They often go hand in hand, and in Aristotle’s writing, “𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 (Anagnorisis) 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑖𝑎, 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑔𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑂𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑝𝑢𝑠…5” Oedipus is the classic example, where he realizes at once that he is his father’s murderer and son, and the son and lover of his mother, and of course this changes everything.
In the last 9 months, I have experienced a lot of anagnorises around a number of really fundamental components and relationships of my life so far – with family at every level, friends, associates and colleagues, where I live, my place in Christian music and all that has gone with that over the years, my place in religion and spirituality, my place in music-creation, my place in academia, each with different turning points.
This probably started more like three years ago since moving to the PNW, but the peripeteia has been profound especially the last 6-9 months. It has been one of my life’s singularities. Before even realizing it, I have been referring to it as “inflection points” with my therapist, all converging around the same point in time. And I have had a number of inflection points, turns, changes, that have been completely organic as a result of the discoveries, the realizations, epiphanies, anagnorises.
It has been hard, sad, crippling at times, and I have suffered from grief and depression over all of it. But it is also liberating, life-giving, and has opened paths forward, irreversibly altering the landscape. What I am learning to navigate as a result of discoveries and their inflection points, is the nuance of love, detachment and letting go, acceptance, and indifference, each showing up in various ways and combinations at different levels. Thank you for reading.
It was literally written in stone if we are to believe the tale. Jesus calls Satan “the father of lies,” and Sam Harris refers to lying as “the sin that paves the way to every other sin.” We are taught from the youngest age that we should not lie and we learned that the punishment can be severe because the consequences of lying are severe. But also true is that from our youngest years, we are put in a double bind. Not only are we taught that we mustn’t lie, but we are also taught that we must lie. There are times, you see, where telling the truth could hurt someone’s feelings, or result in some kind of social faux pas or that it’s just too complicated. Thus the little white lie, that “harmless” even virtuous act of lying that nobody will ever find out about (we hope). We’re taught that we should never lie, and yet we are not taught what it means to walk through life truthfully. We are instead socialized into the nuance of good lies and bad lies, the art of lying, that some people “can’t handle the truth,” and so we manufacture acceptable answers that are not truthful.
Sam Harris, in his little book, “Lying,” suggests that none of us will go to bed at night “without having told several lies over the course of the day,” and that roughly 10% of all communication between spouses is deceptive, 38% among college students. I think we even harden ourselves to how we come to accept our many untruths. There are some folks who actually pride themselves on being “honest to a fault.” I take that to mean that they are not of course, that they do not have the same understanding of honesty that I have, but rather what they mean is that they are blunt, which is not at all the same thing. Nobody is honest to a fault.
All of this requires that we have a common understanding of what lying is and what constitutes a lie. That line can be hard to navigate. We can even lie by saying true things. We can lie by not saying anything at all. Harris defines it thus: “To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” Seems simple enough and yet it is so very difficult – as anyone who has kids knows. It is an act of courage and strength to be truthful when it’s required of us, to have hard conversations.
“Does this outfit make me look fat?” “Daddy, am I going to die from this disease?” “Have you ever been unfaithful to me?” “Should we tell our mother of your terminal diagnosis? It would crush her!” “What do you think of my new song?” “Is Santa Claus real?”
When I started therapy years ago, I wrestled with my discomfort of not having a solid ethical understanding and basis around what it means to really walk through life truthfully. We aren’t taught how to do that in religious texts and the institutions of socialization perpetuate the paradox of the imperative against lying vis-à-vis the situations where it’s (apparently) necessary. To whom do I owe the truth? How much of the truth do I owe people in different contexts? What is the ethical way to deal with people who insist on answers but don’t deserve them? Where do boundaries come in? Is lying ever justified, and if so when, and under what circumstances? How do we integrate a full commitment to being truthful with kindess? What do we make of the white lie? (Hint: don’t do it! The smallest lies erode trust and even white lies are associated with dissatisfaction in relationships.)
