Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • Somebody Spoke

      Woke up, fell out of bed
      Dragged a comb across my head
      Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
      And looking up I noticed I was late
      Found my coat and grabbed my hat
      Made the bus in seconds flat
      Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
      And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
      — The Beatles, A Day in the Life

      They say that when we win the morning, we win the day. I say winning the morning is easy—it becomes hard as soon as the rest of the world wakes up and begins to have a say in how our day goes. That’s when the day gets away from us. That’s when our best intentions meet reality. Ever notice that everything was groovy for Sir Paul singing his song until someone interrupted his flow? Boom! Back to reality. Oh boy.

      If discipline equals freedom, then we can wrestle control back in our days with a structured schedule and focus on a daily routine. Easier said than done, but we are the ones who set the borders on what we will and will not do. That’s a cute line, isn’t it? Tell that to someone taking care of their young children or aging parents, or rushing home to let the dog out before she pees on the rug.

      The consequences of a full life are that we no longer control every decision in our days. Some choices are made for us by the choices we made in the past. It’s the price of fullness. So own it and work around the edges. Nobody said livin’ the dream would be easy. But who said easy was what we ever really wanted anyway?

    • Positive Momentum

      Rise up this morning,

      Smile with the rising sun
      — Bob Marley & The Wailers, Three Little Birds

      Attitude is everything, as the old expression goes. When we move through the world in a joyful state, we tend to attract more joyfulness into our orbit. When we walk around with a scowl on our face, complaining about the state of the world, the world retreats away from us, lest they catch some of that bitterness we’re coughing up.

      Every little thing may or may not be all right. We all have things going on that could be better, or will surely get worse. But we’ve also got plenty to be grateful for, plenty to celebrate, if we simply look hard enough. Begin with rising up in the morning, with the rising sun indicating our trip around it continues for at least one more day. Build on that with something more, and suddenly we’ve got some positive momentum. And sometimes, that’s enough.

    • Third Things

      “Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly.” — John Hall, The Third Thing

      We have our self, we have our selves, and we have what we are mutually focused on in our time together. Like being on teams, whether sports or companies or projects worked on with mutual focus and effort, that thing we focus on together becomes a link that bonds us in the moment and forever after. A long-term relationship is simply coexisting with someone else with mutual attention on a series of third things we carry with us for the rest of our days.

      Our hiking friends have the mountains and expanding red lines on trail maps as their third thing. Our sailing friends scheme of bigger boats and tropical anchorages. Our lake friends are quietly carving out a life as snowbirds and the idea of growing old in a forever summer lifestyle. My sister and brother-in-law have found pickleball a useful third thing bringing them fitness and an expansive social life. We’re all different, and so too are the things we give our lives to in mutual focus.

      Third things capture a time in our life that we’ll remember one day when the math is no longer one plus one plus one more thing. We may be aware of such things as subtraction without dwelling on it. We all know the score. For it’s a thing too. Sha-la, la-la-la-la, live for today…

      What do we—together—focus on other than ourselves? The list comes easily at times. The frisbee-loving pup. The house and whatever the latest project is that my bride has deemed essential to our well-being. Always, the children, then aspiring student-athletes, now adults. Increasingly, the parents, and all that aging parents mean for them… and for us. Travel and collecting experiences once deferred for other third things. Third things are our common ground, focused on together yet differently. A part of us, yet not us.

    • Do Your Thing

      “I myself think that the wise man meddles little or not at all in affairs and does his own things.” — Chrysippus

      We have a serious issue on our hands. There is simply not enough time today to do all that we might do. Spending time on anything is serious business when we recognize how little of it we have left to spend.

      Knowing that time is our precious currency in a brief life, why do we carelessly toss it away on things beyond our control? The affairs of others is not our concern when those affairs are beyond our control. We ought to use this time more wisely, lest we fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Hum the tune, but hear the message.

