free from a tree far from where I was sitting. It floated high in the sky, drifting slowly and unpredictably toward me. I watched intently as the leaf zigged and zagged its way over the river, and when it was about fifty feet from me I realized with a rush of anticipation that it might actually touch down very near to my rock, maybe even near enough that I could grab it. Before I could formulate a clear thought about it, the leaf quickly zigged left, zagged right, dipped down, floated up, and then dropped right in my lap. I was stunned for a moment, then positively filled with joy. I felt like I had just found my Golden Ticket. It was raining leaves that day, and I’m sure several leaves had already touched down on or near my rock, but nonetheless it seemed to me to be the most awesome thing in the world that this particular leaf, the one I’d had my eye on, found its way into my hands. I thought for a moment about keeping it, preserving it between the pages of whatever book was in my backpack, but instead I gave it a kiss and released it back into the breeze.

Every fall since then, I watch for falling leaves and resolve to catch at least one every season. This is not as easy as you might think, as leaves don’t always float right to you as you stroll to and from work everyday. Even if they do float within reach, they can be slippery little buggers. I did finally catch my first leaf back on November 1st. Up until then I had been on a mission every day during my commuting to make the annual grab. I’m sure I looked pretty insane at times, darting into the street or onto people’s front yards chasing down a potential catch. On days when the wind wouldn’t cooperate, I even resorted to chasing a few squirrels up trees in the hopes they might kick a leaf loose. It was all good sane fun, and I finally got my prize on a weekend stroll, while talking with my Mom on my cell phone, telling her all about my trip to DC the previous day for the Rally to Restore Sanity.

So yeah, my walks keep me sane and keep me in tune with a sense of wonder. Winter is looming now, and there aren’t many leaves that haven’t already found their way to the ground. I’ll keep walking though. Sometimes I’ll turn my walks into a formal meditation practice, bringing my attention to my breathing or to the sensations in my feet and legs whenever I notice I’m lost in thought. Sometimes a song idea will come to me, and I’ll spend the entire hour singing a melody line over and over again so that I won’t forget it. Most times I forget it anyway. But like leaves to the trees, that melody will come back around and, sooner or later, somehow, some way, find its way back to me.

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Moment

Reverb 10 Prompt (from Ali Edwards): Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

That’s a tough one, Ali. My first impulse is to pick one of the “big” moments, like a funeral or a musical performance, but I have a strange tendency to slip into a somewhat disembodied, surreal state during big moments. I remember waking up the morning after my wedding and saying to my wife, “Did we just get married?”. I also find myself wanting to describe some big, dramatic moment because doing so would support the narrative of “I am so awesome! (Right?)”, which seems to sneak its way into too much of my writing, contributing to a vague sense of dishonesty and insecurity. So there’s an important distinction for me between the biggest moment and the most alive moment. Another obstacle to being unflinchingly honest about such things is that our most intensely alive moments could involve taboos, like drug intoxication, infidelity, reckless endangerment, or some other secret shame. I doubt a single Reverb 10er will describe a moment from the dark side, even if they tasted life there like never before.

As it happened, my most alive moment was neither a tale from the dark side nor a dramatic event. I described it here on my blog back in January:

As often happens, I popped awake at about 2am feeling restless and stiff. I fell into a meditative trance while loosening up my muscles with gentle, subtle micro-movements. After about twenty minutes of this, it happened. Again. A sense of clarity dawned on me so intensely that the last several months of waking life seemed like a coma by comparison. All the life issues I’ve been struggling with felt either completely resolved or else utterly unproblematic. I knew without a doubt what I needed to be doing with my life, how to refocus and realize my full potential and destiny.

Strangely, things were a bit more fuzzy by the time I woke up the following morning, and my life issues were mysteriously transformed back into their unresolved state. I hate when that happens. Reminds me of when my little sister would mess up my Rubik’s Cube. Still, every now and again I’m graced with these mystical openings of radiant clarity, and often they hit me after extended periods of tension and internal struggle. If fact, the last several of these little kensho awakenings have come in the middle of the night, after I’ve woken up tense and allowed myself to unwind with some body-centered meditation. It’s not something I can easily describe in terms of vivid sensory detail, as it’s more like an overall state of consciousness that makes everything seem clear, simple, and perfect as is.

