The 20th Day of May

For context, today is the 140^th day of 2020, the 65^th day (for me) of an unscheduled collective remote working experiment, and as such, the whole of all the things is wholly unprecedented and just a little bit odd. 

Sixty years ago, today, ¾ of The Beatles (John, Paul and George) played their first show of their first tour at Alloa Town Hall in Clackmannanshire, Scotland.  McCartney was still playing guitar then, Stu Sutcliffe on bass and Tommy Moore on the drums.  Moore was the first of a parade of drummers that would continue for two more years until Ringo completed the "Fab Four" in August of '62.  It is hard for me to comprehend that those four dudes who would’ve likely amounted to very little on their own, coalesced into one of the greatest rock and roll bands ever only to create and play together for barely eight years before breaking up and that less than ten years after that unfortunate, John would be dead.  The Beatles only made music together for eight years?  Are you kidding?!  Have you seen / heard / felt their catalog?  John was only a "rock star" for eighteen years?  That is not only ridiculous, but also a remarkably unequalled fact when one considers the length and breadth of the shadows of influence cast as a result of this shaky impetus.  Just think what they could have been if they'd had a legit drummer throughout! (Sorry Ringo...Pete Best was a cool, cool cat.)  

Lennon is a touchstone for me in a lot of ways, and I've often tried to imagine what he would think and say about the world today, especially now.  I'll try to resist going down the rabbit hole of musical "what ifs” but imagine if they'd all lived through.  John, Janis, Jimi, Randy Rhoads, Dimebag, Razzle, Shannon Hoon, Kurt, Sid, Bradley Nowell, Tupac, Biggie, Stevie Ray, Billie, Morrison, Buddy, Keith Moon, Freddie, Cliff Burton, Layne Staley.  The list goes on forever, right?  What if they'd all made it through the storm?  Would I really be listening to Mandolin Orange records on a Wednesday night if they had?  Maybe.  Hopefully even because MO is an incredible duo that gives me much joy and is a band that you should know that I’d love to tell you about if ever you would ask what I’m listening to these days like humans used to when music was cool...but still I wonder.  My heart and head believe that “music” would have been appreciably different especially had Kurt, Jimi and Tupac came through...but that is a fantasy I hope to explore another day.  BUT for the sake of having something to imagine, imagine what Kurt Cobain's musical response to the drivel that fills the airwaves today might have been.  In all honesty, it would probably be drivel too but it would have felt and looked a whole lot cooler.  IF 80-year old John Lennon were alive to add color to this tapestry, can you imagine how different “this” would be?

Also, further random, today is the birthday of Joe Cocker, Cher, Jane Wieldin, Iz, Patti Russo and Busta Rhymes - what an arbitrary bunch of musically special humans and how surprised am I that I'm just a few weeks older than Busta?

My homie Nick Cave once said, "I've spent my life butting my head against other people's lack of imagination."  That's a helluva truth right there, no?

Leonard Cohen is quoted as saying, "If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often." 

What if "this" is where the good songs come from?  What if "this" is where our collective lack of imagination meets its demise?  If you listen to anybody who is talking right now, they are selling their own personal vision of the truth devoid of fact or precedent and that is an exceedingly selfish and dangerous game to play.  I often quote my Stoic heroes when I write, when I talk, when I endeavor to lead, but I stop short of that tonight to ask the questions that so many people have answered lately irresponsibly and emotionally – what is it that you are chasing, what are you trying to prove, to whom are you trying to prove it and why does that approval matter?  I have listed and quoted several personally influential people tonight, but I would never do a thing because Joe Strummer did it or because Johnny Cash might see me do it or because Buddy Holly heard from a friend that I might. 

We draw our internal ability to act from a multitude of external influences and influencers –

some (most) of which we have no control over, but we should never let anyone's influence outshine our own.  Perhaps it is because of my Stoic leanings, perhaps it’s because I'm an aging punk / headbanger, perhaps it's because I'm a yet to be realized and acknowledged, brilliant goat farmer, but either way I know that MY voice matters.  More importantly maybe, I know that YOURS does too.  The trouble lies in finding that voice I suppose, and maybe that is what I came here to write about.  At the end of every day, we are ALL solely responsible for the mark we have left on the world that day – good, bad, or indifferent.  I think we all aspire to speaking our own truth and most of us convince ourselves on the reg that we are.  When nobody is looking though, and when you are being honest with yourself, have you found your voice?  Have you ever even heard your own voice?  Are you willing and able to stop apologizing for it if you have?  Are you going to be okay if your voice does not align with the sheep that we are all unavoidably surrounded by?  Is your voice strong enough to outshout the din?  Are you going to be cool when and if it does?  Can you surround yourself with people who do not insist that you’re surrounded by only their obnoxious voices?  These are obvs rhetorical questions, but ones that I ask myself on the daily.

I'd like to continue writing this stream of consciousness wandering nonsense around myself and expand deeper into my personal manias on irony and the dichotomy of mankind and all the other things as I promised some friends earlier this week, but it's the 20th day of May and these are all of the thoughts I've had so far today.

I don't know all of the things, but I know that all of the things I know are true.

Wise Words and Random Encounters

This morning, in what has proven to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time I went to my local big box store intent on picking up a few Spring flowers.  And when I say a long time, I’m not wholly sure if I mean ten minutes or if I mean one thousand hours or a million years – the construct of time has appreciably changed since we started using the “Q” word, hasn’t it?  Despite “social distancing” being my natural and preferred life posture, I’ve missed you humans a helluva lot more than I ever thought I could or ever believed I would admit publicly.  High-functioning introverts such as I am recharge from reflective time alone, word?  Where others crave interaction, we crave isolation.  When you might go out, I’m def stayin’ in.   I’ve learned this week though that without that requisite, day-to-day social drain, my batteries became overcharged.  Still not willing to internalize that I need other random people, but also recognizing the intrinsic necessity that my hands touch the healing power of the Earth’s soil on some regular basis, away I went.  That specific mission was an abject failure by the way, but we’ll get to that.

