Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • I Can Give In or I Can Try

      San Francisco, New York City
      Strangely silent, strangely empty
      His graffiti filled the subway
      But where’s my brother?
      He could keep you up for hours
      In a town of wilting flowers, yeah, yeah
      I can more or less continue my life
      I can give in or I can try
      Hit the ground running
      Hit the ground running for your life
      — Tim Finn, Hit the Ground Running

      As a proud member of Generation X, the art of Keith Haring was omnipresent in my life. Ironically, Haring was a Baby Boomer, but he really broke out in the 80’s when Gen Xers were looking for something uniquely our own to hold onto. His vibrant graffiti-style art spoke to us, and is still copied by graffiti artists today. Haring’s art was visually representative of the time—and seemingly everywhere. He was an anchor of the era alongside John Hughes movies, MTV and the music videos playing on it. And tragically, Haring was swept up in another anchor of that time: AIDS. He passed away at 31.

      Tim Finn, lead singer of one of those MTV staples; Crowded House, wrote Hit the Ground Running to honor Keith Haring. The song has been one of those tunes that I keep on my own playlists. Headphone or solo driving music, because it’s one of those songs that stands apart a little from the usual fare. I have a lot of those songs, my misfits, that I keep just for myself.

      The song is written from two perspectives—the person who found out they’ve been diagnosed with AIDS and they’re going to wither away and die, and from the perspective of the person who loves that person who is dying and will have to go on without them. And so when you see the lyrics they can mean both:

      I can more or less continue my life
      I can give in or I can try

      Everything in the universe is cyclical. We are all born, live our lives and eventually pass from this world. All we can do is accept that truth and make the most of the time we have. Things can feel hopeless and unfair at times, but these moments too shall pass. We must choose how to live our lives through the best and worst of moments, both to honor the people who made us who we are and the direction we’ve chosen as our own path through it all. We may travel this world with empathy, dignity and persistence and learn to transcend the darkest moments we will inevitably find ourselves in.

    • 38 Years of Joshua Tree

      And in the world
      A heart of darkness
      A fire zone
      Where poets speak their heart
      Then bleed for it
      — U2, One Tree Hill

      In one of those time warp moments, I realized that U2’s Joshua Tree was released 38 years ago yesterday. That resonates deeply when you’re of a certain age. We all have our cornerstones of influence. We all have our soundtrack of life, anchored in moments that are forever brought back by the song playing in the background, bringing it all back to us once again. For me, U2 has been the anchor, laying down milestone moments for much of my life.

      The first song I heard from Joshua Tree was With or Without You, played as a single on WBCN, one of Boston’s great radio stations back in the day. They played it late in the afternoon, after a team workout, and I sat in my pickup truck in front of my apartment to hear it that first time. Music is like Kurt Vonnegut’s amber of the moment: It’s a powerful resin that holds memory to place and time. This is who we once were. This is still a part of us, even after so much has changed since that first spark of awareness of what we were hearing.

      Many might say that U2 peaked in their Super Bowl performance in February 2002, when the world was still reeling from 9/11 and seeing the names of the victims of that day scroll upwards while the band performed MLK (from The Unforgettable Fire) and one of the big songs from Joshua Tree, Where the Streets Have No Name. That performance forever transformed the latter song in my mind from an overplayed song of the late 80’s to a spiritual anchor in a storm of emotions leading up to that evening. I don’t believe one performance represented a peak for a band as big as U2, I believe they sustained excellence for three decades and we can debate which albums were their best from the bar set by Joshua Tree.

      The music industry has forever changed, and albums as a work of art are not what they once were for popular music. The music industry can pound sand. Music is more than a hit song, it’s a part of our identity. Like a great novel, a great album has the power to transform lives. U2 has their fair share of great albums, and they’ve carried the torch for rock music from vinyl to streaming as well as any band. In a culture that digests information in sound bites, the concept of an album is perhaps a bridge too far. But a great album still has a place in this world.

      For all the hits on Joshua Tree, One Tree Hill is the song I most associate with that moment in the late 1980’s when U2 ruled the airwaves. It’s a deep cut and one of the last songs on the album. One has to be invested in the listening experience to reach it. And there’s the value of a great album: finding the hidden gems amongst the hits.

      One Tree Hill whispers seductively across time. And like time itself, we are all running like a river, running to the sea. We didn’t know what that meant back then, until time flew by, until that tight circle of people we once clung to ran from our lives and others flowed in to replace them. Until time ran out for some people who meant a great deal to us, people who had their final run to the sea. We’re closer now ourselves, aren’t we? Yet still we run. So by all means, turn up the music and enjoy it once again.

