— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Okay, disclaimer: That is not the quote I was looking for.

Evan Osnos is the author of a book I am slogging through. He mentioned how Puritans embraced Emerson’s “commanding sense of right and wrong.” I learned this would fall in line with Emerson’s view of self-reliance and a common morality that is less tied to organized religion and more tied to human intuition, which is what the lead-off quote is supposedly referring to.

I did not know all of that until today, but I DID intuit it. Philosophy classes are thirty plus years in my rearview mirror. I really needed to look.

I still cannot find a direct quote from Emerson mentioning how humans have a “commanding sense of right and wrong.” Google kept redirecting me to a commencement speech he gave at Harvard in the mid-19th century. I will take their word for it.

It is a nice thought that sounds good with just enough common sense to sound right. Recently, though, there have been egregious cases of individuals of some repute being found pathologically guilty of plagiarism, specifically Jason Arday from Cambridge University, who, tragically, took his own life when the sheer volume of fabrications became too much for him to handle.

I quote a lot of people (well, actually not a LOT of people, but those I quote, I quote a lot) which is pretty much why I am writing this. I do not know enough about Jason Arday, much less knew him, to render any supreme judgement except that he was a habitual liar. His motivations are mysteries, and, in the end, it really does not matter what they may have been.

Arday’s situation is unique and convoluted and just…weird. I do not think he was malicious, nor do I buy his strange rationale blaming an autism diagnosis for some of his errors (lies). I sympathize with him and his family, but I am not exactly sure why.

I want to believe he had some kind of common moral compass everyone shares and just chose to bypass it. That would still fulfill Emerson’s “commanding sense of right and wrong,” right?

It all depends on who defines right and wrong. Ideally, this would be the province of philosophers like Emerson or Kant or my Philosophy 101 professor in college. My intuition is that it is people with the most money.

By “common” standards, I am guilty of doing wrong. No, I will not go into exactly what, but I am relatively certain you would be compelled to say the same thing about yourself.

A quick self-reveal: When I was in college (probably the same quarter I was taking Philosophy classes), I learned to pick locks. I put it into practice on two occasions, neither of which resulted in burglaries or arrests. Still, that would fall onto the “wrong” end of the spectrum. I lost the skill a while ago. Hand tremors are not conducive to picking locks. You need to be VERY steady while also being able to hear movement. I remember being rather proud of myself when I could do it quickly.

Maybe Emerson is not the guy I should have quoted tonight.

However, I believe it is those with money that make decisions on what is right and wrong.

To prove my point, in the same book which gave Emerson waaaay too much credit, an Economic Policy Institute report discovered that in 1965, the average CEO of a company like General Electric made 20 times as much of a frontline worker. In 2019, the average CEO made 278 times as much.

That feels commandingly wrong.

“Rest your head, you worry too much
It’s gonna be alright
When times get rough, you can fall back on us
Don’t give up, please don’t give up
Got to walk out of here, I can’t take any more
Gonna stand on that bridge, keep my eyes down below
Whatever may come and whatever may go
That river’s flowing, that river’s flowing”

— Peter Gabriel (and Kate Bush), “Don’t Give Up”

I called Peter Gabriel odd last night. That was a little unfair. Yes, he is a little different, and he is auteur of some bizarre and awesome music videos. I had “So” on audiocassette and am still amazed that “Sledgehammer” was allowed to be played at our Catholic high school dances.

Outside of Bob Geldof (and earlier versions of Bob Dylan), I do not think there is a rock star more committed to his/her chosen cause than Peter Gabriel. He also has a LOT of causes…Amnesty International, bringing attention to Armenian genocide, support for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine…and the list continues.

I also remember “Don’t Give Up” very well and had absolutely no idea what it was about until recently. I did not think it was a love song, per se. It still sounds like Kate Bush is trying to convince Gabriel not to commit suicide.

And it sorta is but sorta isn’t.

Gabriel was inspired by an exhibit of Depression-era photography, seeing parallels between plights of U.S. farmers from the 1930’s to Thatcher-era England’s labor workers. I don’t know enough of either to say if it was a natural link or a reach, but Gabriel thought it fit, so I defer to him. He wrote and sang this song from the perspective of a man who lost his job due to Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. These were not too dissimilar to Reagan-era “Reaganomics” in the 1980’s when the pay of executives and CEO’s began lapping those below them.

I believe all that because I read it in a couple different places today, but in 1986, when this song was released, I would have had zero idea this song was a “screw you, Maggie Thatcher” ode to class warfare instead of a woman (with a great, soothing, commanding voice) trying to talk a guy out of committing suicide.

Coincidentally, given the many things I learned of Dolly Parton in the last week, I also learned she (and not Kate Bush) was Peter Gabriel’s original choice to record the duet with.

Wrap your minds around that for a second.

That…would have been something. Even still, Kate Bush was the right call. I am tempted to put AI to its proper use and see how a Peter Gabriel-Dolly Parton mashup would have sounded, damn the amount of water resources I would destroy in the process.

“I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years, I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare
At all the millions here
We must have died alone
A long, long time ago

Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world
Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world”

— David Bowie, “The Man Who Sold the World”

I am not a HUGE David Bowie fan, but I like him a lot, and I have grown to like him more now, ten years after his death. He wrote “The Man Who Sold the World” in 1969, reportedly after running into Brian Jones, late of The Rolling Stones and soon after Jones sold the copyright to “The Rolling Stones” to Mick and Keith. Brian Jones had some anxiety and regret about whether he did the right thing or made the wrong choice, all for one hundred grand. He came to a conclusion most of us in “the 99%” would come to.

Money talks.

I began reading this book, “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury” yesterday. Thankfully, it is turning out to be much more than a laundry list of economic terms like “derivatives” and “hedge funds” and how to “short stocks.” I do not know what any of those terms means. It doesn’t quote Dylan, Springsteen or The Band much (if at all. I’m only 50-odd pages into it), but it still seems like it is going to be a good read.

I wish I could still pick a lock.

— Kate Bush, “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God)”

Mid-1980’s synth-pop is not exactly in my wheelhouse. I only know Kate Bush because of some great duets with Peter Gabriel, who was pretty cool, even though Peter Gabriel is also a little…odd.

But dance music? Definitely not my zip code. Give me some blood, sweat and tears. I want to hear Mick and Rod and Van the Man sweat those words out like their lives depend on it. Give me Duane Allman’s slide guitar complimenting Eric Clapton on “Layla;” Tracy Chapman wishing aloud for a “Fast Car” to deliver her from poverty with that small sliver of light.

Give me Springsteen’s therapy sessions from the first decades and a half of his career that he shared on vinyl!

However…I pull in Kate Bush for the whole rationale behind her writing “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God)” – the deal in question that sort of mirrored a writing exercise I was persuaded to try, “If the man could be the woman and the woman the man … they’d understand what it’s like to be the other person and perhaps it would clear up misunderstandings.”

That is an interesting thought experiment.

Oh, come on, baby (Yeah)
Oh, come on, darlin’ (Yo)
Let me steal this moment from you now
Oh, come on, angel
Come on, come on, darlin’
Let’s exchange the experience (Yo, ooh, ooh)

— “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God)”

Maybe there is something to this dance music craze from (checks calendar) forty years ago.

Kate Bush IS cool. And she is the first female singer/songwriter that I know who would take this kind of challenge on. Can you imagine Springsteen or Townshend or Bono bringing this to the record label, saying, “I want to write a song from the woman’s point of view…”?

Dylan might do that. Maybe.

Dylan would go to the A&R person with a proposal to write a song from the perspective of an alien, and he has enough currency to get it done.

Writing from the perspective of the opposite gender does not sound like the kind of thing you can just slide into. Method acting is one thing. You rehearse, research, observe…a lot like writing, minus the rehearsing part. For anyone remotely interested in a beautifully satirical snapshot of method acting, check out “Tropic Thunder” with Robert Downey Jr. as mocking (himself) and other method actors. The joke being exactly how hard it can be to be someone else or see the same thing from a completely different perspective.

Amazon will periodically invade my inbox with books I might be interested in reading “based off of your preferences.” I am looking at those lists a bit more skeptically these days because…

“(Substitute) Your lies for fact
(Substitute) I see right through your plastic mac
(Substitute) I look all White, but my dad was Black
(Substitute) My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack”

— The Who, “Substitute”

…apparently, a lot of white men had the requisite experience of living like a Black American in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am not suggesting a white man cannot report on what it was like being a Black American in Oxford, Mississippi when James Meridith was quite literally risking everything just to go to college. I am suggesting, perhaps, a more forceful disclaimer that “Yeah, I do not know at all what that could have been like, but here is what I saw…”

Interestingly (at least to me), “Substitute” was written as an homage (of sorts) by Pete Townshend to Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, “The Tracks of My Tears,” because Townshend was obsessed with specifically,

“Although she may be cute, she’s just a substitute
Because you’re the permanent one”

— Smokey Robinson and the Miracles “The Tracks of My Tears”

Pete Townshend and Bob Dylan have both gone out of their way to give credit where credit is due. Bob Dylan has referred to Robinson as America’s greatest poet. Personally, I think the Holland-Dozier-Holland triumvirate were more responsible for more of the Motown sound than Smokey Robinson, but I will always defer to Bob Dylan.

Admittedly, Dylan has done this spectacularly well once before.

Now all the criminals in their coats n' their ties
Are free to drink Martini's, and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
Yes, that’s the story of The Hurricane
But it won’t be over 'til they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put in a prison cell, but one
Time he could-a been, the Champion of the World!

— Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

“Hurricane” is the saga of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and his friend, John Artis. Both men were wrongly imprisoned for more than twenty years after both were falsely accused and sentenced on triple murder charges they did not commit. “Hurricane” stands on its own as a great song but also one that highlights the gross inadequacies of the American justice system that still exist even though Carter and Artis were both eventually released.

I write from a particular point of view, or, more accurately and accidentally, multiple points of view. I try my best to ameliorate an essay with my experiences and observations, but I know I likely come across as a know-it-all sometimes. Wanting to write from a completely different point of view spurred me to write my first short story. And it was as hard a writing assignment than anything thrown at me in high school or college…or afterward.

It IS an interesting thought experiment.

“The many roads I’ve covered
The many trails I’ve burned
But when our paths did cross, love, oooh
My whole world made a turn”

— The Band, “Time to Kill”

With Dolly Parton’s death I read a bunch of articles and obituaries recounting her life. And she had an amazing life. I learned a lot about her that were genuinely interesting and provided even more depth and understanding for someone (like me) with little knowledge.

And there were a LOT of obituaries.

So much so that I learned The New York Times employs a writer whose only job is to write obituaries of famous individuals. Richard Sandomir is the gentleman, and he was a full-time sports columnist for many years at The NYT before sliding into his current role. If anyone knows how to contact this guy, I would love to talk with him, and how he approaches a job that sounds…challenging and morose (depending on who died). I think that would be a great and illuminating profession. Learning about a person’s life before they die only to hold onto it until the bell tolls for that unfortunate soul. It would be a History class 24/7, which sounds kinda interesting.

I was a History major in college, and I am the first to admit that I would likely be astounded by how much I do not know.

It also may provide the ultimate writing exercise…write your own obituary.

I recognize that anyone can write his/her/their own obituary, but would it be an accurate depiction? Perhaps you have a friend or – better yet – an arch enemy who could shoulder that load. Compare notes and learn how others – friend and foe alike – might see you or might highlight some part of your backstory that you may have given a passing thought to once or twice.

On the face of it, writing about yourself and your life to this point does not sound exceedingly difficult. Bur what would you purposely leave out and what would you make sure is highlighted in bold 24-point font?

When my day’s work is done
We can take in a jamboree
But I just wanna sit down by the fire
With my love right here beside me

— “Time to Kill”

Or maybe I will just go back to writing about music.

— Otis Redding, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (w/Steve Cropper)

Some times, some days, you just end up going back to the well. There are only so many human emotions out there; only so many (realistic) situations you can put yourself in the middle of and be able to express it in an original way.

I am under no deadline; I do not have a publisher breathing down my neck, barking out, “I need 1,300 words about “The Weight,” pronto!”

Fact is, any self-respecting magazine editor would have looked at me nine months ago and said, “Ummmm…think we can move off The Band and Dylan for a few days?” if not outright fired me for exploring the depths of “Stage Fright” from twelve different perspectives.

I only have nine distinct perspectives on “Stage Fright,” far short of a dozen.

Trolling my memory bank, listening to the same opening bass chord to “Gimme Some Lovin’,” looking to make some square pegs fit into round holes, with decent background music is not an altogether bad way to spend an evening.