I remember the exact day I asked my therapist these questions to try to understand lying and truth-telling and the huge impact it has on trust, on all of our important relationships, on our own reputations. I asked her in the context of marriage. They’re hard questions, and I remember her answer well. It was not that far from Harris’s. When we are asked a direct question by our partners, we owe a direct and truthful response and we are entitled to the same. That still left a lot of real estate to try to understand and navigate these questions, and it’s certainly way too much for a blog post. But the bottom line is that people deserve an accurate picture of the landscape on which they’re basing their well-being. To deprive them of this is to deprive them of their autonomy, their ability to make life-decisions based on an accurate picture of reality.
The frequency and ease with which we can move into and out of truthfulness and how important this is to everything valuable in my life set me on a long path of liberation that I imagine I will travel till my end of days. We don’t lie always with malicious intent (although we do sometimes), but sometimes as a matter of convenience, weakness, cowardice even, shame, avoiding responsibility or accountability, to make ourselves look good, or maybe because sometimes we don’t know how, how to use the right words, how to be truthful with kindness, grace, and growth as the goal but without sacrificing truthfulness.
I actually teach from this little book by Sam Harris. What could the ethics of lying possibly have to do with the music industry? It doesn’t take long for that question to answer itself. If we want career longevity, if we want our reputations to precede us as someone who is on the level, someone whose word is solid, someone who will “give it to me straight, someone I can trust,” whose “praise will not be mistaken for flattery,” all things in short supply in the biz, the truth is right at the center. From artist management and learning to level with our artist-clients without dragging them in to every detail, to working with our bandmates, other artists and gatekeepers it’s right at the center.
What does it mean to walk through life truthfully and how do we learn it? For me, an interest in ethics, years of therapy and my education took me down this road. Later, Sam Harris and “Lying” became a catalyst to more rigorous studies in ethics more generally. Picking up a used replacement copy for $9 led to writing this. I recommend it. The hardcover version includes an interview between Harris and the philosophy professor that changed his life at Stanford as a bonus and even still, the whole book is only 95 pages. It’s not a comprehensive treatise but it’s a good read with lots of examples and nuance, excellent as food for thought and perhaps a good starting point for further inquiry for anyone interested.
I can’t write about lying without thinking of the lyrics to the song The Trouble With Lies, by Adam Again, written by the late Gene Eugene, my friend and partner at Brainstorm Artists, who also intimately understood this battle.
The trouble with lies Is that you start to forget where the real man hides
The trouble with lies When you tell them you still got to sell them With the look in your eyes Oh, that’s the trouble with lies As far as I’m concerned With the lessons I’ve learned I’m determined to try and survive Without lies
“There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”
Mark Twain
Balloons, roses, chocolates, teddy bears – It’s just another commercial quasi-holiday that has been easy to ignore, like Christmas and Easter, only vaguely rooted in historical events, times and places. And yet in all these, there’s a seminal idea, hard to throw out along with all the stanky cultural bathwater, in this case of idealized (and often toxic) romance. Of course we want to express our love for those dearest to us, and what kind of bastard would avoid doing that just because of the cultural pollution surrounding the date? There are some of those bastards out there! Perhaps better to put the whole thing on our own terms, whatever that might look like – a good snog on the rug, a nod or a wink, some kind expression or gesture, perhaps without even acknowledging the date.
Nothing has been more important to me in this life than to do my best at understanding and only then learning to practice love. You’d think that would be easy, or at least easier, given how much lip-service it gets in religious texts, yet the Bible neither defines it nor tells us what it is. It only gives us examples. It seems to me there’s nothing more central to the human experience beyond mere survival. Some surrender the latter for lack of the former, which tragically seems to make the point.
I see throughout the year posts on social media celebrating my friends’ life partners – birthdays, anniversaries, other rites of passages and celebrations. I react to them both with joy that so many of you are experiencing these intimacies, and yet I feel a twinge each time (yes, each time) because such has not been my lot in life so far, for any number of reasons. I often think of my friend Gene Eugene’s line, “all you lucky people…”
I do not ask for or want sympathy. My life is rich and full, and love comes from many places. I have had seasons of romantic love – I’ve climbed up on that altar – and seasons without it. I’ve enjoyed both, and have learned to recognize, appreciate and celebrate the puts and takes of each, and there are many! Sometimes it’s 51/49 one way, then 49/51 the other, 60/40 one way, or 40/60 the other. And yet, there is that twinge, that fantasy of what might be, what’s possible, learning to love at that level, in that context. Of course sometimes there’s no place lonelier than inside an unhealthy relationship too; puts and takes.