I went into some more reflections and surrounding circumstances in my original blog post about it, but in keeping with Ali’s invitation, I’ll try to describe what I can remember of the sensory details. My muscles were very relaxed. I could feel the blood flowing through me and my breathing was deep and unrestricted. When I got up to play my guitar and read and think, my actions felt effortless, like my movements and thoughts were happening of their own accord, as opposed to my usual sense that everything is being powered by will or directed by conscious intentions. Sounds, specifically music from my voice and guitar, came to my ears unfiltered and clear, undistorted by thoughts, associations or expectations. Likewise, objects in the room appeared subtly clearer than usual, more there, more significant and beautiful in their stark simplicity. It’s tough to capture the sense in words. In some ways, it seemed like I was just experiencing my senses in a completely ordinary fashion, the extraordinary thing being the absence of my usual mental filtering mechanisms.

Well, there you have it. To anyone viewing the video footage (which hopefully doesn’t exist), it was just me squirming around in bed, then getting up to play my guitar and read for a little while. I suppose that’s all it was after all. The other nine of my top ten most alive moments were all in my living room playing my guitar and singing at the top of my lungs, but this zen moment just seemed a little more, I don’t know, … awesome. Right?

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Writing

Reverb10 Prompt (from Leo Babauta): What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

I do a gazillion things each day that don’t contribute to my creative projects, but I’m at a point now where just about everything I do in the course of my day is important to me for one reason or another. Prioritizing my time has been a zero-sum situation for me in recent months, where making time for something important (like writing) is taking away time from something else important (like music or exercise). I’ve already eliminated just about (there’s that phrase again!) all the time-wasters and distractions that have held me back in the past. Of course, I indulge in a little bit of TV and mindless web-surfing, but it really is just a little, and I’m not the type to be focused and engaged in purposeful activity all the time. Can’t you see I’m doing the best I can, Leo?!?! What do you want me to do, write while I’m sitting on the toilet? Just kidding, man. Actually, I have written while sitting on the toilet. Used to keep a notebook under the sink once I discovered that epiphanies tended to descend from on high as soon as I dropped my pants. But now I’m getting off track…

The truth is, there are still a few places in my day to day routine where I can carve out some writing time. In fact, I’m swinging the machete right now! But again, what I’m eliminating in order to participate in Reverb 10 is something I’ve held onto for two years now, namely the idea of myself as someone with a superior work ethic who refuses to surrender to the prevailing office culture in which it’s become perfectly acceptable to do one’s personal business on the company dime. I’ve finally thrown up the white flag, and now I feel okay about spending a wee bit of my work day journaling or blogging. I’m an office temp, and my supervisors are thrilled with my productivity, attention to detail, and congenial demeanor. And they themselves spend significant blocks of work time attending to their personal lives. “When in Rome”, right?

How this blog post turned into such a rambling rationalization I just don’t know. I’d explore it further, but I think maybe I should get back to work…

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One Word

Reverb10 Prompt (from Gwen Bell): Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

Half-life. A hyphenated word, yes, but it’s the word that immediately comes to mind. Three days ago I turned forty. I was home for Thanksgiving weekend, and that particular morning I woke up to my eight-year-old nephew Joey bouncing up and down on my air mattress in his Spider-Man pajamas, imploring me to get up so that he could play “War of the Monsters” with me. I didn’t feel like getting up right then, but I was relieved the big day had finally arrived. Not since turning twenty-one had a birthday felt significant in the least. But this one caught me by surprise, and my ruminating began as soon as 2010 rang in. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I had long ago planted the thought that forty marked the cut-off point in separating the young from the “not so young.” I was fourteen when my Dad crossed over; sixteen when Mom hit the mark. I vaguely recall the parties, the jokes about getting old, the gray starting to show. “The Big 4-0” was a big deal for sure, and sure enough those old farts were right when they reminded me that my day would come, eventually.

I tend to choose the titles of my creative projects before I start writing or recording, when I can sense only the fuzziest of outlines and my ideas are in their most nascent form. “Half-life” succeeded “The Lucky Dark”, which followed “Waiting for the Miracle”. Thinking about 2011 stirs my mind into a whiteout, like one of those holiday snow globes. I’m not at all sure what to expect, given all the irons in the fire, but what I’d like 2011 to be about is fruition. Wow, that came a lot easier than I expected.

Letting go of my youth, for me, means shifting from a focus on what’s potential to what’s actual. I’ve spent most of this forty year ride in the passenger seat, waiting to see what would happen next; wishing someone would come along and take me somewhere new and exciting; hoping everything would just fall into place and that I’d always get where I needed to go. Waiting, wishing, hoping that I’d eventually arrive in one piece and that I would enjoy the ride. And I suppose I got what I hoped for. I’m here. I’ve arrived. This is it. I am who I am. I’m doing what I do. It’s been this way all along, but I didn’t fully realize it, accept it, embrace it.