I also have a highly addictive personality – which you probably either know or have inferred by now – and that brings with it, some idiosyncrasies, one of which is a ludicrously dependable habit of self-destruction.

Granted, I am not sure you can be addicted to self-destruction as a concept, like you cannot really be addicted to depression. It just is. You could be addicted to how depression makes you feel, but depression is felt differently on a case-by-case basis. Maybe you are addicted to the way your mouth feels when you are depressed, and you have not brushed your teeth for three days. For the record, I am far too vain to go without brushing my teeth at least twice a day. I am far too vain for LOTS of things, and I probably have an unhealthy number of addictive behaviors that would demonstrate that.

I do not listen only to depressive bands. Soundgarden, Nirvana and Oasis would occupy their own wing in my playlist cabinet if that were the case.

But when you are depressed; when you find yourself feeling…desolate is the only word that comes to mind. Surrounded by strangers, noise, sounds of the city, and people facing FAR greater obstacles than me, a tried-and-true approach works best.

“Your brow is sweatin’ and your mouth gets dry
Fancy people go driftin’ by
The moment of truth is right at hand
Just one more nightmare you can stand

See the man with the stage fright
Just standin’ up there to give it all his might
And he got caught in the spotlight
But when we get to the end
He wants to start all over again”

— The Band, “Stage Fright”

Wordsmithing is the tonic I found sort of by accident. Especially when you are throwing music into the mix. It is a distraction from particular triggers…except when I start to write something and realize, “That is EXACTLY what my boss said before he shitcanned me.” It is at that point that I need to turn to Dylan, Springsteen or The Band or Tracy Chapman, people who KNOW how to write about darkness without resorting to self-immolation. As corny and trite as it sounds, they are charting a path forward for (let’s say as an example) someone depressed, in a dark spot, and not exactly sure why. Are there multiple reasons? Is it something I will only find out after listening to “Stage Fright” for the sixth time tonight? How the hell does Robbie Robertson know how I am feeling? Maybe because he might be the coolest rock star ever – the scarf in “The Last Waltz” seals his case. I will go to the mat defending that opinion.

“I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the ‘Frisco bay
‘Cause I’ve had nothing to live for
And look like nothin’s gonna come my way”

— “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is too often ignored when compiling the Great American Songbook. It is old (released a year before I was born), written and recorded by someone who died before I was born. I only really learned about Otis Redding when I was maybe twelve years old. But this song bleeds melancholy and reflection and…resignation. And depression takes many forms but one characteristic that is shared almost universally by people hardwired with depression is resignation. There is not a lot one can do to avoid that. Resignation is an endgame but that does not mean finality.

It is being able to take that deep breath which has been eluding you for days, and you (meaning me) are resigned to asking yourself, “y’know, this looks and feels familiar…am I okay with that?” That is not the easiest question to answer. The easy answer is “absolutely not; “that” is what got me here in the first place.” Ask yourself that same question enough times in situations that began wildly different from one another with varying levels of optimism attached, and you might say – pardon the performative swearing – “Fuck. I guess I’m okay with that. At least I can breathe.”

Or as my man, Robbie, wrote the words for and Rick Danko gave heartbreaking voice to

“You wanna try it once again,
Please don’t make him stop,
Let him take it from the top,
Let him start all over again”

— “Stage Fright”

Another selfish reason for including “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is legend has it that Redding wrote this song literally sitting on the dock of a houseboat in San Francisco. This was around the same time as his absolutely nailing his performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. I grew up on a houseboat, and I can envision writing out words (without a melody or cool singing voice) sitting on the dock of my childhood home, pondering my own life choices. I moved off the houseboat decades ago, and there is slightly less romance on the industrial road that runs past the front of this house from where I am trolling those memory banks remembering a houseboat rocking gently on an August evening.

Sadly, Redding never saw the fruits of his greatest creation. This was the first time a singer posthumously ascended to #1 on the Billboard charts.

Yes, I rely upon “Stage Fright,” semi-regularly, BUT it has been a while and I said above, I have nine separate perspectives about this song. I also and no editor rolling his/her/their eyes telling me, “Not again, Johnson!” Plus…it is just a great song.

Tell me that scarf isn’t cool!

— Dolly Parton, “Coat of Many Colors”

Like half of all people I follow on Substack, I am going to spend a few minutes writing about the late and always great Dolly Parton.

We need to gird ourselves for the next few years. Eric Clapton is 81; Bob Dylan is 85; McCartney is 84; everyone from The Band is gone; Steve (aka “Stevie”) Winwood is 78, Springsteen is 76; Keith and Mick are 82 and 83. Dolly was “just” 80. Rod Stewart graced the cover of the American Association of Retired Persons monthly magazine…which I know because I’M a subscriber.

Ron Wood is a sprightly 79.

There are going to be many sad days around lots and lots of households. My Outlook calendar is going to fill up with many days taken off for “personal reasons.”

I need to start paying attention to some younger bands.

Whatever I write about Dolly Parton will be an echo of everything else you have read today. I am not a country music fan. Until about five years ago, if you asked I would have sworn “Coat of Many Colors” (arguably Dolly Parton’s greatest song) was the sole province of Emmylou Harris. I cannot – with any authority – opine about the greatness of Dolly Parton. But I will give it a shot.

Dolly Parton is the female country music equivalent of Paul McCartney. I cannot recall many celebrities, particularly singers, who were as comfortable in their own skin and with the knowledge millions of people idolize them as McCartney and Dolly Parton. Hendrix, Joplin, Sam Cooke, Jim Morrison and Elvis…all let their fame consume them. McCartney and Parton felt like the person you’d go out to dinner with, and they would pick up the check and pay for your Uber ride home.

Not only do (did) they give off the appearance of having been born into celebrity (even though both come from some seriously hardscrabble backgrounds), neither gives (gave) off the impression that they are complete jerks about it.

The two numbers that stick out to me about Dolly Parton are 1) She sold over 100 million records; 2) She reportedly wrote her first song when she was six years old.

Six years old…I am pretty sure I knew the alphabet and could speak in complete sentences when I was six, but I am not positive. If my brother is reading this and I am wrong, I do not want to know.

One…hundred…million. That is a lot of zeroes. It is hard for me to get my mind around that. That might throw out of whack most people’s assessment of themselves. Not Dolly Parton.

“And, oh, I couldn’t understand it for I felt I was rich
And I told them of the love my mama sewed in every stitch
And I told them all the story mama told me while she sewed
And how my coat of many colors was worth more than all their clothes”

— “Coat of Many Colors”

Dolly wrote because she had to; her family was desperately poor (I suppose most poor families sit somewhere on the spectrum of desperation). She had eleven siblings, and her childhood home was a one-room log cabin. “Coat of Many Colors” was autobiographical as well as being a damn good song.

She had talents, and she leveraged it better than 99% of the population. It helped lift her family out of poverty. While I have no intimate knowledge of her upbringing or part of country she grew up in (and admittedly not well-versed in her history), I do not recall ever reading a negative article about Dolly Parton. There may be many of those floating around the Tennessee hills, she does not carry that ugly stench of rumor and innuendo that a person who has sold – I repeat – over one hundred million records might pick up along the way.

RIP, Dolly.

“Coat of Many Colors” is as great a legacy as any modern performer can have. It speaks to a very tangible desire to belong and to be proud of yourself and your family.

Working within an environment of families living along that desperation spectrum, you begin to get a solid appreciation for what you might have. The donation closet at work is going through its busiest phase of the year. We receive a lot of clothing donations for children (and adults), and the closet is getting full. In a week or two, it will be pockmarked with patches of emptiness as families look for and find the appropriate clothes to wear to school, find the right-sized shoes and a lunchbox, while some parents will take a close look for clothes to wear on job interviews or a new shirt or dress to wear to their current job.

“Now, my ma, she fingers her wedding band
Watches the salesman stare at my old man’s hands
He’s tellin’ us all ‘bout the break he’d give us if he could, but he just can’t
Well, if I could, I swear I know just what I’d do

Now mister, the day the lottery I win
I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again

Now the neighbors come from near and far
As we pull up in our brand new used car
I wish he’d just hit the gas and let out a cry
And tell ‘em all they can kiss our asses goodbye”

— Bruce Springsteen, “Used Cars”

The Boss is more outwardly conflicted about his family’s socioeconomic plight. From all available information, the Springsteen clan was middle middle class. Doug Springsteen was a World War II veteran and a bus driver who always saw how things could be for his family. The father-son relationship was a rocky one by most public accounts, and it infused a bunch of Springsteen’s first few albums, particularly “Nebraska,” which, if you have never heard it, you might invest in a prescription of Prozac before you sit down for a listen. It is stark, depressing, self-explanatory, and amazing. “Atlantic City” might be his second-best song put to vinyl, and it is the most “rock ‘n roll” song on the entire album. I am usually loathe to prop up The Band, post-Robbie Robertson, but their version of “Atlantic City” is one of the best cover versions of any song ever (link below).

But “Used Cars” encapsulates the opposite end of that desperation spectrum from “Coat of Many Colors.” Whereas the latter celebrates what is in hand, the former expresses the frustration of what is not, when a “new used car” is as good as it is going to get. Doug Springsteen is a forlorn character, someone I can empathize with, since there is no planet on which Bruce Springsteen and I can empathize with each other at all.

“Nebraska” is not Springsteen’s best album, nor my favorite (both of those being “Darkness on the Edge of Town”) or even his most important, which is clearly “Born to Run.” If there is no “Born to Run,” there is no Boss. But “Nebraska” may be his greatest achievement. He and E Street were coming off “The River” (a fantastic, underrated album), a huge tour and “Born in the U.S.A.” was two years off in the distance. “Nebraska” is like NONE of them. He zigged when everyone wanted him to zag and pulled off a masterpiece.

“Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away (Ooh)
Oh, someday yet, he’ll begin his life again
Life again, life again”

— Pearl Jam, “Even Flow”

“Even Flow” sits somewhere in the middle. Witnessing a man experience poverty and clinging to vestiges of his own mental health is told violently, precisely and REALLY close to the bone. It is not easy listening. It is intense, vibrant and pulls you in close to what poverty desperation feels like. Eddie Vedder is not one to mince words or wash his songs over with subtlety.

“Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away”

— “Even Flow”

The “chases them away” phrase kills me every time I hear it. You do not have to be rich, middle class or poor to know how that feels. Resignation to your status in life is how it feels to me. Just chase away those thoughts of grandeur, be happy with a temporary reprieve, because “someday yet, you will begin your life again…” Writing as someone who has felt that sensation of needing and having my life begin anew, that feels dead-on accurate.

Hopefully, that was not too depressing because Dolly Parton would not have wanted that. It did give me an excuse to introduce “Nebraska” to some of you.

— The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”

It is purely an accident of history that I was not a fan of The Smiths my junior and senior year in high school. It is also a testament to the hold Bruce Springsteen (and soon thereafter, U2) had on me that The Smiths were not even a consideration. I was their target audience. Holden Caufield-like-The-Catcher-in-the-Rye type depressed.

I cannot say for certain because my memory of those days gets vaguer each day, but I do not think “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” would have even been allowed to be played at any high school dance I would have attended. It is that depressing.

The idea that a bunch of priests, nuns and teachers who were staunch Catholics would listen to The Smiths and decide, “yeah…we’re not adding that one to the playlist,” is unbelievably amusing.

Depression is not a recent development for me. I was kind of a miserable teenager…kind of like, let’s say 25% of the population (and that is probably low). But I was not “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”-depressed. There was no cataclysmic event that sent me tumbling. My teenage years were normal. My family was normal; I have a great brother as my only sibling. There is a lot to be said for growing up as a twin. I

“He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man
He wants his home and security
He wants to live like a sailor at sea

Beautiful loser
Where you gonna fall?
When you realize
You just don’t need it all, oh-oh”

— Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, “Beautiful Loser”

There were a bunch of micro-events and a couple Uber-macro events that, when you add them up, scream “Beautiful Loser,” -- probably the best of Bob Seger’s catalogue, and unlike The Smiths, a song that was included in a lot of high school dance playlists in the mid-1980’s.

I know I used “Beautiful Loser” recently, but this topic was built for it. I am also writing this with a bunch of different singer/songwriters reverberating through my ears tonight, and I think it would piss Morrissey off to be paired with Bob Seger in the same essay.

The root(s) of anyone’s depression is profoundly personal and likely springs from many different sources. Depression is just waiting for that specific catalyst to strike the match and set it ablaze.

Suffice to say, there were a few matches lying around my psyche.

But, like I said, there were just a bunch of micro-(and a few macro)-events that stripped away any semblance of papyrus, supposedly there to be a defense against psychological battalions armed to the teeth, ready to establish supremacy.

