An elusive soundtrack

About 6 years ago I went through a phase where I wanted my life to have a soundtrack. Sort of my own personal band to play the appropriate music at the appropriate time, to make the highs higher, and the lows more poignant and dramatic. You know what I mean I’m sure. For example, if you’re setting off on a big road trip, you might want the band playing Tom Petty’s ‘Into the Great Wide Open,’ or Bob Seger’s ‘Roll Me Away,’ or something similar depending on your taste in music. Well, in October of 2003 I came to a realization that there is plenty of music in my life, I just haven’t learned how to listen. For those who have read my ramblings before, you will not be surprised to hear that Thoreau, I think, understands what I mean. He went to nature to listen, and relates the following:

So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town,
trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express!

(HDT, Walden)

Can we listen and learn from music then as well? I’ll assume it’s possible, and attempt the experiment with some music I was listening to around the time of my transition to the land of palm trees and warm sand.

“You see you don't have to live like a refugee”

-Tom Petty, ‘Refugee’

Joshu’s Comment:

This is, in fact, not true. Between November 2^nd, 2007 and January 6^th, 2008 I had a total of 3 different ‘residences’ in California, and 2 in Colorado. I put over 1,500 miles on the trusty Camry, and stayed in various hotels across Utah, Nevada, and California. I saw the desolate and barren salt flats of Utah and the lonely, wild open spaces in Nevada in towns like Ely and Eureka. My possessions meanwhile saw cities like Los Angeles and wherever else the truck driver decided to take them before they ended up in their 10ft x 10ft holding cell for a month and a half. With all the traveling from place to place I had almost all of my important belongings in the trunk of my car, and if I needed to get, oh, my passport for instance, I had to hope it wasn’t raining when I accessed my file system/coat closet/pantry/trunk/storage locker. A good box to organize my stuff became a precious commodity, and keeping track of all my stuff became an impossibly difficult task. Thus, while well-fed, housed, and usually but not always well-clothed, I’d say I fully became the modern day white collar refugee. So, Mr. Petty, I disagree –sometimes you do have to live like a refugee.

California here we come, the pie-in-the-sky-land.
Palm trees, and warm sand.
Though sadly we just left Rhode Island.
(We did what?!)
(Just forget it.)

- The Muppets, “Movin’ Right Along”

Joshu’s Comment:

As Homer would say, mmmmm, pie. I actually can conclude very little from this, and might note that I have seen only a few palm trees, and only cold looking sand as of this writing. As a side note, this song was in fact on my driving mix which I created before the trip to California. It is, in my estimation, the best ‘driving-to-California’ mix ever created by man. In my not-so-humble-opinion.

(Go West) Life is peaceful there
(Go West) In the open air
(Go West) Where the skies are blue
(Go West) This is what we're gonna do

-Pet Shop Boys, ‘Go West’

Joshu’s Comment:

Pet Shop Boys, surely you jest. While the skies are blue indeed, I’m loosing track of the number of disgruntled motorists on the roads that I’ve seen getting all pissy at perceived slights or the minor mistakes of other drives. Life is peaceful here? Please re-examine this claim, gentlemen.

Roll, roll me away,
I’m gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin, gotta keep ridin,
Keep searchin till I find what’s right
And as the sunset faded
I spoke to the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We’ll get it right

- Bob Seger, “Roll Me Away”

Joshu’s Comment:

Well, this feels a lot closer to truth. I have a feeling that there is no such thing as ‘getting it right’ in an absolute sense, but in a way I think I know what Mr. Seger means. Sometimes you know you’ve found a groove in your life that it good for you, and in this sense there is a ‘getting it right.’ I can’t say that I have done that, but I can say this: settling into a new place gives one a feeling of a fresh start. Now, there is no such thing as a fresh start I would say; we can’t just ditch what we carry with us. But there certainly is that *feeling* of a fresh start, and that’s an important difference to me. It gives you hope that you can maybe create a groove that fits you just a little bit better than your last groove (or rut!) that you created. So, in this case the lyrics are much closer to reality, something I can agree with.

“Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same”

-The Fray, “All At Once”

Joshu’s Comment:

Aaaaahhh. Well. This feels like it might be true. I won’t over-analyze this one, but just leave it with my gut reaction of yeah, that seems about right.

So, what can I conclude from my music experiment? My first thought is that if I do have a band director or DJ running my soundtrack, they’re a bit tone deaf, and need to be given a good smack upside the head. That said, I have to honestly admit that I have reached no further conclusions about music and meanings that I didn’t already have to begin with. Anticlimactic, I know. Boooo! Boring! Go Home! I can hear my friend Zach saying. Yeah.

Another friend, who has a considerable amount of dance experience, once said that all things can be interpreted as music, can be listened to, even silence. (I believe I’m remembering this correctly. It was a long time ago in a state far far away.) But what an amazing thing to say! Even silence has it’s own music. It only gives me confidence, though, that others have found something in the wind, in the silence, in the rhythms out there that are worth listening for. I may not be tuned into my soundtrack just yet, but I have faith that it exists.

The communion of Borges and Heraclitus

I find joy in making connections, and awhile back I recognized the following link, connecting two writers who were separated by close to 2500 years. It got my mind very excited, and was about as close to a mental orgasm as I can get. The two writers that caused this great stir were Borges and Heraclitus. I was reading Borges, who reaches levels of brilliance that continue to amaze me, and he is, and has been for some time, my favorite author. In the afterword to ‘The Maker’ I found the following. Listen:

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” (J.L.B. ‘The Maker,’ Trans by Andrew Hurley)

And then what does Heraclitus, a Greek separated by thousands of years and vast cultural upheavals, say?

“A man’s character is his fate”

Heraclitus no doubt has a more simple formulation than Borges, but I’m of course partial to the poetry of Borges… “that patient labyrinth of lines” is to me a wonderfully poetic and simply beautiful image in its own right, abstract though it may be. In any case, personal opinions aside, it looks like these two are coming at the same idea from opposite directions. Heraclitus seems to be saying that a man’s character predetermines his fate. In other translations of the quote, which I can’t verify, we get “Character is destiny” and “A man’s character is his daemon.” The more I look into this, the more I am coming to question the original translation above, which I got from The Adventures of Augie March. However, I’ll put this aside and assume it’s accurate. In the 'Augie March' translation it certainly could be that Heraclitus is meaning our characters determine our fates.

Now Borges flips this ‘characters creates fate’ notion on its head. Our fates are what we have filled our lives with - the rooms and kingdoms and ships. And then, as in a mystery that finally reveals itself at the end of the movie, the character finds that the summation of all the things that have populated his life turn out to be an image of his own face. The face is identical to self in this image, thus it is our characters that we have revealed. Our fates define our characters.

However, when Heraclitus says that character is fate, I suppose it’s also quite possible that he doesn’t imply the one creates the other, but rather that they are two sides to the same coin. As with Descartes’ “Cogito ego sum,” thinking does not lead to being, but rather they both necessitate the other. Character and fate may appear discrete when written in words, but are inseparable notions when played out in real life. So, would Heraclitus accept the formulation “Destiny is Character?” Of course I have no idea, only guesses.

What impresses me most here is that there is this common theme between character and fate that both authors have picked up on. These deep themes that run through human nature must be apparent enough to inspire two writers from totally different cultures, and then to also inspire the reader, i.e. myself, to pick up on this common theme. That people have these themes running through their lives, and that art is able to pick them out, is an exciting thing indeed.

Dear Bill

Dear Mr. Clinton-

I recently received your letter regarding the qualifications of your wife for president of the United States. Thanks for the note! However, I have a few concerns that I would like to raise. First off, I have to wonder if this endorsement is freely given. As I recall, Mrs. Clinton did you a huge favor by standing by you during a certain 'Monica Lewinsky' affair, which I seem to recall involved some infidelity. This makes me suspect, my good friend, that she's got your nuts in a salad shooter, as they say. And I just can't trust the motives of a man whose cajones are compromised. Sorry.