    • Inhabited by Heroes

      “On whatever side I look off I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men? No scenery will redeem it. What can be more beautiful than any scenery inhabited by heroes? Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      There’s always been two sides to America. Those who build on the foundation of freedom and liberty for all and those who would tear it all down and watch it burn. The thing is, we all believe we’re on the side of freedom and liberty—it’s all in how those words are interpreted. And so we all believe our cause is just and dig in for a fight. We aren’t fighting a Civil War in the traditional sense, but a manufactured war stirred up by profiteers and agents of destruction. The country has always had an abundance of grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men (and women!) on both sides who serve themselves first and foremost. Thoreau wrote this entry in 1851, and he would recognize the characters today as descendants in spirit of those he encountered.

      The real heroes strive for consensus and unification. Inclusiveness isn’t woke, it’s a shared vision that those “unalienable Rights” of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness apply to all of us. This is a dream that extends from sea to shining sea, and yes, across borders—autocrats and oligarchs, racists and “bro culture” be damned.

      These are dark days, and they will grow darker still. We all look around looking for heroes to unite us once again. Look in the mirror, friend. The strength of this country has always resided in our core, where reasonable people with common hopes and dreams reside. And here is where the heroes of the moral core must rise up and seize control of reason and dignity once again. We can’t simply wait it out hoping for better days.

    • Holding to Reason in a Maddening World

      “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Our entire social structure is an echo chamber now. Our media is curated for us. And we curate too. We’ve reached a point where anyone we disagree with automatically gets muted or unfollowed or otherwise edited out of the stories we like to tell ourselves. And so it is that we only get one side of the story and get shocked by things like election outcomes, the erratic behavior of people we otherwise have so much in common with and the escalation of outrage. Yet it’s completely logical when we only hear one perspective.

      There are many of us who feel the United States has just descended into madness. That doesn’t mean we ourselves should descend into madness with those who engineered such things. They love it when they get a rise out of us, and go regressively deeper into despicable behavior to provoke. Don’t take the bait. We haven’t reached the low point yet, so buckle up and prepare for the next worst moment in modern democracy. Fight for all that is right in this world but always hold the high ground.

      I purchased a new American flag last week to replace the one that was old and frayed by years of flying in the elements. My flag is not a symbol of support for the current autocrats and oligarchs running my country, but a reminder of all that we once believed. I wondered whether I should take it down and put up a Gadsden flag (Don’t Tread on Me), but it’s already been coopted by the Tea Party zealots. And why give up my own country so easily? As they run this country into the ground wrapped in clever and well-funded marketing and imagery, remember the truth lies somewhere between what the most shrill voices on either side are screaming. We must hold the line with reason.

      I don’t write this with optimism, but from the perspective of someone who accepts whatever fate the universe imposes (amor fati). We don’t have to love it, but here we are. What are we going to do about it now? When they provoke for anger, answer with quiet resolve. For this is not who we are. And our collective story is still being written.

    • Answers

      “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” — William S. Burroughs

      Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
      Before it is washed to the sea?
      And how many years can some people exist
      Before they’re allowed to be free?
      Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
      And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
      The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
      — Bob Dylan, Blowin’ in the Wind

      The world is a confusing mess that we may either work to make sense of or practice active avoidance of. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. I used to pride myself on reading the news every day, and doubled down by watching the news every morning to be informed before I stepped out the door. It was my way of having a perspective on things when asked for my opinion, but also because I thought it was my duty as a citizen to know what the hell was happening.

      Lately, I’ve had an ongoing dialogue with a good friend about which media source is most unbiased. We all should know that they’re all biased, because they’re all hoping for enough traction to be profitable, but which is the best for fair and mostly unbiased information? Those who follow one source for all information are a slave to that source. We must seek information from multiple sources and sort it out ourselves.

      Or not. The historian in me knows the truth is never found in the headlines, but in the stories that come out long after the dust settles. We know certain truths, but we certainly don’t know everything. The lens of time offers true perspective. And even though we see the world burning, even though we may feel outraged far more than we ever believed we’d be outraged at this point in human history, we must separate emotion from the moment and see what happens (while fighting for what’s right in this world).

      We know that those who say they have it all figured out are generally full of crap and trying to sell us something (well, unfortunately, slightly less than half of us know that). Knowing everything is not in the cards. Our answers will come to us in time, if we’re lucky enough to have time, and so we must rely on what we believe to be true for us and set ourselves in a direction that feels right.