I fought them to a draw. I think.

I place an inordinate amount of importance on any negative event that transpires of which I am a party to; and I place almost zero importance on any positive developments.

Hence, when things go sideways (and they almost always go sideways), it is a body blow that I am tired of absorbing. Historically, the rope-a-dope defense only worked for Muhammad Ali.

When things go great, it is a footnote, self-defense as survival.

“Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You belong to me, I believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You’d better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row”

— Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row”

I am still here, and I found a job, and I have a Substack to bore people to death with constant references to Bob Dylan and The Band (Dylan pops up yet again above). Those are wins.

Getting off the mat…that’s a win. How I ended up on the mat AND believing I belong there…those are losses, and those are losses that chip away at a person’s endurance, when I say (in a non-performative way) “fuck it,” and all I want to do is sleep.

I can be…a grind. My depression is not worse than anyone else with similar experiences and brain chemistry. My “plights” are challenges, not a statement from above that I have been picked out by him/her/them to navigate because I somehow deserve it, even if I am embarrassed enough to say it feels like that sometimes.

Worth noting I am still awake at 10:21pm, writing away, Morrissey in my rearview mirror.

“Desolation Row” is not close to my favorite Dylan song. It might be the longest of the ones I listen to on a regular basis. The themes do not strike quite as accurately (in my own head) as Bob Seger, but there is something to the idea of desolation row being what you are faced with when you are just sick and fucking tired.

Like most great songs, “Desolation Row” also has an interesting origin story, which, given my temporary non-driving status, stands out to me. When worse comes to worse, I have to call Uber. I don’t like doing it, and the rates are borderline extortion, but I am always on time, and if it says it is a ten-minute ride, then it is always ten minutes.

“Desolation Row,” according to its author was written in the back of a taxi, writing “city songs.” This song is over eleven minutes long. That must have been one long taxi ride. My ten (or eleven) minute Uber rides barely give me enough time to remember what I am supposed to do on any given day. Dylan writes a classic; I drink coffee, peruse the AP News updates and laugh at the idea of Morrissey and Bob Seger in the same room together, comparing notes, wondering what kind of dumbass would lump the two of them into the same essay.

— Patti Smith (Van Morrison), “Gloria”

Maybe the best opening verse of any rock song post…let’s say 1975.

Granted, this is technically a collision of ideas between Patti Smith and Van Morrison, who wrote the original “Gloria” in the 1960’s, but “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” was 100% Patti Smith.

That opening line is emblematic of Patti Smith’s life, writ small. It is taken from a poem she wrote, smacked onto a punk rock instrumental and credited to her and someone else. She wrote poems, collaborated with San Shepherd as a playwright, wrote periodically for Rolling Stone and Cream, and co-wrote (allegedly) “Because the Night” with Bruce Springsteen. She also toyed for a time with the idea of joining Blue Oyster Cult as their lead singer.

That single paragraph could stand on its own as a hall of fame career. The Blue Oyster Cult-angle is the only item that seems out of place. Everything else feels completely on the nose for someone with her sort of gigantic talent.

Patti Smith has life experiences I wish I could have had…except for Blue Oyster Cult. I have never been a fan.

“Gloria’s” opening verse is rugged and tough. It is easy to see why she was embraced by the punk rock movement. “Their words are just rules and regulations to me” is, for the most part, the guiding ethos of punk rock. In 2026, that line borders on self-parody if read straight from the page. I cannot imagine looking in the face of someone who said that to me with a straight face.

Hearing her deliver it backed by a band back in the mid-1970’s (and also fifty-odd years later), it sounds EXACTLY like it is supposed to sound…rugged, resilient and hard as granite.

“Thick, heart of stone, my sins, my own
They belong to me”

— “Gloria”

Whether Smith is singing – and writing – from lived experience or is letting others’ experiences wash over her and she is serving as their translator is beside the point. Those lines still resonate.

I hate “performative swearing,” that annoying tendency when people punctuate every emotion with “fucking” or “shitty.” It seldom comes off as authentic, especially for anyone under the age of 29. Personally, I swear a blue streak up and down a city block, but only when the occasion calls for it. So, I write this with full knowledge I am straddling a line between “performative” and “rational” swearing.

In my life, I have made some terrible fucking decisions. They are mine; I own them, but consequences from at least some of those decisions adversely affected people around me. Some of those decisions and their aftermaths follow me around like a stalker with nothing much else to do but tail me for eternity.

Worse, I allowed (still allow) those decisions to define me because it felt and feels like the right thing to do. Perhaps I am just channeling the universe’s desires to balance things out.

“I walk in a room, you know I look so proud
I move in this here atmosphere where anything’s allowed
Then I go to this here party and I just get bored”

— “Gloria”

Except, in this version, I do not get bored by the party. Instead, realizing the mistake I made by going to said party, I do whatever I can to get away from it. What was I thinking? What am I proud of? Lasting more than three months in a job? Going more than a month without faceplanting and giving my body an unnecessary, unwelcome (not to mention bloody) convulsive workout?

But writing is my respite. Despite my history of fucked-up decision making, I am better off for those decisions. Those decisions led to this. Those decisions led to you reading this (unless you are REALLY into discussing Dylan, The Band, et al). Fucked-up decisions can still have happy endings.

I would rather write than any other solitary activity…but not include so many damn rhetorical questions.

All this worrying is exhausting.

“I can’t stand the rain
Against my window
Bringing back sweet memories

I can’t stand the rain
Against my window
Just keeps on haunting me”

— Ann Peebles, “I Can’t Stand the Rain”

Late night, pitch black, no squealing tires or whirring sirens of emergency vehicles to fill the void of sound, the rain against the window is often my lone sign of life when I sit to write about…The Band, Springsteen, The Stones, Dylan…or Patti Smith and Ann Peebles. I live in the Pacific Northwest so drawing comfort from rain is sewn into my DNA. Rain at night is practically the soundtrack of my childhood. I grew up on a houseboat. Raindrops echoing against a lake, particularly at night, were white noise. And because I always put studying off until 11pm at night, those raindrops were the background music to many late-night study sessions.

But there are nights when rain just portends a bleak tomorrow, or, worse, a long, drawn-out night. It does not matter if it is a thunderstorm or a light sprinkle, that plinking against glass plunges me back into darkening depths.

It may or may not have rained on the second (or third) worst night of my life, but hearing rain fall against the windows I am staring at now transports me back to a chaotic night that never seemed to end…which then turned into day, although I have no proof of that since I saw no daylight…which then turned into another very long night and rumor of a day before night arrived yet again and…freedom into a sprinkling rain.

Maybe I should just move to the desert.

Origin stories for songs are usually interesting. Patti Smith’s “Gloria” was a goth’d-up version of a song recorded ten years prior with an opening line from a poem she had written in the years before she became famous. Her version is also superior to Van the Man’s (and Them’s) original. “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is a phenomenal broken-hearted romance (second only to “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?”) that sprung from Ann Peebles’ frustration that her concert plans were ruined by a rainstorm.

Rain seems to have stopped for the moment. Patti Smith and Ann Peebles will play us out tonight.

— Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”

The most important (not the best, just most important) song Bob Dylan ever wrote and recorded is example 1A of why writing about music is something I should do from afar and keep any criticisms to myself.

So, I am going to write about some music.

Bob Dylan, more than any other artists I put on endless repeat, uses a LOT of rhetorical questions as plot points.

I am on record thinking using hypothetical questions is lazy. This is meant more for people who talk in hypotheticals questions rather than write with them. It is a tool a lot of people use to keep a conversation going. You are not having a conversation with anyone when you write and ask hypotheticals (except maybe yourself and whatever face you can put to the person who is reading what you write) and a hypothetical question can serve to keep a person zoned in on your writing.

You have to be pretty goddamn sure of yourself to write a song, produce and record it and then perform it on demand for the remaining sixty years of your life asking the same questions today that you did back in 1962 and not provide some semblance of an answer.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is a mashup of hypothetical questions and is the song that made him a star and hero. Beyond the folk music fans (who would later turn against him for buying an electric guitar), civil rights protesters, including Sam Cooke who wrote recorded “A Change is Gonna Come” in tribute, people from all backgrounds began looking at the scrawny guy from Hibbing, Minnesota for some guidance to get through the 1960’s.

He later would claim he did not write protest songs. The melody for “Blowin’ in the Wind” is taken from the slavery-era folk song, “No More Auction Block for Me.” I do not think that was an accident.

BUT…Bob Dylan did have at least a partial answer to those who did not see an answer to any of his questions posed in the song. In the liner notes to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” he is quoted:

“Some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong,”

Indifference is not on the same scale as serial murder or poisoning the water supply, or bilking war veterans out of their retirement benefits, but indifference is an intentional act. Indifference can mean loss of structure (rules, laws). If such an act ends up with another’s liberty compromised, then, yeah, indifference is a crime.

His protestations aside, Bob Dylan writes and sings in grand themes with vivid images and a defined point of view. He may not have actively sought out the influence that ended up bequeathed to him, but he did not shirk from that responsibility either.

“Making a difference” is – or at least was – part of the job description when it comes to public figures not already part of geo-political scene. I saw Lionel Messi field three different questions during the World Cup asking him what he thought of some U.S. political issue. It was dumb. It was bait for Messi to take – which he didn’t. He demurred and gave off a non-answer each time.

While I am not a huge hockey fan, I became enamored with the Washington Capitals a little over eight years ago. They seemed like a bunch of goofy guys who played a sport I was not at all familiar with, and they always seemed to lose to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the playoffs. They finally broke through in 2018, and their captain on the Stanley Cup winning side was Alex Ovechkin, now the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer. I was as happy when they won the Cup as when Arsenal finally won the Premier League this past season. Okay…maybe not THAT happy.

Alex Ovechkin is also Russian, and two years after he paraded around the rink with the Stanley Cup, I saw him on a dais with Vladimir Putin.

This was discouraging. Putin is a murderous thug, and I was disappointed Ovechkin chose to stand next to him. I do not expect Ovechkin to have a truly well-informed opinion on what it is taking place in (and around) Ukraine. Maybe he does, and it just does not jibe with my own. Maybe he has a penchant for hanging out with violent, insecure murderous dictators that I am only now learning about.

I am sitting here tonight, writing in the relative comfort of my home with an Ovechkin jersey hanging in my closest, sorta conflicted over the political leanings of someone I will almost certainly never encounter, who is not a citizen of the United States, and whom I only really know because he can slap a puck with his stick and stick in the back of the net better than any professional hockey player in history. I should not give a toss about it.

But people who are stupendously talented in one skill (or multiple skills) are not necessarily stupendously well-read when it comes to opining on other things going on in the world. It won’t stop people from asking them questions. That train, alas, has left the station. The public doesn’t want their stars to just have opinions. It wants stars to have the “right” opinions and “If you can save a few million lives in the process, we would like that as well.”

Blame Bob Geldof. (This is meant sarcastically. If any of you want to take issue with Sir Bob Geldof, you gotta run through me first.)

“Eh, said, said, said I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown, yeah
And then Georgie would make the fire light, I say
A log wood burning through the night
Then we would cook corn meal porridge, I say
Of which I’ll share with you, yeah
My feet is my only carriage
And so I’ve got to push on through”

— Bob Marley and the Wailers, “No Woman, No Cry”

And then there is effecting change on a much smaller scale.

“No Woman, No Cry” might be the best-known Bob Marley song a non-reggae-loving layperson would recognize, thereby making it the best-known reggae song most people have heard. The song is a call-out to a woman in Marley’s life to not worry about bad news and stay positive considering all the bad.

In other words, not the kind of song I naturally gravitate toward. Give me the tortured, tragic soul of the Magic Rat in “Jungleland” or the musician with a serious case of “Stage Fright” or a lonely soul asking a bunch of hypothetical questions…

Something uplifting? Hmmm…not sure about that.

Bob Marley grew up in a very poor area of Jamaica. “Trench Town” is the name of the public housing project Marley was born into and grew up in. Had he wanted to, he could have penned the lyrics to “Jungleland” or “Stage Fright” or “Blowin’ in the Wind,” with a lived-in voice that pulsated authenticity. He touched on a lot of different themes in his writing. “No Woman, No Cry” is not making an overt political statement, but it is a life-affirming message that immediately makes me uncomfortable discussing…even though I am. And the live version of the song (linked below) is amazing.

(One of) the “changes” that “No Woman, No Cry” precipitated sounds small, but it made an enormous difference to Vincent “Tata” Ford, Bob Marley’s childhood friend. Marley gave Ford a songwriting credit for “No Woman, No Cry” resulting in royalties that would keep Ford’s soup kitchen running and able to feed the hundreds of families in the Trench Town area who depended on it.