      Just look at how we burn through this very time thinking too much about how to use it. That’s the philosopher’s curse. To be or not to be, that really is the question. But remember to be now, for there is no later. So stop thinking so much and do your thing. Tomorrow will be far too late in the game for such things.

    • And Now We Rise

      A day once dawned, and it was beautiful
      A day once dawned from the ground
      Then the night she fell
      And the air was beautiful
      The night she fell all around
      So look, see the days
      The endless coloured ways
      Go play the game that you learnt
      From the morning
      And now we rise
      And we are everywhere
      And now we rise from the ground
      And see she flies
      She is everywhere
      See she flies all around
      So look, see the sights
      The endless summer nights
      And go play the game that you learnt
      From the mornin’
      — Nick Drake, From the Morning

      I’m told that Nick Drake’s family had the two lines from this song, “Now we rise and we are everywhere” engraved on his gravestone (a simple Google search verifies this). Could there be a more beautiful choice of words to mark a life? Nick Drake’s career rose quietly, posthumously, and is now everywhere (should we listen for it). Our work outlives us, doesn’t it? So it follows that we ought to put our very best into the work that matters most.

      We are creative beings, putting our dent in the universe, such that it is, before we fade away into eternity. Knowing this, we ought to rise up to meet the work as best we can, to put something of ourselves into it that makes it uniquely ours. And then to let it fly, to find its own way in the world like a moth rising to meet the light. Most everything is consumed and disappears, but some work might just break through and go everywhere.

      I think sometimes, is this blog enough? The question betrays the answer. There is far more to do. We put our best hours into other things, knowing that the days flow into nights and begin again and again. And we only have so long to play this game.

    • Digging Our Ground

      The trouble, doll, is not moving mountains
      But digging the ground that you’re on
      If it’s true that good fortune gives no change
      We got just what it takes
      — Jakob Dylan, Something Good This Way Comes

      Nowadays, doesn’t it seem like everyone is angry or depressed or resentful of others? We know there are legitimate reasons for concern, but there’s also a collective amnesia about how good we really have it. It’s driven by an information diet that tells us how awful we should feel about the state of the world, about those “nasty” people on the other side, about the number staring back at us on the scale or the fact that few of us look like those fit, fashionable and well-traveled people we see on our screens. We know that comparison is the death of joy, but our feeds are relentlessly pushing for comparison anyway.

      There’s nothing wrong with aspiring for more in life, for that is how humanity grows and evolves. That’s how we grow and evolve. But we shouldn’t lose track of that which we are blessed with. How many people throughout history would have given everything for what we have right now? They’d be shocked by our lack of awareness of all that surrounds us.

      Gratitude grounds us. It changes our mindset from feeling like we live in scarcity to knowing we live in abundance. When we’re grateful for where we are, with what we have and who we’re spending our precious time with, it’s hard to feel like we aren’t living a great life. So maybe it’s time to start digging the ground that we’re on, and stop clawing for more of what’s over there. Because over there ain’t all that either.

    • The Shared Secret

      Fool if you think it’s over
      ‘Cos you said goodbye
      Fool if you think it’s over
      I’ll tell you why
      New born eyes always cry with pain
      At the first look at the morning sun
      You’re a fool if you think it’s over
      It’s just begun
      — Chris Rea, Fool (If You Think It’s Over)

      Life is pain, as the Dread Pirate Roberts told Buttercup in The Princess Bride. It’s full of setbacks and sadness, betrayals and “between jobs” lean living. But it’s also full of climbs to redemption and epic comebacks and the finding of strides. The trick is to see beyond the pain of the moment and find a way to a better place beyond. To remember, always, that this too shall pass.

      Chris Rea passed away yesterday. He was bigger in the EU than he was in America, but he had that one ear worm of a song that stayed with you, reminding you that there will be more breakups and sad days in our future, but just keep singing your song and try again with the next one. And sure, there’s a life lesson there that resonates about pain and resilience and such very human things. Nobody said this would be easy.