Secondly, I note that you refer to the senator and candidate simply as 'Hillary.' Now, I have indeed read that Mrs. Clinton has decided to refer to herself in this way on the campaign trail, partly to put some distance between herself and your most dignified person. However, before writing a letter like this to multiple people (I'll be so bold as to assume it wasn't personalized for just me) I think you ought to check with the Missus on matters like this. Remember that you're walking on thin ice here, buddy and its better to be safe than sorry. You don't want to end up sleeping on the couch now do you?

Finally, I note that at the bottom of the message, it says "Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee." Now, I know you've been out of a job for about 7 1/2 years now, but it's time to start pulling your own weight (which is probably considerable) when it comes to the household finances. I know unemployment can be pleasant, but you can't just sit around on the couch all day eating fritos and getting high. It's just not dignified for a former president. Check the Classifieds for a company looking for a friendly, outgoing type who can wine and dine clients (and maybe even regale parties with a saxophone solo, yeah?). You'd be good at it, and it would get you out of the house!

I certainly don't want to offend, and I hope you will consider these comments as 'constructive criticism,' which is certainly my intention. Again, thank you for your well written, informative letter, I very much appreciated it. I hope we can continue to maintain a friendly dialog via our correspondence, and I wish your wife great success on the campaign trail. Yours truly,

-howiej

Old and New

There’s never any single moment in life when you recognize that you have ‘grown up,’ that you are officially more experienced in the ways of the world than, say, 10 years ago. But every now and then something comes along which puts those ten years in perspective, and makes you realize that you, for better or worse, are more familiar with the show that life is putting on around you.

I had one of these moments not too long ago when I heard a song by Modest Mouse on the radio. While I may have heard some of their stuff before, it was the first time I actually knew what I was listening to, and definitely the first time that I remember a radio DJ talking about them and their work. Now, about 12 years ago I met a girl in college who is one of my best friends to this day, and this girl was a huge fan of Modest Mouse. I wasn’t into the music scene, but my friend would talk of going to Modest Mouse concerts at small venues on 'the hill,' the center of off-campus life. And this band which I had never heard of, and was well out of the mainstream, epitomized the newness of college life. That time in our lives where we meet lots of new people, try out new lifestyles, run into new ideas. Simply put, so much of our college experience, or mine at least, was characterized by a feeling of newness, of doing things for the first time.

Since then the pace of new things entering my life has slowed down to a bit more of a crawl. (Or, possibly, my excitement over new events in life has greatly diminished) In any case, I have graduated, gotten a job and been in the real world for a number of years now. Concurrently, that feeling of everything being new has certainly departed from my life. Modest Mouse coming on the radio was a vivid reminder for me of those old days when everything was new. Here was a band, who was now mainstream, which I could say ‘Yep, I’ve heard of them – my friend was into them since the beginning,’ and have a feeling of familiarity and maybe ‘oldness’ about the band. It was a strange feeling, because only 12 years ago the very same band was the epitome of the ‘newness’ of the world.

I certainly felt a little sentimental when I heard Modest Mouse on the radio, no doubt due to the juxtaposition of the ‘older’ self with the ‘newer’ self. Have I given up the excitement of the new for a sort of wise, less excited, ‘been-there-done-that’ older and experienced view of the world? And isn’t this the natural progression of things? I can’t say for sure, but it was, for just those few seconds as I reflected on the passing of time, a pretty powerful and somewhat nostalgic reminder of how things change. Or, more specifically, how our perspective on the world changes, but the things that populate it stay the same.

Music

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
- Nietzsche (The Twilight of the Idols)

Surely many have heard the famous maxim above. It's one that I tend to agree with, although I would classify music and poetry as a whole new entity entirely, but (perhaps) more on that another time. In the end, sadly, life is so often a painfully crude, dull, painful experience that we need the very few saving graces that are given to us - and music is one of them in my view. What brought this philosophical turn of mind about was the rather commonplace act of downloading, from i-tunes, 'Read my Mind' by the Killers. I don't find the lyrics mind-blowing, but luckily this song has some great tunes to fall back on. And then we get to the line
I pull up to the front of your driveway
With magic soakin' my spine

And yeah, good work Killers.... I can feel the dreary commonplace world pull away, the excitement, the 'in-the-moment' aliveness of pulling up to a driveway on a first or second date, and everything is quite aware and alive, and I feel the magic soaking my spine. In this moment of feeling, life certainly doesn't feel like a mistake.
And, for those interested, the video is, or was here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Oec8RuwVVs
In any case, just one of those lines that makes you sit up and take notice. Kudos, Killers.