I was in a meeting today and our conversation meandered into what people would like their legacies to be. People talked about making a positive impact in other people’s lives because…everyone says something like that. I thought of Bob Marley and Tata Ford. Bob Marley has a legacy that dwarfs that of anyone I know personally, but a small gesture like a songwriting credit created more of a legacy than anything anyone I know would have.

— Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, “Wichita Lineman”

I know…Glen Campbell. I did not see that one coming either.

I was born toward the end of 1968. If you believe the people in charge of producing documentaries for public television in the United States, 1968 was the most consequential year in post-World-War-II America. One is not at all related to the other.

The history degree from the University of Washington sitting in my desk should, on its surface, bequeath some knowledge and, ahem, “authority” for stating my opinion on the significance of 1968. Most of my knowledge for 1968 comes from those same Public Broadcasting Systems’ documentaries, some books I have read, listening to a lot of records, and the giant time suck that Google can morph into for someone with a casual interest in current events and history.

Even with all that at my disposal, I still am not sure exactly how qualified I am to opine on 1968. King and Kennedy were shot; the Tet Offensive happened; “Music from Big Pink” (still only The Band’s second-best album) was released smack in the middle of the year; Nixon was elected; Tommie Smith, Kip Keino, and Wyomia Tyus and Jim Hines set world records at the Mexico City Olympics; Charlie Brown still did not kick the football, Elvis had his “comeback special,” and Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

A lot of other things happened too.

I have run into a lot of people older than me over the last few years who use 1968 as a marker of some sort…they were drafted/got married/went to work for the military/industrial complex, etc. 1969 and 1967 are not years when people planted a stake and said, “This will change history.” That happened a lot in 1968, for better or worse.

Occasionally, I will wonder what kind of punk teenager I would have been if the universe had flipped on its axis and I came along fifteen years prior.

Probably not that much different. Sort of moody; kind of a loner; still with absurdly big feet. I want to say I would have gravitated to the Stones, Dylan, The Band, maybe a supergroup like Blind Faith. The entire Stax Records catalogue, perhaps.

Glen Campbell would not have been on my bingo card.

I was getting ready to write about Metallica last night and now Glen Campbell.

But dismissing Glen Campbell (and Jimmy Webb) in 1968 would have been a mistake. “Wichita Lineman” is unequivocally a great song. It is short, three verses (closer to two and half in actuality) and just over three minutes in length. It packs a lot of story into three minutes and seven seconds. At its core, though, it is a story about a lonely blue-collar worker, working the line, missing a gal. It has all requisite parts for a country song, but it does not sound like a normal 1960’s-era country song. Lots of people felt the same. It ascended to #3 on the Billboard charts, due to what I can only assume was a very large contingent of fans who never bought a country record before.

There are no Shakespearean tragic figures like Bruce Springsteen-esque “Magic Rat,” and Bob Dylan/Manfred Mann “Mighty Quinn” to guide the brief narrative. There is just a guy doing his job, a lonely job to be sure, noticing elements of his object of affection in the pieces of his job that wear away at him.

Jimmy Webb would later tell the BBC when asked about what his vision for the song was, said:

“I just tried to take an ordinary guy and open him up and say, ‘Look there’s this great soul, and there’s this great aching, and this great loneliness inside this person and we’re all like that. We all have this capacity for these huge feelings’.”

Huh. Maybe it is like a Springsteen song after all.

I am sure Jimmy Webb has an ego. He wrote a lot of music that sold a lot of records and at least made the people who sang his words and those who produced them rich. I have not spent much time on his Wikipedia page other than to learn he is still alive. I do not know much more than what I found from the interview quoted above. I do NOT get the sense he has a boundless ego. Not many people would boil down his/her/their most well-known song into two sentences.

“There’s a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars
If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise
Just remind me to show you the scars”

— Bob Dylan, “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)”

I have been pretty good about steering away from Dylan and Springsteen and The Band the last couple of weeks. Occasionally, I slip up but all in the name of context.

Webb and Campbell wrote their song as chapter in a romance, or perhaps a broken romance. Bob Dylan was trying for the same with my favorite sixteen-verse songs, “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat).”

But our hero, the Lineman, is in a kind of pain that transcends romance and can be applicable in almost any crisis. For me, the hardest part of being (involuntarily) unemployed is how much that feeling of rejection penetrates my psyche. I am sure anyone who has lost a job knows what I am trying (poorly) to express. Loneliness is not a neighborhood most people would like to occupy, but loneliness can be a weigh station, a place to judge, evaluate and move along; but that feeling of aching rejection (or of just being ignored) can psychologically cripple a person. As the song says, “Just remind me to show you the scars.” If this happens a couple of times to you and “a journey through dark heat” is a good way to describe what feels like. This happened all the time during and as the world was emerging from COVID. I was working from home most of the time when COVID hit, and I was not in a “normal” work environment for a very long time even after the world returned to some semblance of normal. It is only a slight exaggeration to say I had to relearn how to regularly interact with people when I was hired for my current job.

All of which is to say that “Wichita Lineman” may nominally be about a solitary union (I am purely guessing on the union status of phone company workers in 1968 Kansas) worker doing his job, wishing he was somewhere else with the object of his affection. But even the song’s auteur said above that we all have that capacity for huge feelings so the message of the song can traverse all sorts of different scenarios. 1968 had more than its share of huge occasions matched by huge feelings, not all of them celebratory.

I hear you singing in the wire
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman
Is still on the line

— “Wichita Lineman”

— Metallica, “Master of Puppets”

I was going to write about Metallica tonight.

I didn’t.

I am not a Metallica fan. I do not dislike Metallica, but they are not the band that inspires me to write a twelve-hundred-word treatise about whatever crosses my field of vision on any given day. If you read this Substack on even semi-regular basis, you would likely be surprised (if not also puzzled) if I featured them one day. “Huh. Metallica…that is not exactly in Mark’s wheelhouse…”

It isn’t.

“Master of Puppets” is the only Metallica song I can name without having to think about it. I am grossly underinformed about the band to be able to cogently write about them. James Hetfield is an interesting guy. He battled more than his share of demons and came out the other side, bruised, battered and with a surprising amount of self-awareness for someone with an amassed wealth of a small nation. “Master of Puppets” is also an interesting song, given it was written from the point of view of an addiction, not the person who is addicted, but the source of the addiction itself. You write what you know. Hetfield knows addiction, of which I also have some familiarity. Depths of a person’s addiction can be very dark. Ipso facto, James Hetfield’s and my own experiences are EXACTLY the same.

Except they aren’t, and I did not feel like going there tonight. Metallica is intensity turned up to eleven. My intensity is a lot quieter. It’s Sunday night; it has been a good few days; weather was agreeable, and I had no major health episodes (it is still 9:38pm as I write this, so there is still time…). I did not want to dive into Metallica tonight. It would wear me out, and, personally, I prefer a little melody on Sunday nights so I will limit my Metallica space to roughly two hundred and eighty-odd words.

“Do you feel in me
Anything redeeming
Any worthwhile feeling?
Is love like a tightrope
Hanging from the ceiling?”

— U2, “Shadows and Tall Trees”

Not that U2 is not intense. U2 is VERY intense, and it is part of what makes them awesome to some people (me) and tiresome to LOTS of others. “Bad” is a song about heroin addiction, and their first hit, “Pride (In the Name of Love)” is about Martin Luther King’s assassination. You cannot accuse U2 of not taking up a challenge. And while this has absolutely nothing to do with what I actually AM writing about tonight, “Shadows and Tall Trees” was reportedly inspired based on Bono’s reading of Lord of the Flies.

I went to school with people and know people older than me who swear by Lord of the Flies like some people swear by the bible.

I am not one of those people.

Yeah, I read it in high school, and, like my relationship with Metallica, I did not actively hate the book, nor did I like it that much. I remember barely finishing it in time to take a test, so I am guessing it was a summer reading assignment. I always put those assignments on the back burner until it was really late in the game. For example, between my freshman and sophomore year, we were assigned to read Les Misérables. I was not quite sixteen years old. The copy we had was nearly six hundred pages. And I have a twin brother who does not have procrastination issues, and even he was pushing it to the edge with getting it done in time. Catholic education has its strengths and its share of catastrophic weaknesses, but the Archdiocese of Western Washington should have paid my parents for us to read that book. Look, the guy stole a loaf of bread and lived life like a character in any Bruce Springsteen song from the “Nebraska”-era. Springsteen tells that story in ten minutes (max), and Victor Hugo takes six hundred pages.

“Who is it now? Who calls me inside?
Are the leaves on the trees just a living disguise?
I walk the street rain tragicomedy
I’ll walk home again to the street melody”

— “Shadows and Tall Trees”

And it is sort of U2, sort of Metallica and sort of Les Misérables and sort of my brother that brought me to my topic tonight…Muff Winwood.

Muff Winwood may have read Les Misérables at one time, but that would be the only direct link between Mervyn (aka “Muff”) Winwood and any of the above subjects. The older brother of Steve Winwood, as well as his bandmate in The Spencer Davis Group, Muff Winwood had an impressive career in the music industry. Besides being the bassist in The Spencer Davis Group -- and the auteur behind one of the most recognizable bass lines in rock history (“Gimme Some Lovin’”) -- he was also a record producer and a record exec who signed Sade, Terence Trent D’Arby and others.

It’s a good resume.

For most laymen (ahem, self-consciously raising hand), he will be known as Steve Winwood’s brother (and owner of one of the most unfortunate nicknames anywhere from any time).

I have no younger or older siblings. My twin brother is technically older but by a scant four minutes. Muff Winwood is five years older than Steve. Steve Winwood is (or at least was) a household name, and one of the most singular musical talents to come out of the 1960’s. Imagine yourself in Muff’s shoes. You are successful, not a screwup, relatively healthy (for 83) and your younger (by a significant number of years) brother is pulling in all the accolades and being celebrated as a generational talent (like I am doing here).

One might start to be inspired by reading overrated books or a U2 song or stealing a loaf of bread:

“Do you feel in me
Anything redeeming
Any worthwhile feeling?
Is love like a tightrope
Hanging from the ceiling?”

— “Shadows and Tall Trees”

Some night not many moons ago, I could not sleep and I happened across an interview with Muff Winwood from about twenty years ago. No bitterness, no complaint about how he has been treated by history (maybe it was edited out of the interview), nothing to suggest he harbored the slightest resentment against his younger brother. There was genuine appreciation for Steve’s God-given abilities as well as gratitude toward a bunch of others that made his life and career fulfilling. He presented himself as a normal chap, fortunate to have the opportunity to have the life he has.

I do not live in the U.K., so all of what I just wrote may have been a whitewashing of who Muff Winwood “really” is, but I hope not. He was a much cheerier prospect to write about tonight than Metallica who will just have to wait. I am sure James Hetfield and Co. are crushed.

— Big Country, “In a Big Country”

I have always maintained (well, at least since, about…2008) that every song sounds better with bagpipes.

This…is false. There are many instances where a guitar and drums and maybe a bass are all that is needed to make a song memorable. Killer lyrics help. A sax solo, a harmonica or a whole wind section can add a lot of aural depth to any song. However, bagpipes, or at least instruments that can be made to sound like bagpipes are a severely underused tool for any band.

My experience with bagpipes (or the Uilleann pipes, if you are Irish and want to cause a ruckus with those of Scottish descent – trust me, it’s a thing, and there is a difference between the two wind instruments) is limited. When my friend died back in 1994, we had a small ceremony at a lake near where we used to work. We enlisted a guy to perform a traditional Scottish dirge with his bagpipe and wearing a kilt. It was cool and solemn and my only real extended exposure to traditional bagpipe music.

With all that said, it is probably worth noting there are no bagpipes being played in “In a Big Country.” The sound came from Stuart Adamson hooking up his guitar to an effects pedal and the speaker.

When I was a kid, we did not have our television hooked up with cable. That came several years into high school. Prior to 1986, almost any music video we saw came from a Friday late-night show, aptly titled, “Friday Night Videos.”

It was through that medium where I learned Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend actually had solo careers. “Coming Up” and “Let My Love Open the Door” are firmly etched into my memory bank, as much for the videos as for the songs themselves. This was also the place where I learned about a Scottish band named Big Country making records. “In a Big Country” was a huge hit in 1983. I may have also seen Big Country perform it on “Saturday Night Live” in 1983. These guys were a big deal when I was a freshman in high school.