I would be remiss if I took full credit for this action.  Full disclosure – the subtle cracks in my solitary armor that I alluded to above, opened into exposed chasms…impassable gaps between my perceived reality and my actual reality by the end of the week.  Gaps become canyons only by exploration, and I’m an explorer so that was a bad deal Friday night.  Introspection overdone, as it turns out and as is true with all the other things – anything overdone is a negative unequaled.  Still, internally unaware entirely and upon reaching out to a trusted friend, I was snapped back…awakened.  She didn’t sugarcoat or give me a pass for being an asshole, but she did have some good advice.  Wise beyond her years as ever, she said I should get out – be IN the world.  The irony, that I had given our entire staff that same advice just a short time before but had not fully heeded it myself was not lost on me.  My days have been spent inexplicably and involuntarily glued to the news – shut it down, she said.  But I’m all about stats and graphs and charts, I retorted – that’s how I make sense of it all.  “You know everything you need to know to stay alive…so GO!  BE alive.” 

Responding to these words, I got vertical and mobile with a renewed cocky quickness.  Still reeling from my self-imposed mania, and with no clear plan of attack – the mission failed.  I wandered the aisles forever it seemed…at least an hour in the garden area alone.  I must have examined, at an almost biological level every single plant specimen on display and refused them all for a myriad of utterly ridiculous rationales.  Indecisive.  Anxious AF for even being there…away from my fortress of solitude or whatever.  Defeated and ashamed, I walked away.

Recently, in the vast and unending time I mentioned earlier, my old friend Marcus Aurelius said a thing to me inside of the immense cavern of my own personal holy shit – I might be losing it this time for real puzzle.  "You have power over your mind – not outside events.  Realize this, and you will find strength."  His words were burning in my brain walking empty-handed back to my truck.  What a shitty Stoic you are homey, said I to myself.  My increasingly public display of having adopted Stoicism as a lifepath hung in the balance of my next move.  Yes.  That is way more dramatic than it should be or needs to be, but whatever.

I mentioned the stats earlier – despite good advice, I’m still locked in on the reg.  I can’t separate my reality from our reality, you know?  Since I started writing this, worldwide cases of COVID-19 have gone from 320 to 336,000+.  That’s a reality that we can’t avoid or reinvent, but there’s hope for us yet.  Here’s why!

As I sulked back to my truck, I couldn’t help but notice a guy struggling to solve his own personal conundrum.  He had apparently purchased a new dishwasher, but the vehicle within which he had arrived to make said purchase was dreadfully incapable of transporting product back to his domicile.  The poor guy had the thing out of the box, Corolla trunk open…he was just standing there looking at the situation like, “what the actual fuck?”  This moment is where my new normal starts to kick in.  I say new because I’ve seen similar events at the aforementioned big box in the past and laughed about it driving away.  Today – in stark comparison, I casually approached and asked, “you good”?  Knowing the answer, I was dropping the tailgate as I said it.  We loaded the dishwasher into my truck, and I followed him to his adorable little house in Little Five Points.  I think I had decided to hook the damn thing up for him by the time I got there, five minutes later.  His young (rightfully skeptical) wife caboshed that nonsense (given the environment) and I dropped their new appliance on the sidewalk and drove away.

There’s a lot that I could say about that singular event, but what I felt inside isn’t something that I can put into words.  Back at the crib, my internal emotional seed purified and buttressed by the karmic payment I’d just made, I found myself reflecting upon the nature of how and why and when we choose to live our lives…every single day in the normal world.  That deep dive made me question why whatever it was that had just happened, doesn’t happen on the daily.  I questioned, in the sober light of day why I don’t more often display publicly what I know is right internally.  Why isn’t this my every day?  Why isn’t this YOUR every day?

I’m not sure that it’s a Stoic virtue per se, but it’s an unavoidable fact of my life that I question.  Every.  Single.  Thing.  The day passed – recharged for sure but still conflicted, questioning.  Instead of my routine Sunday night takeout, I cooked spaghetti…like an end-of-the-world sized pot of spaghetti – I’m not immune to the panic buying phenomenon after all.  In the past few days, I’ve adopted through no voluntarily expression of my traditional temperament and despite my regular consternation, an inescapable desire to interact with my neighbors on a more consequential level.  They are ALWAYS walking their dogs or kids or whatever and I naturally / almost religiously ignore them because of it…because I’m an asshole, I just realized.  Regardless, these days, I step out if I’m not already out there, onto my stoop and say hello.  That’s a helluva thing right there, no?  I.  Say.  Hello.  Me?  Yep! 

A few weeks ago, I got new neighbors across the street in the yellow house that isn’t yellow anymore.  It’s been a minute since I felt like I had a word or more to say to any neighbors across any street.  I don’t know, never met ‘em before tonight…but they’ve got a dachshund so they must be cool.  Tonight, as I was chatting with them like a lunatic hermit from my front stoop, I asked if they were hungry.  Having cooked enough for the entire coming apocalypse, I divided my need by half and gave them what I couldn’t reasonably use.  Maybe I’m not an asshole after all.

I paraphrase once again the wise words of Marcus Aurelius…humans exist for the sake of other humans.  For all my “stoic” training and bluster, I don’t believe that I’ve ever fully grasped that specific ideal before now.  We have a collective moral responsibility to be there for each other in times of need.  Period.

Today was a good day – I needed it.