“Good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that’s as old as the hills. Why is this so hard to get and so easy to ignore? Well, we’re human. What we’d really like is a quick fix, something we can get that’ll make our lives good and keep them that way. Relationships are messy and they’re complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, it’s not sexy or glamorous. It’s also lifelong. It never ends. […] Our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community.”
May we all lean in a little today, however that looks for you. Someone is there. May you not only feel loved, even a bit, but perhaps more important, may you feel that the love you have to give is well-received.
I used to enjoy sitting at our table, watching you eat,
watching you enjoy your food, every bite you took.
You didn't know but I watched as we talked.
Sweet potatoes, salads, stir-fry, spiced by ear,
your tiny hands, nourishing yourself with food I prepared,
bought with the fruits of my labor.
I watched you enjoy every bite, each an infusion,
my love for you diffusing into you,
spoons full of love. A portion of my vow,
what spring does with the cherry trees, but more,
It was one way that I just knew.
Any man can have a kid as they say, but it’s another matter altogether to be a father. I had to learn as I went, to cobble together what it meant to father and how to do it. I had to do so over time and under the consequences and impact my childhood was having on me in real time and in hindsight. Yes, as a kid we had food on our table, I had a roof over my head and clothes to wear. We lived under a dark cloud though, a constant storm on the horizon, never knowing when it was going to thunder or when lighting might strike, and it did strike.
I can have compassion on my own father, knowing that he also had no father (my grandfather was an honorable man as far as I knew. He was away in the Navy, a survivor of Pearl Harbor and those were very different times) and was abandoned by his mother to be raised by her mother, a non-English-speaking Austrian who did her best. I understand he also did the best he could in a different parenting epoch. I know many of you had fantastic fathers, imperfect perhaps but you never felt unloved, unsupported, and were dearly valued. I know many of you didn’t. Maybe most of you are somewhere in the middle.
What makes the difference? For me it was two things, no three. First, when it became unavoidably clear that my relationships in general were suffering and that the results of my life were not what I wanted or had expected, I begin going to therapy. I was skeptical of it, it was frowned up by those in the Church (unless it was “biblical counseling,” the biggest load o’ shit this side of the rapture), but I did it. First for 6 months, then for a year, then straight for 14 or 15 years, sometimes twice a week.
“Close your eyes and imagine that terrified seven-year-old boy. Imagine being there with him, in that situation. Go to him. What can you say to him? What can you do? How would you console and comfort him and get him through this?”
I am in therapy again now since last summer. I hope it’s a life-practice for me as I continue to try to unravel the mystery of myself till my last breath.
Second was my education, which was more like therapy 2.0 than anything else. I’ve talked about all this before, and I beg your indulgences. I didn’t need a degree although I wanted one. I knew I needed to invest in myself and my brain. I thirsted for it. I used to pour through the school catalogs exploring majors and minors, things that looked fascinating and wondrous and there were so many. There was one class that jumped out at me though, and that was Sociology of Marital Dissolution. I enrolled right away and it was so fascinating I kept taking sociology classes related to the family and ended up with my degree. Often I was the only male in my classes. This is tragic. It’s a topic for another day, but consider again the thought at the top – it’s another matter altogether to be a father. There’s a crisis of masculinity in our country and it shows up right here. It’s a learned skill set, but you have to want the skill set and commit to it. Otherwise it’s just sperm, and as Jethro Tull said, “Your sperm’s in the gutter, your love’s in the sink.”
The third big difference was the three gentlemen you see in these photos. Fatherhood doesn’t end when the kids turn 18 or leave home. They start their own families, yet we parent forever. I’ve watched them closer than they realize and see how they have done better than I, as I have hopefully done better than my ancestors. It’s strange how when we are young we look up, and when we are older we look down, and if we’ve done it right, look inward all along the way. I’ve learned from them, even if the window of opportunity to practice what I’ve learned has long since closed. I’m not as essential to them now as I was when they were small. That’s just a fact, even though I do know I am important to them. It’s just different now. But there are other things to practice, now and still. It would be a lie to say I have no regrets, and I do wish I could have some do-overs. The job now is to live in such a way that I don’t add anymore to that list.