So, fruition it is. Let’s see what I can actually do when I stop waiting until some far off future day when I’m finally good enough to go all-out and do all that I hope to do as well as I can possibly do it. You know, when I’m like, forty or something.

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Drive all night

I’m still in my Glen Hansard phase, spending way too much time watching/listening to every bit of him I can find on YouTube. A few weeks ago I saw this video of Hansard, Markéta Irglová, and Colm Mac Con Iomaire sitting around a tree in Milano, Italy playing a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Drive all night”. I was never a big Springsteen fan and I’d never heard the song before, but I was just blown away. I immediately downloaded the original version from Bruce’s album “The River”, and was not disappointed. I hadn’t realized the song “Hungry Heart” was also on that record. That song was in heavy rotation at the Frear Park ice rink in Troy, New York back in the early 1980’s, and it’s impossible for me to hear it without vividly recalling the sound of skates scraping the ice, and the sensation of cool air streaming across my face as I whizzed around, zig-zagging between slower skaters, trying to impress some doll-faced girl wrapped up in a pink scarf with matching mittens. There was also hot chocolate in the vending machine and absolutely no chance I’d want to stop skating when it was time to go. It would be nearly thirty years before I’d hear any more of that Springteen album, but it was certainly worth the wait.

Since I can’t get the song out of my head and can’t stop playing it whenever I pick up my guitar, I saw no harm in hitting the RECORD-button last night. Although I haven’t yet received permission from The Boss to post this online, I’m sure he won’t lose sleep over it…

Drive all night
When I lost you honey sometimes I think I lost my guts too
And I wish God would send me a word
send me something I’m afraid to lose
Lying in the heat of the night like prisoners all our lives
I get shivers down my spine and all I wanna do is hold you tight

CHORUS
I swear I’ll drive all night just to buy you some shoes
And to taste your tender charms
And I just wanna sleep tonight again in your arms

Tonight there’s fallen angels and they’re waiting for us down in the street
Tonight there’s calling strangers,
hear them crying in defeat.
Let them go, let them go, let them go,
do their dances of the dead (let’em go right ahead)
You just dry your eyes girl, and c’mon c’mon
c’mon let’s go to bed, baby, baby, baby

CHORUS

There’s machines and there’s fire waiting on the edge of town
They’re out there for hire but baby they can’t hurt us now
Cause you’ve got, you’ve got, you’ve got,
you’ve got my love, you’ve got my love
Through the wind, through the rain, the snow, the wind, the rain
You’ve got, you’ve got my, my love
heart and soul

Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

[The photo above is a tree that I walk past every day on my way to and from work. Anyone familiar with Franklin Street has probably seen it. Reminds me of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”.]

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Ten more days

Ten days left before becoming officially “not young anymore.” Yikes. I’m not happy about it, but a man has to keep moving along. Ten more bowls of cereal. Ten more walks around town. Ten thousand more thoughts bouncing around my skull, telling me things like “You should start journaling every day again”, and “You should start recording songs every week again”, and “You should carry a digital camera around and start taking pictures during your walks.” I suppose there’s really not much difference between taking a picture and recording a song and writing in a journal. It’s all about capturing the moment, putting a frame around it so it can be revisited later. But why do this? Why should I start doing any of these things? Am I trying to freeze time, to deny the inevitable? Ten days. It may as well be ten minutes, or ten seconds. As soon as I imagine the sand in the hourglass it’s already as good as gone. But while there’s nothing I can do to slow things down, I can pay closer attention. Better attention. And that’s really what I’m hoping will come of the journaling, the recording, the picture taking. Each of these activities focuses my attention in some way, tunes me in to some bandwidth of experience I habitually fail to notice. So yeah, it’ll probably do me some good to start doing these things more often. Still, I’m sad to turn forty. At this moment, I’m noticing the banana sitting on my desk—my mid-morning snack. It’s a bit past its prime, covered in brown spots. It’s not rotten mind you, not inedible, but still, it would have been tastier yesterday, or two days ago. In ten days, it’ll be rotten to the core. That is, unless I eat it today. If I eat it today I can spare everyone the stink and the fruit flies.