“So, take that look out of here, it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened, doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered”

— “In a Big Country”

The song has a great hook, it is sort of anthemic; it has a point of view, and the familiar New Wave feel lots of groups were aiming for during that period. I vividly remember liking that song, probably out of proportion to how good it actually was. But it was unique and Big Country’s sound was not as “stuck” to an era as some of the work of other groups, including those whose careers lasted a lot longer than theirs. The Edge would later say Big Country wrote the songs U2 wanted to write, which is fair to say since Big Country WAS a bigger group in 1983 than U2 was.

Alas, not for long.

Stuart Adamson was a troubled soul. This, on its own, does not make him all that remarkable in the annals of rock history. He quit his first band after suffering a nervous breakdown. After taking time off, he decided to move forward with a new venture, Big Country. Coincidentally, the band’s bassist, Tony Butler, was also Pete Townshend’s bassist for “Empty Glass,” and “Let My Love Open the Door.”

I would not know until decades later that Adamson suffered sinisterly from various addictions and alcoholism. And I probably would not have even known that if it had not been mentioned in one (or two or five) of the umpteen articles I read about alcoholism and addiction after I went head-to-head with those demons in 2018. Essentially, I forgot about Big Country from 1990 onward.

“I have the only key to your heart
I can stop you fallin’ apart
Try today, you’ll find this way
Come on and give me a chance to say
Let my love open the door, it’s all I’m livin’ for
Release yourself from misery
There’s only one thing
Gonna set you free
That’s my love
That’s my love”

— Pete Townshend, “Let My Love Open the Door”

Adamson was such an innovative guitarist (for example, making his instrument sound like bagpipes) that one British music writer (John Peel) said he was a “new Jimi Hendrix.”

No pressure or anything.

Adamson’s nervous breakdown hastened the end of The Skids; his troubles with alcohol and drugs would eventually spell the end for Big Country. Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith were so nervous about Adamson’s mental fragility and fears that the group would not be able to hold it together for Live Aid, they refused to give them their own set that day. Instead, you can see members of the band in the grand finale but that was it. Soon thereafter, Adamson gave up drinking for at least fourteen more years before falling off the wagon in 1999.

After going missing in early December 2001, Adamson was found dead in his hotel room, victim of an apparent suicide with copious amounts of alcohol found in his system. Stuart Adamson, Michael Hutchence, and Richard Manuel…to name three rock ‘n rollers whose personalities and overall makeup made them great performers, albeit uniquely poorly equipped for the rock ‘n roll lifestyle. All three took their lives in similar fashion. As Robbie Robertson said toward the end of “The Last Waltz,” – “It’s a godddamn impossible way of life.”

“I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered”

— “In a Big Country”

The song has a relentlessly upbeat hook to it, and the bagpipe-sounding guitars are a nice touch, but those two lines from the chorus take on an ominous, grimmer meaning in light of Adamson’s eventual death.

I remember thinking (and still think) that “Let My Love Open the Door” was nothing more than an exquisitely produced ballad. Townshend would later explain how it was more about his own spiritual journey and the spiritual guru, Meher Baba. Obviously, I defer to the song’s author and composer, I can guarantee most of the 14–15-year-old-boys who listened to that song did NOT think about Meher Baba when it was released. Even in 2026, it is still a damn near perfect synthesized pop/rock ballad that makes me long for those days of Friday night videos and discovering new bands that U2 wished they wrote songs like. Pearl Jam has the definitive live-cover version, also linked below.

I also want to know more about this chap, Tony Butler.

— The Faces, “Ooh La La”

Yesterday and today have been a couple of interesting days at work.

I had coffee with a supporter of our shelter today. He is an older guy; we happened to attend the same high school – 25 years apart – which is a hell of an ice breaker. Turns out, my friend is getting married to his new “gal” in a couple of months. They are both in their mid-80’s, both widowed, both aware something had been missing from their lives. It is a sweet, funny, compelling romance. One of his regrets, though, is he has outlived most of his friends, as well as one of his children. I know he is saddened by this (who wouldn’t be?), but he retains very vivid, positive memories of his friends with just the slightest hint of melancholy in the timbre of his voice and glint in his eyes. He stayed in touch with so many of his high school friends that he began to lose track of how many “rainy funerals” he had been to.

I have not had that kind of experience. I only know of two classmates who have passed since graduation, and I learned of those two well after the fact. I kept in touch with few of my fellow alums and did not feel particular regret about it, until today. I may very well return to my noncommittal attitude toward old friends tomorrow (I am not a particularly good friend), but my friend’s recollections were striking and worth remembering…even if I do nothing with the knowledge.

What made our coffee encounter stand out the most, though, had nothing to do with his impending nuptials or the talent show kicking off behind us (quite literally…I believe it was a woman on the south side of 90 years banging away on a drum set) but a form of “career advice,” he passed along. “My new favorite phase is ‘just fucking do it.’” A good Catholic, he admitted he would have to confess to his priest – after the fact – that he said it “about five thousand times.”

Generally, I abhor performative cursing. It’s lazy and done to impress seriousness upon your words. We get it...you think you are right. Saying you are “fucking right” does nothing to convince me you are right. Instead, it is more likely to make me believe that you are “fucking” wrong. But my friend’s use of “fucking” was genuine and convincing.

I do not think I will be including it in any future grant requests.

“I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger”

— “Ooh La La”

To the public, The Faces were a bunch of goofballs who made some great records with great musicians. Kenny Jones (drums), Ronnie Lane (primarily bass), Ron Wood (guitar) and Ian McLagen (keyboards) can arguably lay claim to be among the ten best-ever at practicing their respective crafts. Add in one of rock’s greatest singers, and best-ever from the British Isles, (Rod Stewart) and you have a halfway decent foundation for some memorable music. They also happen to be one of my favorite bands for reasons unrelated to music.

Ronnie Lane was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1977 well after The Faces disbanded. He toured, formed new bands, produced new records, was a sort of musical vagabond, albeit with some famous and influential co-conspirators. When his health took a significant downturn in the mid-1990’s, former bandmates Wood and Stewart funded his medical care since all royalties from his previous work dried up.

Everyone should have friends like that. If you dredge up old videos (and I have) of their performances, you see five guys enjoying themselves and each other. Even if you do not like their music but knowing what befell Ronnie Lane, you must be pretty cold-hearted not to be moved by those blokes jamming away.

“Weary voice that’s laughin’
On the radio once
We sounded drunk
But you never made it on
Passin’ through and it’s late
The station started to fade
Picked another one up
In the very next state”

— The Replacements, “Left of the Dial”

Since I was on the subject, however tangentially, of high school, this song came flooding back through my memory bank.

I cannot tell you exactly why. I was not a huge college radio listener; I was not really into alternative rock in high school, but I did have the cassette “Tim,” which may be the only time I bought something from The Replacements. I listened to it A LOT while I was in college.

“Pretty girl keep growin’ up
Playin’ make-up, wearin’ guitar
Growin’ old in a bar
You grow old in a bar
Headed out to San Francisco
Definitely not LA
Gonna mention your name
Gonna mention your name

And if I don’t see you in
A long, long while
I’ll try to find you
Left of the dial
Left of the dial”

— “Left of the Dial”

I see Paul Westerberg pop up in interviews every now and then, and he has become sort of an elder statesman of rock, dispensing wise words about the ravages of early cult-like success and how it goes to your head. I have nothing negative to say about him, but not much positive either, just because I seldom listened to The Replacements. “Left of the Dial” is part long-distance love song, part ode to analogue-turning radios. Remember those? College rock stations were normally on the far left of the dial, with less reach than your normal FM station.

In the proper context, at the right time of night, if I am in a pensive, melancholic mood, that outro will rip my heart out. The “pretty girl playin’ guitar” was a singer whom Westerberg fell in love with after seeing her perform. After becoming friends with her but knowing he never wrote letters, he figured the next time he would hear from her would be on the radio. Sure enough, six months later…

It is a beautiful, semi-tragic love story. “I’ll try to find you left of the dial…” – rockers do not get nearly enough credit for being romantics.

Like I said, an interesting couple of days heading into the weekend.

Goodnight.

— Toots & The Maytals, “Pressure Drop”

I believe in karmic justice; Just like Toots & The Maytals. Well…maybe not “just” like, but they express it better than I do.

I am not a religious person, but I consider myself spiritual, and I place a lot of faith in the concept of karma. If someone is approaching a key decision or is unsure about what exists “around the corner,” I will almost always say something to the effect of “I’m wishing the best karma your way.”

It is not a throwaway line. I normally send anyone I care about positive thoughts, particularly in moments of strife. I do not think I have ever said – or expect to ever say – “I’ll pray for you.” Anyone with a scintilla of knowledge about me, would guess I was being inauthentic at best or making a mockery of the word “prayer” at worst. I admit is a gigantic grey area when trying to split hairs on karma and prayer, but the narcissist in me feels better wishing good karma on someone instead of telling them they are in my prayers.

Pressure comes from all sorts of directions and sources, families, co-workers, bosses, dogs that demand your attention because I was out of the house for 45 minutes. With full knowledge I am slotting one of those dastardly and unnecessary rhetorical questions into an essay, who couldn’t use someone spreading a little karmic pixie wishes in your direction?

So, I am all in on karma. I also wished bad karma on people, which almost assuredly ricochets back at me, so I try to keep that in check only for my worst enemies.

The songwriter, Toots Hibbert, said this about his most-famous record, “If you do bad things to innocent people, then bad things will happen to you. The title was a phrase I used to say. If someone done me wrong, rather than fight them like a warrior, I’d say: ‘The pressure’s going to drop on you.” In other words, “shit is about to get real.”

But when that pressure is self-inflicted, wishing myself good karma seems antithetical to the spirit of the idea. When I’ve done myself wrong, then Toots Hibbert has some explaining to do.

As other denizens of the Pacific Northwest of the United States know (I can also lump in the British Isles and lots of Europe) when the barometric pressure drops, a storm is imminent. Mist, sheets of rain, sprinkles or a periodic shower…or all of the above…will darken the sky and push down its own ominous pressure on a person’s shoulders. Weeks can go by, especially in the winter, and you will never see the sun. It can get damn depressing.

This part of the country is lucky – for the most part – when it comes to weather. We seldom, if ever, have insane heat or paralyzing cold. The weather is so mild that I can recall at least three different occasions when just a threat of snow grinds the wheels of education to a halt in local school districts.

I am not exactly sure how this skidded off track from an essay about karma, energy and pressure to a weather report, but I figure if I just keep typing, it will come back to me in some kind of shambolic, disjointed way.

“I’m a-going back out ‘fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number”

— Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

That’s what I’m talking about!

I could probably pull from any number of Bob Dylan songs from that time span of 1964-1970 and make it fit my mindset at any one time. The phrasing, the allegories, analogies and symbols, the transition from a harmonica slung around his neck to the angry, loud and forceful cuffing away at an electric guitar…his songs may not be sermons as he reminds us regularly, but they have their own Karmic forces if you are open to it.

This sliver of time is bastardized therapy for me. For the 166 hours a week I am NOT in therapy, I need some ballast. Writing fills some of that need but not nearly all of it. Sometimes it is finding a verse from a song that resonates or listening to a (different) song for the six thousandth time that slips into the therapist’s chair to get me to work out some junk in my mind’s eye.

Or maybe just ruminating about barometric pressure and weather patterns at random places in the world, while listening to a reggae song originally recorded 53 years ago…and THEN! my train of thought returns to its regularly scheduled programming. And I get to decide whether I want to write about it. Let’s face it…I usually decide to write about it. I am writing about WEATHER for crying out loud. I cannot write poetry; I cannot draw (my own handwriting is barely legible – at best), and I cannot play a note of music. Writing may be all I have for those 166 hours, non-therapy hours.

Imagining the vastness of night also engenders an explosion of much-needed mental endorphins. What is it like at this very moment on that patch of water where my childhood home floated or what about the view from Red Square at the University of Washington in the dead of night…or the sounds (or lack thereof) which engulf the train station in downtown Seattle after crowds embark and disembark an Amtrak railway car. Are those people headed to Portland or somewhere farther south, where it might be warmer, drier, quieter and different than here? Are they escaping the metropolis Seattle has become to the relative peace and quiet of…somewhere else?

These ideas are strobe lights, catching my imagination for a millisecond then are gone. Stepping up next to take the passenger seat are all the people and places for whom I have promised to send good karma their direction. The list is long.