I am not looking for consolation, reassurance or validation. It gives me a sense of humility to see how well they have done with their kids, to see how they love them so, how they dawdle over them and keep them, how their kids lean into them for love, security and safety. As their kids – my grandkids – get older, they will have their own challenges and m y sons are already rising to the occasion in sometimes long-term difficult circumstances. There’s a role for me here too, but they have this station now.
It’s not just watching them father that I learn from either. I also learn about my own fathering in the practice of our ongoing relationships. We are not estranged. There is lots of love. We have fun together and simply enjoy each other. I see where my weak spots are as I pay attention and work through those (therapy, remember). I try to be as available as I can be and to give of myself, to listen, to accept each wherever they are, different as they are. Well, I learn all kinds of stuff – about responsibility, courage and the truth, about myself, about them, about being a dad, but mostly about what it means to be a man, the kind that can be a father. Only a man can father.
I am happy for those who had great childhoods with real fathers. I admit I am somewhat envious but glad to hear it exists. Some of us have fathered ourselves or had other father-images or role models. Some just got through it, lucky to survive. Like many other holidays, this is a tough one for many people. To all, wherever you fall on this continuum and especially to these three young fathers, I hope you can find the best thing about what today could mean to you – whether it’s celebrating, mourning, reflecting, recommitting, whatever it might be, and somewhere at least, find a portion of love, from wherever that might come, even if you have to close your eyes and give it to that child you knew years ago who needs you still.
Let us forget with generosity, those who cannot love us. – Pablo Neruda
Writing songs is hard and the hardest part is the lyrics. I don’t know a single writer who would disagree. We spend a lot of time talking about lyric in our songwriting classes – cliché the song-killer, the risk of cowardice with “You done me wrong” vs. the courage of self-disclosure and vulnerability in song, all kinds of nasty, tricksy pitfalls. College is a hotbed of the kinds of experiences that can dash us against the rocks of overused hokum.
So yes, we have some engaging conversations, especially about love, and in one such conversation we were talking about how to avoid common uses of humanity’s most powerful construct. It’s hard to do that without drilling down on some hard, heady questions – what is love, what are some of the nuanced uses of the word, is it really love? – all that stuff. I often suggest they avoid the word altogether in favor of painting it – don’t tell us, show us. Describe it vividly. I know, lots of great songs use it but I especially discourage use of the phrase, “I love you.” It’s more often about a sense of attachment and need than anything else, and it can be so gutless and toothless. We like to think it’s unconditional, but it’s often not. We expect something in return. We feel vulnerable. When we say, “I love you,” to our beloved we expect to hear it back, and if we don’t, well that’s a real problem! It’s a quid pro quo. But how dare we?!
I asked my young charges what the highest, most loving thing to say is when someone says, “I love you” to them. And they all say it – “I love you too!” I objected, and said right off the top of my head that instead, I think the best thing to do is first take it in, and then say in return, “Congratulations,” or “How great for you!” Their eyes went as wide as saucers and mine did too, I guess. Say that in response to your other and it’s a trip to the doghouse for you, you arrogant shit! But, saying either is truly better! It reflects back on the lover, not on myself. It builds up, acknowledges and honors the other as that kind of person who can love, who has learned to love, who has practiced and gained some mastery of love, who actually loves, and who loves me, with all my many flaws. It’s admirable and respectable. It sees the highest calling of humanity in my partner. It is not a statement of need or expectation on my part. I understand that sometimes it’s just an off-the-cuff proclamation and we don’t need to make such a big deal over it, but this is more about how I think about love generally and behind the scenes, and how I would like to practice and write about it.
What about heartbreak? What can we say about the other side of this, where the theater, landscape and context for love is stripped away from us, even if we initiated it, altering every fabric of our world? I was listening to Etta James sing, ”I’d Rather Go Blind,” one of music’s finest laments:
So you see, I love you so much That I don’t wanna watch you leave me, baby Most of all, I just don’t, I just don’t wanna be free, no.
I was just sittin here thinkin’, of your kiss and your warm embrace. When the reflection in the glass that I held to my lips now, baby Revealed the tears that was on my face.