Now I know I’m not dead yet, that I’m healthy and likely to have many good years ahead of me, and that no one near forty (or older) wants to hear anything but positive spin when it comes to aging. Wisdom, and all that. But the brown spots are starting to show, and that fact means something to me. I’m not sure what it means, but I don’t want to gloss over it. I don’t want to turn away too quickly from the pangs of fear and wonder, from the slightly nauseating mysteriousness of it all. Birth, life, decay, death. Why not dwell on it a while? The times in my life that have been marked by the most personal growth have been those times when I’ve chosen not to turn away from uncomfortable feeling and thoughts. When I’ve stopped and turned toward what’s been nipping at my heels.

The last time I felt real terror was when I saw a man sneaking through the sliding glass door into my bedroom. It was about three in the morning, and it took me a moment to realize what was happening. When I finally realized a stranger has just broken into my home, I sprang up to my feet and, standing on the bed, I tried to scream. The sound that eventually came out of my mouth sounded like… well, I’m not really sure. Strangely, “a grizzly bear having an orgasm” is what comes to mind. Whatever it sounded like, it scared the doo-doo out of my wife, who had been snoozing soundly. In the end, the would-be burglar turned out to be my microphone stand, which I had set up a few days before. What does this has to do with turning forty? How the hell should I know? I’m only 39. For ten more days. But I’m guessing it has something to do with breaking the spell of illusion. Buddhists say our entire sense of self is an illusion. So who is it then, really, who’s turning forty? This physical organism? Scientists say that every cell in the human body is replaced every seven years, so that like a tornado or a whirlpool it’s really only the pattern that persists, not any particular object or thing. And everyone knows that each night we dream an entire universe into existence, only to forget about it before we’re done emptying our bladders the following morning.

Whoever “I” am, I was right about journaling. This is fun. But I was wrong about the banana. It turned out to be perfect. As far as taking pictures during my strolls through town, I’m not sure I have an eye yet for drawing out what’s most interesting:

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Good sane fun

“If you want to catch a falling leaf, you have to be where the leaves are falling.” That’s what a little birdie told me, so I intentionally changed my route to work this past week so that I walked under as many trees as possible. It’s the only ritual I observe religiously. I simply must catch at least one leaf every fall. (And it has to be fresh from the branch and caught before it hits the ground. Nothing off a roof or blown up from the ground will do.) If I fail in this, it means that I’ve given up the ghost; that I’ve gotten old; that I’m no longer paying attention to what really matters. Maybe that’s a little melodramatic, but at the very least a leafless fall would mean I’m probably not walking around outside much, or I’m too often staring at the ground lost in my head, or listening to my iPod, or talking on the phone. My mindful strolls have been keeping me sane for years, and it just so happens that the number of leaves I catch each year is one of the few quantifiable measures of my degree of saneness. Best-case scenario, I’m taking a stroll to work or around the block and, without making any special effort whatsoever, a leaf just happens to float down near me and I reach out and grab it. Or, better yet, it just hits me in the face or drops in my lap. That’s the best-case scenario mind you, the one that most captures the Zen spirit of the tradition. But sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do to catch a leaf, and it’s almost November and the leaves just aren’t falling this year, at least not when I happen to be walking under a tree. The last time I was leafless this late in the season was the year I had knee surgery. I went out half-crippled and waited under a tree for an hour before getting the job done. Having not yet reached that point of desperation, I decided to start with a route change. And although the new route did take me under a fair number of trees, I couldn’t convince the air to stir up so much as a light breeze. By Friday, things were looking so bleak that I resorted to chasing squirrels up a huge oak tree, so that one of them might rustle a few leaves while running for cover. I’m not sure how that affected my sanity score, but in any event, it didn’t send any leaves into the air. On the way home from work I walked back the same way. Again, the wind wasn’t enough to blow a single hair out of place. As I approached the mighty oak, I noticed a huge hawk hanging out on the ground under it. The squirrels were all hiding under cars in the parking lot, terrified. Neither the hawk nor I was destined to make a catch right then and there, so the hawk took off and I headed home and then to Washington DC for Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.

My wife and I got to our hotel room (near Dulles Airport) late, crashed on the king-sized bed, and drove to the West Falls Metro station at about 9:30am Saturday. If not for the fact that thousands people were trying to get to the National Mall by noon, I’m sure we would have made it to the rally in plenty of time, as it’s only a twenty-five minute train ride from West Falls. As it turned out, however, the trip took us five hours, so we didn’t set foot on the mall until the rally was in its final few minutes. The crowd was unbelievably massive (the estimate of 250,000 sounds about right to me), and my wife and I are both under 5 feet 7 inches tall, so we saw and heard next to nothing that was happening on the main stage. What we did see was people. Lots and lots of people. People dressed in goofy costumes. People with goofy rally signs. People waiting in line to get into the Metro station. People waiting to get on the trains. People crammed into trains, pressed up against the walls and windows and each other like in a jelly jar full of gummy bears. The truth is, it was pretty insane. The truth is, we pretty much missed the rally and didn’t really know how it all went down until we got home late last night. And the truth is, neither one of us was too disappointed. We showed up, and somehow that felt like it was enough.