— The Ronettes, “Walking in the Rain”

A belated happy birthday to the late, great Ronnie Spector. She would have been 83 years old yesterday. Aretha could go by one name; Diana Ross had The Supremes to lift her and make her into a genial diva for the ages; Carly Simon took no prisoners, introduced a kick-ass female-first attitude to American suburbia with her own instantly recognizable voice, Joan Jett, Ann and Nancy Wilson have arguments, but…

…Ronnie Spector had a better voice than all of them. Of all the American rock and R&B groups emerging from the early- and mid-1960’s, The Ronettes occupied the top tier with maybe three others – The Beach Boys, The Temptations and…maybe The Supremes. Everyone else gets, at best, a B+.

The “bad girl of rock and roll,” also survived being married to the monstrous Phil Spector. If the reporting is accurate (and I believe it purely based off of his later second-degree murder conviction), Spector essentially slammed shut her career by making her a prisoner in her own home, forbidding her to tour and travel and circumventing her recording career before she could reap the fruits of a truly spectacular voice. Phil Spector may have been a musical genius, but he was also a murderous abuser of unbelievably scale.

Even if you do not know who Ronnie Spector was, you know her voice. “Be My Baby” is the greatest love song ever recorded.

“So won’t you say you love me?
I’ll make you so proud of me
We’ll make ‘em turn their heads every place we go

So won’t you, please (Be my, be my baby)
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)
Say you’ll be my darling (Be my, be my baby)
Be my baby, now (My one and only baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh”

— The Ronettes, “Be My Baby”

Happy birthday to the “bad girl.”

“Sail away, sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay
Sail away, sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay”

— Randy Newman, “Sail Away”

Time machine…It is 1972…you want to mock American consumerist culture…America’s most successful racist politician, George Wallace, is running for President (again)…and you ask yourself, “What if I wrote a song from the perspective of a slave trader making a sales pitch?”

The creative mind is one I will never fully comprehend.

In 1972, satire was already a thing. In 1972, Randy Newman perfected it. “Sail Away” took guts to write, and it took even more to record and put into rotation. George Wallace, his racist, xenophobic hatred aside, had a following in 1972. Ronald Reagan and the joys of consumerism were becoming popular ideas. If you were not keyed into Newman’s unique point of view, one might think “this guy is a racist piece of crap,”

“In America every man is free
To take care of his home and his family
You’ll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree
You’re all gonna be an American”

— “Sail Away”

Instead of mockery and satire being what everyone would talk about, there would be riots outside the record label, protests and podcasts castigating Newman for his use of the word “monkey.”

And that view would have some weight behind it. A white guy mocking the slave trade is not exactly a sure thing to generate record sales, whether it is 1972 or 2026. Newman’s long history with writing ironically was not a “long history” at that point, and I bet some people will “tsk tsk” this song today, bemoaning Newman’s inability to “read the room.”

“Irony is just honesty in a disguise.”

Anonymous

Satire and irony are hard to do well, and is subject to as much interpretation, if not more, than any other verbal or print genre. The gutsy part of the song is not the lyrics but Newman’s faith and trust in his audience. Without the unspoken wink of an eye or raised eyebrow, it can be very easy to be drawn away from the meaning of a story/article/song/poem and live in a humorless, sterile, stark existence.

No thanks.

Randy Newman is not for everyone, “I didn’t just want to say, ‘Slavery is awful.’ It’s too easy,” Newman later told Rolling Stone magazine, “One thing with my music,” he said, “you can’t sit and eat potato chips and have it on in the background at a party.”

Remarkably, it was precisely people playing his music in the backyards of America in 1984 when I became more acquainted with Randy Newman. Nike launched a guerilla advertising campaign during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles with “I Love L.A.” as the soundtrack behind some great ads with Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton. Nike was not an official sponsor of those Olympics, but you could never tell if you just flipped on the television screen for more than a half hour.

“Look at that mountain
Look at those trees
Look at that bum over there, man
He’s down on his knees
Look at these women
There ain’t nothin’ like ‘em nowhere

Century Boulevard (We love it)
Victory Boulevard (We love it)
Santa Monica Boulevard (We love it)
Sixth Street (We love it, we love it)
We love L.A!”

— Randy Newman, “I Love L.A.”

There is ebullient mockery dripping off that lyric sheet. Having members of Fleetwood Mac probably did not lend any more gravitas to the song ironic tone. But I vividly remember getting psyched up with those Nike ads. I was about to enter my sophomore year of high school, and I was completely obtuse to the satire contained within those lyrics. It was not until YEARS later when I learned it was a conversation Newman had with Don Henley that prompted him to write this song. Displaying nearly complete ignorance as to whom he was actually speaking with, Henley complained he could no longer charter his own flights around the world. Hence, the unofficial theme of the 1984 Olympics was born.

— The Band, “Where Do We Go From Here?”

As much as I love The Band and find meaning in verses of all sorts of songs, today, “Where Do We Go From Here?” stands above the rest. And it is not even that big of a reach. Plus, they put a question mark where it belongs!

Jackie the Eagle – Queen Jackie – died early today.

A couple of months ago, I had zero idea who Jackie was. She was a 14-year-old bald eagle who cared for her flock with her mate, appropriately named Shadow, in Big Bear Lake, California. A stationary 24/7 nest camera was installed and tracked Jackie’s and Shadow’s movements thlrough all the seasons and all the crises nature foisted upon those birds.

I work in a unique and awesome place. And one of the most unique and most awesome parts of it is the children’s program for kids of families in our shelter. That camera was broadcast in the learning area all day. Besides being a great distraction, it was an invaluable teaching tool for our program manager.

Jackie, Shadow and the flock (there probably is a more technical term for baby bald eagles) adapted to changing weather conditions, unwelcome advances by other feathered creatures, illnesses, and the challenge each year of welcoming more babies into the world, not to mention traumas associated with being an endangered species.

I can only imagine it generated millions of dollars of donations to wildlife and conservation funds around the world. Once I learned who Jackie was and what this camera thing was all about, I tuned in, read about people who said watching the birds helped them through the grief of losing a loved one.

When we would bring “very important people” (i.e. potential donors) through the doors to tour our facility, the children’s program is always a highlight and, without exception, attention and questions turned toward the broadcast. Seeing grizzled politicians, Rotary members and local business types become entranced by a bird’s nest must be one of the top five highlights of my job thus far.

Like almost everyone else’s job or life, I work through some stressful periods, and I ended up pinning that broadcast to my laptop, letting the sounds and views of nature give me a few seconds of respite before I went back to work.

And that is sort of where this dovetails (different bird, but felt the verb was apt) with where I work.

I can only imagine what it is like to be homeless, and I still probably have no idea. How about being a kid who is homeless, couch-surfing, living in a car part of the time, arriving in our shelter at some point because options are becoming scarce? You would want something that can mitigate or relieve some of that trauma.

Enter Jackie. And Shadow. And the rest of their family

I worked at a 90-day shelter. The length is important because it gives families a chance to reset and begin planning their next move into more stable housing. It gives kids a chance to have a play area, read books, paint, play games, learn a little about nature, and establish some bonds with other kids in similar straits. The last thing you want to do is add another layer of trauma onto their shoulders.

I am not an expert in such matters, but I am assured by our program manager and have been told by parents how important that program is to their kids. Jackie and Shadow have been important partners, shepherding these families through some of the most harrowing and challenging periods anyone would ever face, regardless of age.

You will be missed, Jackie. And thanks for helping a bunch of kids out.

— The Band, “The Rumor”

I heard Donald Trump wears a wig.

And I heard he doesn’t.

Then I heard orange paint is sprayed on to serve as a kind of ballast to keep his hair (wig, toupee, natural hair?) from flying all over the place.

None of it matters because a person’s hair is relatively inconsequential when it comes to issues about leading the free world

It is still free, right?

I got sucked into three different articles from three different reputable news sources reporting one of those three rumors. Six minutes of my life I am never getting back.

Have you ever told or been subject to a rumor?

If you answer “no” to both of those, then I will spread this rumor – you’re a liar.

I cannot place the time or place, but I am certain I have spread a rumor or two in my life. Probably not purposely. Probably.

“Close your eyes, hang down your head
Until a fog blows away, let it blow away
Open up your arms and feel the good
It’s a’comin’, a brand new day”

— “The Rumor”

I know I have passed on information I received from some questionable source that turned out to be false; information that may have done harm to someone’s reputation; information that, if I thought about it for a minute or two, I would have said, “yeah, that does not sound quite right…” and halted any further transit of information.

I can only ask for that person’s forgiveness. If you are/were that person, contact me, and I will offer my full apologies.

Despite not being Catholic, I attended Catholic school. Despite not being Jewish, half of my family traces their roots to Sephardic Judaism, which are primarily Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities.

So, you could say that, while it was not fully woven into my DNA, guilt was foisted upon the Johnson brothers from different sides of the religious spectrum from a lot of people for a lot of time. After all, spreading rumors is nothing but bearing false witness against another person(s), right?

“I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then
You can’t figure out the bag I’m in

I am everyday people, yeah, yeah

There is a long hair that doesn’t like the short hair
For bein’ such a rich one, that will not help the poor one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and Scooby-Dooby-Doo”

— Sly and the Family Stone, “Everyday People”

Full disclosure: I love this song. I know I have used it at least once in an essay I posted here. I was a wee one when it was released and only know it from repeats of the Flip Wilson Show or retrospective episodes of shows like “Songs of the 60’s.” The message is COMPLETELY 1968 about peace, communal love and living together. I also like to link it to behaviors that do not vary wildly due to race, religion, class or social standing. And while Sly does not address it directly, spreading rumors is something everyday people have done.

“Now all you vigilantes want to make a move
Maybe they won’t, you know I sure hope they don’t
For whether this rumor proves true or false
You can forgive, a’you can regret, but you can never ever forget”

— “The Rumor”

I cannot recall a time when I was a progenitor of a rumor that would have materially damaged a person. But I can be petty and there WERE times I thought about it. There may be times in the future I will think about it again. But I cannot envision a scenario where I would put that kind of plan into action. I also believe in karma, and I would forever poison the well of grace and goodwill I tried to build over the years if I gave in to my petty side and did something as abhorrent as that. In the long view, I cannot see how it would benefit anyone.

I do not occupy a position of such importance that someone would care enough to start a nasty rumor about me. At least I don’t think someone is out there who would do something like that at my expense.

I also do not know how I would feel if a malicious rumor about me was spread. What level of violation would I feel? It isn’t a physical injury so there are no visible scars, but it would certainly devastate me. Would I be angry or just puzzled? I can hazard a guess that yes is the answer to both of those.

“You can forgive, a’you can regret, but you can never ever forget”

This is a powerful thought, especially since it adds a third layer to the more pithy, “You can forgive but never forget” by adding in the point of view of a person who spreads rumors. The person with regret. Forgiving can be difficult, but it is just a collection of words, and you are trusting the antagonist to be worthy of it. Forgetting may be a little more difficult, depending on the violation against your person. My brother and I fought less than you might think between twins, but we fought, and I know I was the jerk in some of those. I cannot tell you what the argument may have been about, but I was responsible for at least a fair share so forgetting may just be a matter of age.

Regret, though, phew…regret is a passive-aggressive, but well-meaning friend who gnaws at your conscience. Regret is a constant reminder you are smarter than that, making it difficult to forget your transgression(s), and harder to forgive yourself. Sure, you can regret something you said or did, but it is a hell of a lot harder to push regret to the side. Guilt provides a path for absolution. Guilt is your ally, but regret is a much cagier foe. They are twin siblings; one is just a lot smarter with a longer memory than the other.

“The many roads I’ve covered
The many trails I’ve burned
But when our paths did cross, love, oooh
My whole world made a turn”

— The Band, “Time to Kill”

Four-fifths of The Band is from Canada, including their primary songwriter, Robbie Robertson. Canada is rural, and there are more trails than bridges. There are more bridges south of the border, but the image of burned trails resonates the same way as a burned bridge. Hearing the song tonight I am stuck asking myself questions “How many trails/bridges have I burned? Where are they? Who and how was that person affected?”

Undocumented guilt and regret seem like a good place to end tonight.

Given the wildfires in Canada over the past few months, it is safe to say those trails are indeed burning. The smoke and flames burden the once-fresh air of the Seattle area with a heaviness that feels like an apocalyptic flood.

“Stage Fright” is The Band’s best album. Just by sheer volume of great songs, it is an easy call. Both of their entries tonight come from that album, and neither is the best song on the album. That honor goes to the title track.

“And we’ve got time to kill, what a thrill
June and July
We’ve got all our love, buckets of
The tears that we’ve cried
Now we don’t cry no more, gonna bolt the door
Don’t know what we got, but it feels like a lot
We don’t need no more”

— “Time to Kill”

— Nina Simone (originally Sandy Denny), “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”

An interesting sidenote to this version: Sandy Denny wrote the original version of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” without a question mark on her original. The meaning of the entire song could change with the presence (or elimination) of that question mark.