Baby, baby, I’d rather, I’d rather be blind, boy Than to see you walk away, see you walk away from me.
Heartbreak from finished relationships seems to me to come from the same place, especially in music, from a place of weakness. I am heartbroken. I am wounded. I am bereft! Woe is me! What is to become of me? I admit, there is not much worse we can go through in this life than losing those we love more dearly than our own lives and we rightfully grieve. Is there nothing to be done to console ourselves from that which is completely out of our control and yet so vital?
What if we can again turn it around? What if heartbreak, rather than somehow representing the power someone else or some relationship has over us, how great someone made us feel, the person we think we are when we are together, actually instead reflects who we actually are and our own ability to have loved?! What if it’s not as much a statement of the other at all, but a statement of our own strength, our own capacity to love, to have learned, to have chosen someone to try to love with, to have risked having the course of our life altered, to have actually loved another, flaws and all? Does it hurt any less? Yes, I think it does. It still rightfully hurts like hell. Congratulations! I do think it helps indeed and it gives me a lot of hope. I can love. I loved. I climbed up on the altar and I allowed that fire to consume me as best I possibly could.
In responding to expressions of love by empowering the other, we love. In responding to heartbreak by acknowledging and empowering ourselves, we practice love of self and self-care, and still honor the object of our love rather than lash out in pity, anger, or retribution. We acknowledge our willingness and capacity to have given ourselves to another, to have committed, to have risked it all. This is not their path anymore. This is your path. Let them go, not with the arrogance or apathy of, “Well that’s their loss,” but with an honorable sadness and grief, with generosity and kindness. Let us also hope we will be similarly forgotten. Breathe and smile at least a little on the inside, standing a little taller and more fortified knowing that you will go in and go out loving.
Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of an Old Man and a Youth, c. 1500-1505
A while ago, on January 2, 2011, I wrote a reflection piece called Reverse Resolutions – 11 Reflections on 2011. I suppose it’s normal to reflect like this on days of passage and that would include a 65th birthday. It’s hard to believe that last article was 10 years ago already, but so that goes as we age as well. Don’t worry, I’m not going to burden you, dear reader, with 65 reflections on the occasion, but taking stock of a few things is not a bad idea from time to time. These are not resolutions or revelations that I woke up one morning realizing after an epiphany – it’s just things I’ve been thinking about lately.
The Call to Therapy
This is my second real go-round with therapy. I went for 14 or 15 years straight some time ago and I’ve said many times that it’s made all the difference in my life. My current therapist and I have been meeting electronically since the pandemic began. I sign in to a virtual waiting room and when he comes online, I get a chime from the system. It’s lovely and reminiscent of a Tibetan singing bowl and when I pointed that out, he said it’s like a Buddhist call to meditation but in our case the chime is calling us to therapy, to health, reflection and accountability. That’s pretty good. We always start with a little small talk and that includes “How are you?” I never quite know how to answer that and last week we jumped in right there and we both agreed that if we’re not dead or wanting to be dead, it’s a good day and we’re doing fine. This is life at 65.
Currency
One thing we hopefully learn over the years, some of us having made at least a few foolish financial decisions in the past, is the importance of honoring and respecting our money and our own labor. One way to think of currency is that it represents a measure of opportunity, nothing more, nothing inherently important about money in itself. We cash it in so to speak – we spend it – on opportunities, for other things we value – necessities, experiences, gifts, charity, freedom from debts to others. But this isn’t about money, and that’s not what I’m talking about, dear reader. It’s important to honor our money but I feel like the only real currency I have now is time. There’s just not a lot of it left, and it’s all downhill (or uphill, depending on your perspective) from here. What’s left is not all going to be great, some of it not even very good. My body’s as good now as it’s ever going to be and that’s sobering. Every day is increasingly expensive. I have a sense of urgency and a sense of waste and cost when even one single day slips by without having made the world a better place for someone, invested in myself somehow, or without having lived. We think we have time. We don’t. My time informs everything that follows below from here.