So I don’t have any personal photos to share, and I can’t share my reactions to the show Stewart and Colbert put on. I missed all that. I did take away a few important things from the experience, though. First, I feel a lot better about the state of our country and about the basic goodness of the people who live here. When we finally did manage to squeeze onto to the Sane Train heading for the mall, we found ourselves packed in a tiny corner, shoulder to shoulder with every type of person imaginable—men, women, children, black, white, brown, Asian, Middle-eastern. We all had sore feet and full bladders. We were all missing the rally. But we still were kind to each other, made room, gave up our seats, shared the streaming video on our smart phones. I’ve had phrases like “People are morons” and “People are assholes” bouncing around inside my skull for too long. It feels good to think to myself “People are basically decent and good at heart.” Second, I realize now more than ever that it’s far more fulfilling to take action when I’m inspired—even if the results are disappointing or even painful—than to wallow in cynicism or surrender to the pull of inertia. Better for me to enjoy or even suffer the consequences of pushing boundaries than to snooze away in the comfort zone. Finally, I have a renewed appreciation for my wife. She was super-busy, but made time to keep me company because she knew how inspired I was by the event. The day could’ve gone a lot smoother and we could have had a lot more fun, but we were there, together (along with about a quarter-million of our fine friends). Your welcome, Jon Stewart!

And thank you, Jon Stewart! The needle on my sanity meter is moving in the right direction (I hope).

Oh yeah… And while talking to my Mom on the phone this morning, strolling around the block telling her about the rally, a leaf hit me right in the chest, sticking there long enough for me to make the official catch. I still plan to take the tree-covered route tomorrow, but I won’t be concerned about which way the wind blows, or if it’s blowing at all. It’s all gravy now. You still might see me diving onto someone’s front lawn or running out into traffic to chase down a floating leaf. You might even see me chasing a few squirrels. But from here on in it’s just good sane fun.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Jon Stewart – Moment of Sincerity
www.comedycentral.com
Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear The Daily Show The Colbert Report
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Weary hearts

A song that descended from the Great Unknown on January 2, 2008, while I was living in Mexico. I finally got around to singing it:

Go Beth, go catch your breath
Just slow things down a little bit
One day you’re gonna be okay
Just watch your worries float away
Like whispers on a breeze
Messages on stormy seas
Like memories of a dream
Nothing’s ever what it seems
Rest your weary heart

Wake up, my little sleepy head
You don’t wanna spend all day in bed
Get dressed, take a walk with me
We’ll watch the leaves fall from the trees
Like young hearts into love
A shooting star from high above
A tree onto the ground
And we’ll be there to hear the sound
And rest our weary hearts

[Narration: 1) Henry Miller, reading “Third or Fourth Day of Spring” from his book “Black Spring”; 2) Myself, talking to myself in “el cuarto”, Mexico, 2008.]

<a href="http://isaacdust.bandcamp.com/track/weary-hearts">Weary hearts by Isaac Dust</a>

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The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye - Toni MorrisonI was pulling down a box of books from a shelf in our closet the other day, searching for something for my wife, when I noticed Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I had swiped the book from my mother-in-law’s house over a year ago and somehow never got around to reading it. I’ve been chipping away at it on the bus to and from work, and this morning I finally finished it while enjoying my Saturday morning cup of coffee. What an awesome book! I read Morrison’s Beloved many, many years ago, at the time noting her amazing gifts and certain I’d be diving into more of her work soon. Better late than never. Here’s my favorite passage from The Bluest Eye:

“The pieces of Cholly’s life could become coherent only in the head of a musician. Only those who talk their talk through the gold of curved metal, or in the touch of black-and-white rectangles and taut skins and strings echoing from wooden corridors, could give true form to his life. Only they would know how to connect the heart of a red watermelon to the asafetida bag to the muscadine to the flashlight on his behind to the fists of money to the lemonade in a Mason jar to a man called Blue and come up with what all of that meant in joy, in pain, in anger, in love, and give it its final and pervading ache of freedom.”

Only a musician and a brilliant writer like Toni Morrison.