      All that said, the historian in me also knows that history is written by the victors, and vast swaths of truth have been swept aside and blown away in the winds of time. We’ll never know the full story about anything, only what we are able to capture and discern. The trick for us in this moment is to ensure that we come out on the other side to bring the truth to the future.

      And that brings me back to the Burroughs quote that kicked us off today. We must learn to quiet our minds and find the answers within ourselves in the context of the times we live in. To be aware of the world is essential for navigating within it, but we cannot forget to turn inward and listen to what our own truth is. And if we find those answers, we may set our compass in a direction that carries us through the confusion and madness in the world to a place we know deep down is right for us.

    • Breaking the Mirror

      “I wanted to act, but I’d always been convinced that actors had to be handsome. That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theater and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him.” — Gene Hackman

      Gene Hackman passed away yesterday. Hearing about people who have always been there in our timeline passing away isn’t like losing a loved one, it’s more like seeing a tree we always admired knocked down in a storm, or a favorite restaurant closing. It’s a part of us, but it’s a peripheral part of our identity, not our core. And when that thing goes away, well, we realize things won’t be the same anymore. There’s a lot of that feeling going around right now.

      What is it within us that makes us believe we can do anything? What stirs within, inspiring us to rise up and slog through the early drafts of who we are towards who we might become? It’s some spark that needs fuel to ignite into something more, and then more still. But fires don’t burn in a downpour. The people we surround ourselves with either smother our dreams or feed them, and so we must be very careful about who those people are. But our worst enemy is the person in the mirror saying we don’t look like someone who can do that.

      It takes time to break that mirror. Some never do. As we grow, who we once were becomes ever more peripheral to who we are now. We climb away from that mirror and grow into a new identity, and hopefully grow further still for the rest of our days. But it all starts with believing that we can be more than the person looking back at us. The trick is to stop lingering at the mirror and get to work on who we might be next.

    • Something to Offer

      “You’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” — J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

      I’ve developed the patience to step away from the mass hysteria that media represents and focus instead on the big picture. This may very well be a time for hysteria, but I think it’s really a time for perspective—we’ve been here before. That’s not license for the rogues and bastards to tear down everything that means anything, rather to focus on what we may control and lead from the front.

      Keep a record, in whatever form resonates. We may each agree to love poetry or the lyrics to a great song without being inclined to write either ourselves. We may pour our heart and soul into a journal, but (by design) so few journals ever reach the masses (Anne Frank and Marcus Aurelius being notable exceptions). Many of us feel we’ve got a novel somewhere deep within us, but keep the muse at bay so long that they find a willing participant elsewhere. For many of us, blogging seems to fulfill that desire to write every day without fail. It’s all part of the Great Conversation following closely along the timeline of recorded human thought. Here is our verse, whatever its form.

      When we do write, we ought to have something to say. It takes many iterations of this blog to reach a point where I click publish, knowing that it’s not perfect but must ship anyway. Write for an hour or two and send it on its way, then on to the next. In this way, writing is so like a photograph: it’s where we were recently, not necessarily where we are right now. Which is why most commenters seem to bark up the wrong tree. They react to a moment that may have already sunsetted. But who doesn’t love a great sunset?

      This is one reason I don’t always take the bait when I read other blogs. It’s not that I haven’t got a reaction, it’s that the reaction doesn’t serve the current moment, let alone the future. We are all collectively too reactive, and the occasional “WTF” gets entirely too much traction. There are a lot of WTF’s floating around in the world right now. Maybe they should form a chorus, but to what end? Instead, focus on the trend and what brought us to there. What did that represent in the moment, and where do we go from here?

      We all ought to do something with our time. We only have this one go at things. What have we to say about this moment in our own lives? Whatever form of expression we choose to use, we must get busy expressing, before this moment is gone and we’re busy adjusting to whatever comes next. Sunsets come and go so quickly, don’t they? So what have we observed with this one?

    • Beliefs and Revelations

      February one is a countdown day in the United States (2/1) and a count up day in the rest of the world (1/2). Don’t even get me started on the metric system. We tend to do things our own way here in the United States, and most of us won’t pretend that we get it all right all the time. But being right about things was never the point, it’s about confidently charging through life, believing in the cause we’ve signed up for as our birthright. Many times the world is looking for someone to look around and say, “I’ve got this!”, but more often than not they’re just patient with us.