Maybe this was an accident on someone’s part. Maybe someone responsible for Nina Simone’s liner notes saw it and decided “there really needs to be a question mark there.”

“Across the purple sky all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time”

— “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”

In the original lyric sheets from the non-questioning original, the chorus does include question marks, just not in the title. This seems odd…and purposeful. It is a rhetorical question, and I generally do not like rhetorical questions.

But there are always exceptions.

A detached melancholy frames each verse. Our narrator is resigned to his/her/their life. Satisfaction, though, is nebulous. Time is an eccentric character, an antagonist, a stand-in for the millions of instances that make up your life. I listened to the song five or six times tonight trying to glean something from it. I could only come up with an answer that might be a cop-out but would explain the whole question-mark issue: The answer is the question.

This is a song written by a mature voice from at least two perspectives, someone who has seen things in life…

…Sandy Denny was twenty when she wrote it.

And while I heard the song recorded by a couple of different artists (I assumed Nina Simone was the original songwriter and Fairport Convention had covered her instead), I did not know a lot about Sandy Denny. I knew she was in a couple of different bands in addition to her solo career, and she died in 1978 when she was 31 years old.

Blunt force trauma to the head resulting from a fall down a staircase.

That caught my attention. I trip over my grotesquely big feet all the time, and, thanks to my brain’s only real talent of keeping me REALLY off guard during my waking hours, I have had more than my share of face plants on hard surfaces. If you never played football and/or never had a significant head injury, trust me…blunt force trauma is just as stark as those three words sound when they are said together.

Sandy Denny’s cause of death was a sobering sentence to read. I take a bunch of meds to manage those falls. This was another excellent way of reminding me of better living through (some) chemistry.

Because it is an easy connection to make, Sandy Denny’s own brilliant songwriting at twenty years old feels like a straight, thru line to her death, eleven years later.

I cannot buy into that. Normally, I flop between “everything happens for a reason” and “life’s a crapshoot,” and I can be swayed in either direction. On this occasion, I lean more towards “heartbreaking.” Sandy Denny’s life was complicated, and devoid of easy answers because of an early death.

Sandy Denny had twin demons of alcohol and drug abuse to deal with along with episodes of manic and depressive behavior. Her life was a tragic series of tenuously connected events, interspersed with, by any measure, a successful recording career, one I feel like I should know more about since I write about music almost every night.

“Who knows where time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?”

Because I am partial to Nina Simone’s version – since it was the first version, I remember hearing and no other particular reason – I am riding with this being a question posed by our narrator.

When you add the question mark, though, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” becomes a question on par with “and then what happens?” in its brilliance AND without anything but a pedestrian, facile answer like “Well, of course…the answer is…YOU.”

Meh.

Paradoxically, I think the answer is simpler but requires more effort. Today, I could tell you my English teacher from high school could be the one who can provide me that answer. Tomorrow, it may be the guy I used to sell running shoes with when I was twenty (and not writing transcendent, challenging, mature songs like Sandy Denny was at the same age). Both answers would be correct.

I began working again steadily three months ago (give or take). Each week has brought into my work sphere some weirdly tied-in factoid of my life. Fortunately, the factoids have all been positive. Was I a jerk to any of these connections in my past. No one has held a grudge over too many years and reminded me of a time when I was a jerk. At least not yet. I was reminded of a piece of art in my parents’ houseboat that I had not thought about in forty years. In my introductory tours of our shelter’s financial sponsors, I discovered a connection with an off-handed mention of a vice principal at my old high school. A co-worker is married to a guy who was a year ahead of me in high school and is also a twin.

Catholic education has tentacles everywhere.

These are small fragments you find along the way

You find things along the way that only mean something to you and begin to piece them together before you realize your autobiography has more than one author.

“In the mornin’ you go gunnin’
For the man who stole your water
And you fire ‘til he is done in
But they catch you at the border
And the mourners are all sangin’
As they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn’t hangin’
And they put you on the street

“Now you swear and kick and beg us
That you’re not a gambling man
Then you find you’re back in Vegas
With a handle in your hand
Your black cards can make you money
So you hide them when you’re able
In the land of milk and honey
You must put them on the table”

— Steely Dan, “Do It Again”

There are a handful of bands I actively dislike and go out of my way NOT to include in these essays. Steely Dan is one of those bands. Throwing extended jam sessions into songs that get a nauseous amount of radio airplay is one reason. Another reason is I keep reading how subversively brilliant they were.

Maybe I am not that subversive. I will give them this — “Do It Again” plays with different points of view to make a salient point.

It takes a little bit of extrapolating, but “Do It Again” follows up with the idea of multiple editions of time past. There are at least three different perspectives in this song about one man’s three primary vices – violence, money and women. Characters from each of those episodes would naturally have had some say in answering the question of who knows where the time goes.

— Billy Preston, “Will it Go Round in Circles”

“And then what happens?”

I briefly worked in politics – I was an abject failure – but I liked the candidate I worked for. He gave me a bro-hug and soul shake the second day I was in the office. I did issues research and kept to myself. At the time, I thought LexisNexis searches were as cool a search engine as could possibly have been invented.

He always asked, “and then what happens?” after someone anxious to establish their own bona fides with the candidate would spread out some policy idea in front of him. Puffed up with pride and confidence, knowing that he/she/they made their case foolproof for the candidate to consider, this unfortunate soul would take a seat, gulp some coffee and prepare to bask in glory…

“And then what happens?”

That is a brilliant question…when properly asked. The person I worked for never meant it as a “gotcha” statement in the guise of a question. He knew enough to know that someone was going to ask him, “and what are you doing after that?” if he laid out verbatim what the policy paper said. My guy needed to be prepared…so he asked the question.

I was let into that inner circle three (maybe four) times. I made a mental note of the question, but it never guided any of my later behaviors. Looking back, it would have been exceedingly helpful had I asked myself that question before a few missteps.

The Seattle area was not (and still is not) known for hyper-aggressive investigative newspaper reporters. There were a couple who tried to be Jimmy Breslin and cantankerous on purpose. Those reporters were always trying for a “gotcha” moment. It was a great object lesson that I only have grown to appreciate (ummm, checks watch) thirty two years later.

“I’ve got a song
I ain’t got no melody
I’ma gonna sing it to my friends
I’ve got a song
I ain’t got no melody
I’ ma gonna sing it to my friends”

— “Will it Go Round in Circles”

I am on record with the belief that I do not think there is anything harder than writing a great rock song. The senses and sensations and talents one needs to harness in order to make five minutes of great music are incomprehensible to me.

But I think I am wrong.

The average great rock song is roughly four to five minutes. (9:45 if we are referencing “Jungleland”) A lot can be shared in five minutes of perfectly phrased lyrics and a great guitar riff. Bob Dylan might be able to squeeze sixteen verses into six minutes and seventeen seconds of “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat),” which still seems absurdly difficult, but I am still trending toward there being something harder than writing a great rock song.

No, it is not hitting a baseball or hitting a ten-millimeter target six consecutive times from two hundred meters when firing a handgun. I tried both, and I failed spectacularly.

Actually, there is no hitting involved at all.

Try writing a book, particularly a novel. At the end of every chapter, “and then what happens?” has to be answered…in the next chapter. Or…you end up losing your audience by teasing them without actually addressing central issues.

Oh…and make it compelling…with vivid characters…unexpected plot twists that somehow still make sense in the grander scheme of things…throw in some pop culture references just to let people know you are in harmony with present day trends and tastes…the ending doesn’t have to be a brilliant resolution but maybe keep it just nebulous enough for people to demand a sequel.

Don’t ask too many rhetorical questions either.

And, for GOD’S SAKE, avoid “the.”

The greatness in the art of a Steinbeck or Hemmingway or King is wrapped up primarily in their words. When taking into account the painstaking pieces I offhandedly listed above, and fully aware AI, CoPilot, other predictive text programs, and self-editing programs did not exist in the 20^th century, it can be baffling how these great books came to be without any of our modern conveniences.

Time should be acknowledged. Snarky newspaper reporters work on deadline so they get to do the easy thing and “throw a wobbler” at a public figure because it makes for easy and good copy. John Steinbeck’s only deadline was the one his publisher gave him. He had the grace and gift of time to ask and answer “and then what happens?”

Steinbeck did not write romances, but his characters were romantic; Stephen King wrote thrillers and self-reflective short stories. Both knew something about themselves that could be poured out into hundreds of pages, multiple times. I do not think they actively thought “what’s next?” when they were penning their stories. And then they moved onto the next one. Steinbeck wrote 33 different books; Stephen King nearly tripled that.

Writing through all this, I am convinced neither Steinbeck nor King (or anyone else worth mentioning) knew the answer to “what happens next?” Their gift was to provide the answer as they went along at their own pace.

“I’m one of these people that think everybody has certain gifts, you know, when they’re born, and you got enough trouble just trying to find out what it is. I used to play the guitar when I was 10, you know. So I figured maybe my thing is playing the guitar, maybe that’s my little gift.”

— Bob Dylan, 1963

“If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it – what it all means.”

— Dylan, 2016

There is nothing set in stone that demands you end where you thought you were going to get.

It is still a great question…maybe the best question to be asked of anyone at any random time. It will keep your mind sharp, and unexpected answers are not always negatives.

— Paul McCartney and Wings, “Live and Let Die”

Getting older means lots of things but getting older gifts you one thing in particular – retrospection.

When I was a dumb young punk from ages 17 to about 30, I cared not a whit about The Beatles, and I thought Paul McCartney was sort of a lightweight. Springsteen and U2 were my main guys; The Who and Clapton, later joined by the Stones, Dylan and The Band would nudge up along the outside. Pearl Jam was a cheeky newcomer. I liked some punk and hated Nirvana. Atlantic was better than Motown, and Bob Seger was singing about beautiful losers.

It was a good era.

McCartney would partner with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson for some cheesy one-offs that are memorable only because of the names associated with them.

I have said before, and I say again…I am an idiot.

Since around my 35^th year, though, I have taken a 180-degree turn on McCartney. The most successful songwriter of any genre of any era in history. Beethoven has nothing on McCartney. The most grounded rock ‘n roll star ever, therefore making him the greatest rock ‘n roll star ever. He has had three remarkable careers – The Beatles, Wings, and solo, just one of which anyone in history with an inkling of desire for success in music would reasonably commit a felony for.

Besides being remarkably gifted with an ear for sound and aptitude for any instrument placed in front of him (Steve Winwood may be his only rival), McCartney achieved all this success for one primary reason:

The man is in control.

And not in a “control-freak, let me take over something I know nothing about” kind of way. I can only assume McCartney at least has some “freak-ish” control issues because of his prolific talent and record of success. The guy knows what he is doing.

He was practically invisible for five years after John Lennon was killed, raised a family, and came back where he left off. He gives off such an effortless sense of control that every emotion he emits seems completely genuine.

I believe in Paul McCartney because Paul McCartney always bets on himself to win…not place, not show.

“But if this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’
Makes you give in and cry
Say, “Live and let die“

— “Live and Let Die”

“Live and Let Die” is – with the possible exceptions of the theme song to “Rocky” and “Chariots of Fire” – the most played and most well-known movie theme song of all time. It could have been an epic fuckup. Bond movies are almost as well known for their theme songs as the actual plots. McCartney is someone who let half the world believe he was dead in the 1960’s, and, despite being one of the two or three most recognized men on the planet, was arrested in Japan in 1980 carrying nearly a half-pound of marijuana in his suitcase.

You cannot throw Sir Paul a wobbler.

Control is not a word people would associate with me. I am scattered. I did not plan my career to become what it did. When I was 18 years old, I did not have any idea what a grant writer was or what a grant writer did. A grant writer…wrote. That was the extent of my knowledge. The internet was something only NASA engineers knew about. I could not just Google the term, and going to the library took a lot of effort to learn about a job I almost certainly would never have. There was no way for me to know what a grant writer did unless I bumped into one by accident.

I am not in control of many things. I have always worked for someone else; my health is sort of at the whim of whatever my brain synapses are in the mood for on any random day; I am not talented enough in any one particular task or hobby to be in control, or even sorta in control of my circumstances.

I played some team sports, and I was okay at them…until I wasn’t. So, I gravitated toward the one sport which you do have (almost) complete control over – track and cross country running. One could argue – and I did at one time – that cross country is the ultimate team sport, where the seventh fastest guy is arguably as important as the fastest, but if I have to start a sentence with “One could argue that…” it is almost a sure thing that I should not argue on behalf of whatever my topic is. Best to say less and let people guess what I mean.