Paradise and the DR

Wakey Wakey! Don’t be lazy! Time for your exercise! And with that, the Caribbean music, with a bit of techno mixed in, jumps to life, and its time for aerobics on the beach. This was my first real ‘resort’ trip, to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. And who knew that paradise included a Dominican dude who ran daily aerobics classes? Not I. If it was paradise, it had a distinctly German cast of characters.

And, we even learned some German:

Zu mite
Zu tites
Zum zoch zoch zoch!

(or such is my poor recollection of the crude toast by our German friend who I’ll call Eric the great). He certainly looked like a conquering barbarian with his barrel chest and steady beady eyes, ready to raise a toast to his motherland. Or, rather, his gods.

But it was, of course, a superficial paradise, one built on the poor of the Dominican Republic. For 50 some kilometers the tourist beaches ran, and how much of this was open to the native people? Tough to say, but probably very little. And how much were the hotel workers making, the maids that cleaned the rooms? In any case, there was another level of its falsity, seen in the entertainment. At times they seemed to want to mimic the European culture, or at least one of their evening entertainment pieces did. And so, dolled up all in white, were approximately 8 native entertainers dancing what I think was the blue Danube waltz, and doing a rather poor job of it. Here were people from Germany, some of whom had probably seen the masterpiece done by expert ballet dancers back home, watching this poor reproduction, with the dancers missing some steps and butchering others. It wasn’t natural, but whoever decided on the programming must have thought those watching would like a tour of all the worlds dances. For me, I would have preferred just the local style – but then again, I didn’t stick around to watch.

Besides the partying and day trips and drinking games at night, there was a more subdued and relaxed atmosphere at the resort. After dinner, with a few drinks in you, it feels like this was the most palpable. People could go down to the seashore or cobbled beach path, and truly and honestly saunter. Thoreau says of walking, “Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.” And so we’d chew over the evening’s dinner as we sauntered lazily down the beach. The waves softly crashing on the shore lent a constant beat to our slow dance, which, deep down in our souls, we always felt. And the steps would come one after the other, sometimes so slowly that you would wonder if one step would be followed by the next. But, as with the waves coming in and beating out a rhythm in time, the next step would always follow, as a drop of water wells up and forms in a faucet, and then finally falls – plop! – to the sink below. It was the slow, plodding walk of the camel that felt so natural on the beach. While much of the resort was a false façade, this sauntering had the feel of authenticity to me.

In any case, the resort trip, my first, was a lot of fun. There were beautiful beaches, beautiful countrysides, lots of drinking with friends, a few evening dancing trips, sand volleyball, and lots of hanging out on the beach. Everything one might expect a resort trip to include. As far as physical pleasures and a relaxed attitude went, the resort was, indeed, paradise. I would hope, though, that real bliss includes a deeper, more spiritual depth of feeling, rather than just the numbing feeling of drinking too many rum and cokes.

My Onion entry

For anyone who enjoys the Onion, and I absolutely do, they might enjoy the following. I wrote and submitted this to the Onion a few months back - I'm pretty sure I'll never hear back from them since they have written, in very prominent type, and in a very prominent place on their contact information page, that they do not accept editorial submissions. Surely they didn't mean me.

God Cancels Reality In Favor Of Reality TV

Nov 15, 2006

Vatican City, Italy - According to a Vatican representative, speaking on behalf of the Almighty, reality will be canceled at the end of this season and will be replaced by reality TV. God, the release stated, has found that the multitude of reality TV shows being aired more than satisfied his experiment in creating mankind and then watching the ensuing trials and tribulations. “The shows created by the four major networks,” stated God, “in fact go well beyond even the most difficult vicissitudes that I could have dreamed up. Bravo Fox, NBC, CBS and ABC,” he concluded. The release further stated that the fate of mankind at the end of this season will be instant non-being, with the exception of a small percentage kept on to staff the various reality TV shows themselves. There was no word as to which network’s season end date God will adhere to.