      We see how damaging belief without facts can be. But humans need belief in something to get through their lives. Otherwise they have to ponder questions larger than themselves. Better to simply believe without thinking too much about it. Life seems easier when we give our agency to someone else. It’s like never really growing up and having parental figures tell us what to do, where to go, who to like and not like. What to believe. It’s all just stories we’re told to agree with. And most of it is bullshit. But it does the job of controlling the mob.

      We all have people in our lives who believe things we know are made up stories. Hug the flag, point the finger at others, blame the weakest and tell some clever story that makes everyone believe we’re all in this together. It’s a great recipe for power and influence, and it all hinges on belief.

      We can roll our eyes and shake our head at these people in our lives, but we ought to take a moment to question our own beliefs and who’s telling us stories. What’s real and what’s BS? It’s always been a matter of which story feels more aligned with the story we tell ourselves, which is often based on the way we’ve always seen the world. Belief is very hard to shake free from.

      We often don’t realize our beliefs are being challenged until we feel irritation at something or someone that calls our beliefs into question. This is a journey we resist, sometimes violently, but on the other side of it is revelation. It turns out the world is more nuanced than we dared to believe in the shelter of our own stories. Beliefs are fine for keeping us in line, but revelation is what moves our world in new directions.

      Whatever we believe is likely an old, favorite recipe that we cook up in our minds each day. Do you remember the first time you tried an oyster? One moment we believe we’d never eat something like that, the next we experience a revelation of briny goodness. Maybe shellfish isn’t your thing, but we can all think of something that similarly shook up our pallet and our belief in what is good.

      Revelation is profoundly moving when we encounter it head-on. And we only reach it by being open to seeing the world clearly (while beliefs are closed, revelations only come to us when we are open to them). So maybe try to see things differently today. It turns out it doesn’t matter whether we say February 1 or 1 February, so long as we know which day it really is. Today is a good day to look at the stories we tell ourselves and look for some revelations we never knew we needed.

    • Ship of Fools

      “Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      There’s no getting around the foolishness in the world. It’s maddening if we let it be, but we must remember that it’s always been foolish and maddening. This is simply our time to navigate it all. The reason it frustrates us so is because we had such hope for the world not so long ago, and then the fools turned it all upside down.

      We’re setting sail to the place on the map
      From which no one has ever returned
      Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
      By the light of the crosses that burned
      Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
      And the gold and the cotton and pearls
      It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need
      You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby
      You will pay tomorrow
      — World Party, Ship of Fools

      We’re being carried along, pressed-ganged into service to pirates seeking profit, as the world burns. In a moment when humanity needed to rise up to meet the climate crisis head-on, we chose oligarchs and conmen to steer the ship. Where it leads us, only science can predict. But why listen to facts when there’s so much money to be made? There will be consequences, and life will be more challenging than it might have been if we’d simply chosen progress over short term profits.

      Maybe I’m missing the part where all the billionaires and pirates pool their resources to save the world. Let them prove me wrong, but their track record isn’t particularly impressive. We aren’t here for miracles, we’re here to face to world as it is (and will be) and to position ourselves for the best possible outcome given the circumstances. Our answer is to build resilience into our own lives and to have our lifeboat at the ready.

    • Connecting Miracles

      “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein

      I spoke with one of my aunts yesterday. I don’t see her and my uncle all that much now. Really, I don’t see any of my aunts and uncles much now. In fact, most of the people who were central to my identity in the first half of my life are not very present today. Childhood friends and enemies, teammates, old coworkers and that person we went on the nervous date with once upon a time. Life gets busy, we tell ourselves.

      The truth is that we can’t be everywhere at once, and some people who mean the world to us gradually slip away as the gap of time and place grows. A bridge requires strong anchors on both sides, but oftentimes we forget to tend our own end of things. So many people in our lives want for a simple call and conversation. We have more power for connection than we utilize in our frenzied, important lives. And what is really all that important anyway?

      We have this one go at things. When we view our lives as a miracle of infinitesimal chance in the cold expanse of the universe, we may appreciate our waking up to face whatever our day brings us a little better. When we consider our fellow time travelers, living their own miracle moment at the same time that we are, well, perhaps we might appreciate their presence a little more. We are stardust, after all, and so is that older neighbor down the street, that barista serving us go juice and the guy that just cut us off on the highway. All miracles in the moment; starstruck and dumbfounded in where we find ourselves. Go figure.

      Connecting miracles is a mission we opt into. Active engagement with the world is a choice. Using that mobile device to actually make a call instead of watching another curated video is a bridge to someone else who may be in desperate need of a reminder that they too are a miracle. Connection is harder than ever in this world of distraction and outrage, but it’s our choice to make.