THAT is control…or in the same neighborhood.

“’Cause I, I’m in love
With my future
Can’t wait to meet her
And I (I), I’m in love
But not with anybody else
Just wanna get to know myself”

— Billie Eilish, “my future”

“my future” (lower-case is the way it was titled) went against the grain for Billie Eilish. She was pensive, melancholy, the kind of singer/songwriter I am interested in. This song established her bona fides as a crossover pop and rock star. The title – even if it is performatively titled all in lower-case letters – tells us this is a more positive outlook for Ms. Eilish, someone who was willing to take a little more control over her career. Coincidentally, she is another auteur of a Bond theme song.

The temperature remains warm (but less noisy) in the Pacific Northwest. From the inside looking out, it is pretty much the same as last night. Fewer flakes of ash from wildfires east of the mountains are welcome. My throat remains scratchy but not in a cool Rod Stewart-sort-of-cool. I am in the one place where you can’t throw me a wobbler. This is when I feel in control of my surroundings, writing because I want to about what I want. Writing alone at night is where and when I am in control. I do not know if that is happenstance or by design. I am open to any interpretation.

Even with my modest and recent uptick of luck, there is still this looming (although not quite overwhelming) sense of dread. Even looking outside at this time of night, it is dark, dank and vacant. I do not know what is ten feet outside of me, much less what is around the corner or what awaits me twelve hours from now.

I used to (figuratively) dance within that uncertainty, spit in the face of potential derision and elimination of hope, expecting bad news, wistful for good, relying on little.

The arrival of this sudden, short streak of good luck is the wobbler that may just pierce the papyrus layers of defense the last couple months have built up.

The irony of feeling more in control of bad news than good is unsettling and not lost on me.

Thank God I have therapy tomorrow.

Hopefully, you appreciated the absence of any Dylan-related verses tonight. I am aware Bob Dylan was in such massive control of his career that he put out shitty records on purpose; changed his name just because he wanted to and screamed his lyrics at those old fuddy-duddy folkies without making eye contact with them in the mid-1960’s because…he could. That is how in control Bob Dylan was and is.

— Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

“So, is there anything you need from me?”

Thus signals the end of the weekly check-in with my boss.

As all of them have been so far, this was smooth sailing. Outside of stifling, dusty heat you can practically hear, there was not much different about today’s “check-in” from any of the other ones I have survived so far.

The heat is partly a byproduct of August in the Pacific Northwest, albeit a slightly warmer-than-average day. We can (allegedly) “thank” an irresponsible fifteen-year-old on the east side of the Cascade mountain range for the resultant thunderous dust storm. I have not followed the story much, if at all. I only learned that a fifteen-year-old (allegedly) sparked it from the Uber driver who schlepped me to a meeting yesterday. As of four o’clock yesterday, over 8,000 homes were destroyed, and I do not know how many businesses.

“Please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift
Look out, kid, they keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole, light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals, try to avoid the scandals
Don’t want to be a bum, you better chew gum “

— “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

People can rebuild, restock, regroup, and reopen…but it is pretty tough to replace. After all, millions and millions of dollars literally go up in smoke. Is there a mathematical table out there that could passably calculate how much damage was done to people, their possessions and their livelihoods? And how does anyone who may be guilty of being responsible for a fire of this magnitude begin to repay those damages? Bitcoin? What and where from does the motivation come to say, “I’m going to set an entire state on fire”?

Yeah, the President is an imbecile and a danger to the rest of the world, semi-regularly threatening war crimes against nation-states. So that sucks. And, yeah, the Knicks won the NBA title which did not exactly thrill me. But there is no huge groundswell of rebellion in the air. It exists in pockets among people who take things VERY seriously, but protest songs are sort of quaint. Not that there aren’t causes to rebel against or protest for. I half expect whoever is charged with destroying over 8,000 homes, displacing tens of thousands of families, businesses and animals to claim he/she/they was doing it in protest of something.

I sit here typing this out among the reverberating echoes of Al Green, Dylan, Talking Heads, The Band, Peggy Olson and Don Draper with dust particles safely shielded from my eyes by thick windows and blinds. Outside of the loud air, the only remnant of the catastrophic loss of livelihoods hundreds of miles away is grit in my teeth and burning corneas from spending more than ten minutes outside.

A weekly check-in with my boss? I will take worrying about something like that any day of the week over a large chunk of the United States being swallowed whole by flame.

I admit…getting back into the routine of a workplace is taking a little longer than I anticipated. I did not anticipate it being great or bad. I had absolutely zero idea. I was hopeful it would not take long, and I would be enmeshed within the workplace culture like I was putting on running shoes.

Nope.

My brow is sweatin’ and my mouth gets dry
Fancy people go driftin’ by
The moment of truth is right at hand
Just one more nightmare you can stand

— The Band, “Stage Fright”

While I HOPED for that smooth transition, I EXPECTED massive anxiety attacks and, you guessed it, a fair amount of stage fright.

Damn you, Robbie Robertson.

For every short story that four-minute song inspired (granted – it was one short story), I could cite five, ten, maybe a baker’s dozen instances where at least one verse from that song reflected a very real sense of foreboding in my very next action, whatever that action may have been. Today was another one of those instances. Thanks to August heat, zero wind, an irresponsible teenager and a sixty-year-old building that I have a sneaking suspicion has asbestos in its pipes, the sweat was very real and not self-inflicted. And another nightmare could have been directly in front of my nose, but I had sweat dripping off my nose, diverting my attention.

And it was fine. But note to self: Get a fan for the office.

“Stage Fright” is still my favorite song from The Band.

Affirmation is something everyone wants. That is why there is a thumbs-up emoji and room for a comments section on Substack…and every other social medium platform available at our fingertips. Working for nonprofits gets a person intimately attuned to affirmation, not only because the pay generally sucks but also because…well maybe that is it. The thirst for a thumbs-up emoji may just be a result of my own self-combustible insecurities.

But it’s also about the paycheck. My favorite episode from the television show, “Mad Men,” was the episode from season four, “The Suitcase,” specifically the late-night, “come-to-Jesus” exchange between Don and Peggy. As brilliant as the writing was on that entire series, the scene (linked below) was as close as it comes to perfect television. Or stage. Or movies. And it was all about affirmation. Epic, hard-earned affirmation.

“Hug me, squeeze me, love me, tease me
Till I can’t, till I, I can’t take no more

Dip me in the water, drop me in the river
Push me in the water, drop me in the river
Washing me down, washing me down”

— Al Green AND Talking Heads, “Take Me to the River”

I have been friends with past co-workers. When the anvil would inevitably come down on my head, when the organization wanted to “go in another direction…” those friendships followed. Working in the silo of a home office is a luxury but also an explicit, purposeful act of self-preservation.

“Take my money, my cigarettes
I haven’t seen the worst of it yet

I wanna know, can you tell me
Am I in love to stay?”

— “Take Me to the River”

I am certain I am making more of this than it deserves. I am posting an article about thumbs-up emojis and affirmation on Substack, for chrissakes. Yeah, I am making more of it than it deserves.

Is that what the kid in eastern Washington was looking for when he took matches to dry tinder? Simple affirmation.

“That’s what the money’s for!”

— The Band, “Life is a Carnival”

Slay the demons lying in wait in your sleep.

That thought occurred to me last night…and the night before. Not quite that eloquently, but the thought was still there.

One of the features (some may call them “side effects”) that come with being a depressive, recovering alcoholic, Epileptic wanna-be Kerouac-like chronicler of life is…medications. Lots of ‘em. All necessary (that is the doctor(s) speaking, not me) and all with their own quirks just to keep me paying attention.

Before anyone offers a solution or alternative, let me just offer this: Whenever dosage levels of certain medications I take are dropped significantly, bad things happen. They are not dropped for very long.

And one of the features of being a human pharmacy is a very VERY vivid dreamscape. I remember being informed this would be very normal years ago when the doctors thought it appropriate to make me a medicated Rorschach test – “I wonder what would happen if we tried this…”

Actually, that last quote was never said (at least directly) to me. There was(is) no secret cabal plotting to flood my body with toxins…however, the circumstantial evidence is such that something of that sort MUST have been said at some point.

“Saw a man with the jinx in the third degree
Trying to deal with people, people you can’t see
Take away, take away, this house of mirrors
Give away, give away, all the souvenirs

Life is a carnival, it’s in the book
Life is a carnival, take another look”

— “Life is a Carnival”

Lately, that dreamscape is starting to resemble something like Spartacus, something I cannot adequately describe, something enormous and foreboding. One thing is certain around the time my eyes start to tire, and noises from the street outside begin to fade and frequency of motors jetting up and down the drag ceases. This is before the current day passes into the next but not by much.

I do not want to fall asleep.

Sleep is necessary. It is one of those standard “recommendations” doctors, of all specialties tell you. I cannot say for sure, but I am willing to bet that none of those docs had an exceedingly competitive twin brother, who also happens to be the smartest person I know, pulling all-night cram sessions just to cover all his bases.

I remember pulling those dreadful all-nighters in high school and college. Our houseboat was not very big with very thin doors. I knew when his light was on, and he was still studying. So, I did too, trying to ensure I knew everything before the next day’s exam.

I never knew everything there was to know. I barely knew what I needed to know.

On a purely related note, my brother and I were the youngest people I knew to drink coffee on a regular basis.

This is not a categorical statement of fact, but I did not dream much, if at all, between the ages of fifteen and 23.

Recently, though? When I turn that light out at night, my brain becomes a mashed-up combination of Scorsese movies, Stephen King novels and “Heart of Darkness.”

And I am a fan of Martin Scorsese movies and Stephen King novels. “Heart of Darkness” I was assigned to read in high school. It was…intense. And it was not even for an English class, but a Psychology course everyone a year ahead of me told me I needed to take as an elective. This is the same course that Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and “Dark Side of the Moon” were topics of study for weeks.

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

That instructor did not last long.

So, I took the course and read Joseph Conrad for the first time. It was not my favorite book, nor did it scare the crap out of me, like some people I took the class with claimed it did with them. It was just very intense.

At least “Apocalypse Now” was brought in as a visual aid.

“Apocalypse Now” was based on “Heart of Darkness.” While Martin Sheen, as Captain Benjamin L. Willard, is pretty cool, the film was even more intense than the novel. It did not give me nightmares. It was exhausting. Brilliant but exhausting.

It is 10:16pm when I am writing this. Not exceedingly late. Well before curfew. But I am beginning to get that stiffness in my chest, a shortness of breath which is one sign anxieties associated with the start of the work week are beginning to kick in.

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”

— Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”

Instead of my brain following my body into a somber state of slowed-down reflexive actions, lightning-speed, marathon-length pinball matches are taking place in my cerebellum. It does not matter if I am nominally asleep. The brain is firing on all cylinders. That deep REM sleep is fleeting. It’s there – my smartwatch tells me it is – but I cannot make a definitive claim of its usefulness.

I am not alone in these dreams, but I am also not surrounded by people who currently make up my life now. My old basketball coach and teammates from sixth grade appear, but we are all in black and white, sepia-tinted photos; my math tutor in junior high school popped up recently; I was skydiving (falling uncontrollably) with guys I worked with when I was in college. I never skydive; I was wading through the dark coils of the Amazon with faces I knew but could not place their names. I have never been to the Amazon; I was in a surgical theatre with my first neurologist and…the actress, Alfre Woodard (?) getting ready to open up my skull. Alfre Woodard is great, but my first neurologist was kind of a jerk.

If this keeps up, I can never claim to be suffering from writer’s block.

Other than one of America’s greatest living actresses performing brain surgery on me, none of these would technically be chronicled as a nightmare. But they are plentiful, and I am not all that anxious to find out what body part Matthew McConaughey is going to pry open tonight. It is now 11:16, and I am no more anxious to sleep now than I was an hour ago.

“Run away, run away, it’s the restless age
Look away, look away, you can turn the page”

I cannot run away from these dreams. They are the work of my subconscious, or so I am led to believe. But the randomness of these images, none of which has a direct connection to the other, baffles me. I wish there was some pattern to link them all together. Again, random brain surgery being the exception, nothing points to a terrible event, past, present or future. These are not pleasant dreams, nor are they nightmares. They are not heroic tales but survival tests. The Amazon does not seem like a very friendly place in my dreams. I am relieved when I wake up.

Joseph Conrad was probably last on everyone’s list as a dinner guest because “Heart of Darkness” is not exactly a self-help manual. But it does contain one of the most on-the-nose-descriptions of adult life that IS also affirming…sort of.

“I don’t like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means

— “Heart of Darkness”