Choose Your State
I hate platitudes as much as anyone. But sometimes little gems of wisdom come dressed up as platitudes and might be worth a second look. So it was for me with the idea that we can choose happiness. How stupid; ridiculous! Right? Right?! I mean, If we could choose happiness, wouldn’t everyone simply choose to be happy? No, they wouldn’t. First, some people need to be miserable, and for some, it’s all they know. Second, it’s not a switch that gets flipped. It’s a practice like most things of value in this life. The more I’ve thought about it and deliberately made conscious choices about my own reactions and responses, I’ll be damned, the more I found myself really evened out emotionally and genuinely content. I don’t have time to feel like shit. I have also discovered that someone else’s feelings, attitude and behavior do not obligate me in the least to respond in kind or in any certain way at all. My friend Pastor Brian Q. Newcomb turned me on to the idea (and we play with it every once in a while) that we don’t have to attend every argument we’re invited to. The same goes for many other kinds of invitations we get, rooted in other folks’ internal stuff. I don’t have time for that shit.
Love
That’s not to say that I am relieved of my obligation to love. In fact, it requires me to know what love actually is, to have the wisdom to figure out how to practice it on difficult emotional terrain, and then to have practiced enough and be courageous enough to pull it off. Some people need misery and some folks will not allow love into their lives. You will not be able to love everyone. There are certainly obvious loving gestures and acts of kindness – feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, things like that – the ones we all know. But in the end, the love you practice through the course of a day or a relationship is sometimes not going to be the love that others recognize as love at all or even as useful or virtuous. Wish them well, do whatever good you can, learn, and then go where your love is celebrated as love. Again, time… there is no time to waste your days and effort when it’s not received or appreciated.
Health
I signed up for Medicare a couple days ago. That alone is a welcome to oldness. Health is the bull in the 65-year-old china shop. I talked about it above a bit, but here’s the thing. It’s not only the bull in the china shop, it’s now also the proverbial frog in the pot, where we begin reaping the consequences of lifestyle choices we made years ago. And even if we’ve been pretty good at making adjustments even at early ages, shit just happens. I’m a vegetarian, very near vegan (cheese, dammit!), not overweight, don’t drink or smoke, and until the pandemic I’ve been working out religiously 6 days a week for as long as I can remember. And even with that, my ears are getting worse, my bad cholesterol has been creeping up and is now too high (“How can that be, when I eat the way I do and work out as much as I do,” I ask my doctor? “Genetics,” he says), I have an eye floater in each eye at risk for retinal detachment, two meniscus tears in each knee from years of running and playing basketball, and because I grew up in Southern California roasting myself to a crisp at the beach, I have to get my skin checked every year. My gums and hair are receding. I used to see the doctor once a year for a physical, but it seems that now I always have a next appointment on the calendar. And I consider myself pretty lucky and pretty damn healthy, all things considered. Back to the frog. There’s going to be a time when it will be too late to make changes, especially the big important ones, where the point of no return has been reached and past. The best time to plant a tree may have been 30 years ago, but the second-best time is today, like it or not. Those years are gone, but it’s not yet too late to do something – yet.
Work and Retirement
This is what’s supposed to happen at 65, right? I’ve never been one to look forward to putting myself out to pasture and spending the rest of my days golfing and fishing. I imagine that might entertain me for a couple months (actually not even that because I don’t golf or fish, but you get the idea). I’ve known too many people that retired and were dead less than a decade later. I’ve also known people who got bored with it after a lifetime of making plans for it, and then went back to work. My job brings me an incredible amount of meaning. Viktor Frankl found that meaningful work along with love are two of the most important elements of meaning and purpose for human beings. I expect to work as long as I can. The alternative in my world is not golfing and fishing – it’s irrelevance, and that is just not something I can accept. Here again, I consider myself lucky. I’ve spent almost 100% of my career doing things that blur the line between work and play. I’d do it for free (“Wait, you want me to teach History of Rock, and I’m gonna get paid for that?!”). I encourage my students to find that place in their lives, where they are enriched by their work, where it gives them a sense of mission, purpose and meaning. It’s not for the paycheck, it’s for the other currency. How do you want to spend your time? Do that. Yes, there’s a way, and the path goes right through a shit ton of hard questions. Retirement… pfft.
Religion
Yeah, no. The conversation hardly even interests me anymore other than the impact of religion on society, especially toxic here in the U.S.
Spirituality
Whatever that is – let’s call it a nurturing of the inner life. I want to be a better person, to increase my capacity and become more and more a part of the community of beings, human and otherwise. I want to leave a legacy of love and kindness and I feel a very long way off from that ideal still. Most people in the U.S. believe that atheists have no morals or sense of spirituality. This is just raw ignorance and nothing could be further from the truth. Since I’ve left the supernatural and all theologies by the wayside, it’s like having fully awakened at last. I would like to increase my own enlightenment and spiritual depth. The legacy idea is powerful for me right now. I have a musical body of work and will keep working on that, and students whose lives I’ve helped influence, but when I die, what I’d like most is to be missed (please never refer to me as having “passed.” I will have died, not “passed.” Honestly, what are we so afraid of?). And that doesn’t come just from a body of work. It comes from love, kindness and generosity, from having made people’s lives a little better, from helping them get in touch with what it means to be human. I’d like to have been an example, a help and inspiration to others, and that’s enough. I know I have to do more than I think is necessary too. There’s always a gap between what we feel we’re giving and the love people feel they are receiving. Be the one who loves more and tries harder.
Sexuality
Lots to be said about aging and sexuality too, another elephant in the room. I don’t have a lot to add to what’s out there, other than to say that it changes as my body changes and I have no intention whatsoever of going gentle into that dark night of asexuality. I read recently somewhere that masturbation in old age is not really about sex as much as it is a system check. Sex is something that has to be cultivated and nurtured, even if how it looks is different. Touch, caressing and being caressed are so central to being human that I can’t imagine life without it.
Consumerism
Jesus, we spend a lot on unnecessary, stupid shit. A trip through almost any big-box store is almost embarrassing if you really look around and think about it. Part of my learning to honor my own labor and money has been taking a hard look at what is actually essential in my life and trying hard to let go of everything else. Possessions become our prisons. For me, paring way down has freed me to travel and spend more time on music and teaching. It’s lovely. Here again though, it’s not just simplifying (another platitude) but a realignment of values.
The James Baldwin documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” although mostly about race, depicted this aspect of middle-class aspiration and Western values powerfully. Many songs, movies and books have done that too, but that film was a real eye-opener for me in a blunt, cut and dried moment. The convergence of spiritual growth, a sense of meaning, the move away from religion toward a desire to understand what it means to live a more ethical life has resulted in looking beyond myself and my little world, to the rest of the world where there is real suffering that I can actually do something about, even with modest means. I can channel the difference between what is essential and what I earn to charities that are accountable and efficient, where the dollar gets to the ground to feed and immunize children, to provide malaria nets (more important than you might think; the actual cost of one net is less than a dollar, and that alone can save a life), clean water and education. There are all kinds of reasons and excuses we have that keep us from donating to such causes, and I’ve finally been convinced that the money I can give can save a life just as surely as pulling the switch on that train about to run over a stroller. I will leave the rest to you to explore if it so calls you, but Jesus, we spend a lot of money on unnecessary, stupid shit and whether this is ever part of any legacy or not, I have to sleep with myself.
Family
It’s everything. Each family structure and composition is different and it’s been such a great life-lesson to learn to honor the many types, especially those whose makeup, origin and culture is so different from my own. I confess that I am out of touch with a lot of my own family members and it’s sad that in almost every case it has been because of religion or politics, usually both. The only time I am the one who cuts the chord is when it becomes abusive or disrespectful. But I am NOT out of touch with any of my kids, and by the gods, I will spend my last and dying breath if I have to, working to make sure they know they were loved dearly, not just in word, but by action and example. It’s also how we can know there’s no hell. God is better than I am, I imagine, and there is nothing that will come between me and my kids, even if they were to abandon me. Nothing. This can be hard sometimes too because we all have family dynamics. It again requires that I know what love actually is, that I have the wisdom to figure out how to practice it on sometimes-difficult emotional terrain, and that I have practiced enough and to have courage enough to pull it off.
That’s enough for now. I might add more as it comes. After reading the post from ten years ago, I realize this one’s more urgent, a bit less lofty, a bit more “Get-off-my-lawn” with some “I have no more fucks to give,” thrown in too and hopefully a little Zen. Well, I’m 65 now and there is that currency, after all. We think we have time and we don’t. Ten years have passed since the last post. How many of those do I have left?