      We look around one day and realize that we’ve been very lucky indeed with some things, not so lucky with some other things, but we’ve arrived here nonetheless. Wherever here is. Whatever we’re supposed to do with what we’ve arrived with. The lesson is to keep on figuring things out. That’s the shared secret we’re all working from. To keep on facing whatever life throws at us next and begin again.

    • Tickled By Audacity

      “Il faut vivre et créer. Vivre à pleurer”
      (Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears)
      ― Albert Camus

      I’ve moved away from apps that teach me to read other languages, because they never really brought me to conversational French or German or Spanish. They aren’t immersive enough for that. Perhaps some of the AI-driven apps will deliver on the promise of multilingual proclivity, but as with most things, we learn by immersing ourselves in proximity to others doing that which we aspire to do. Which is another way to say we ought to challenge ourselves to go and do and be that person who is beyond where we currently are.

      French, for me, is the language I’ve dabbled with too long without mastering. We are all students of something, aren’t we? We may dabble in some things and attempt to master one, maybe two things in a lifetime. Conversational French is as good a skill to aspire to as anything. But skills are merely acquired to bring us to something else. Perhaps reading Camus in the language he wrote in, or perhaps holding one’s own in a local café where the tourists rarely go. We reach places we would never get to through the knowledge and skills we acquire and use.

      To live—vivre—is more than simply going through the motions. We can make a case that going through motions is not living at all. Going through anything is mere existence. To be alive we must do and dare, create and share. Embrace living by turning away from existing, towards something bolder and a little tingly. Those tingles are the nervous system expressing being tickled by audacity.

      Well, to live’s to fly
      All low and high
      So shake the dust off of your wings
      And the sleep out of your eyes
      — Townes Van Zandt, To Live Is to Fly

      How many ways must we say it? Be bold today. Live an expansive life. Try new things with frequency. Wings should never accumulate dust and skills should never be allowed to rust. We’re here to fly and strut our stuff. What is a day but another chance to make something memorable of it? What will we embark on next? What will we finally complete before we run out of time? Immerse yourself. Live and be bold! Vivre à pleurer.

    • Beliefs and Truths

      “Trust, but verify.” — Ronald Reagan

      There’s an interesting story about that expression, “Trust but verify”, attributed to Ronald Reagan. During his Presidency, when the Cold War between the US and the USSR peaked, an advisor to the President told him that the Soviets like to communicate using proverbs. “Trust, but verify” is the english version of an old Russian proverb, doveryai, no proveryai. Whatever we each may believe about Ronald Reagan as a President, we can all agree that he was a talented communicator who captured the imagination of his followers. All consensus begins with some agreed-upon truth. Reagan’s use of the proverb met the Russians on their ground, and it made all the difference.

      Coming from a long line of travelling sales people on my mother’s side
      I wasn’t gonna buy just anyone’s cockatoo
      So why would I invite a complete stranger into my home
      Would you?
      — U2, Breathe

      One should never challenge the beliefs of another person, just as one should never impose their own beliefs on another person. That doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to question those beliefs, or to decide for ourselves what makes the most sense for us. We are not simply zealots; we are intelligent beings moving through a lifetime of information, sifting through all that experience to find our truth. We may be living in a time when people don’t want to agree upon a common truth, but that doesn’t make the presence of that truth any less true.

      “I don’t want to believe. I want to know.” ― Carl Sagan

      I’m not a scientist, nor an engineer, but I still prefer my information diet to be rich in fact and truth. Skepticism is not a contradiction of another’s beliefs, it’s a survival tool that leaves a healthy gap between what someone is telling us and what we ultimately believe ourselves. Developing a strong BS filter is a survival tool. It doesn’t come from books, but from street smarts. We must build our foundations on something solid, or the very structure of our lives—the stories we tell ourselves are true—will crumble one day.

      To pass from this world still believing a lie isn’t the worst way to go. It’s far worse getting to our deathbed and finding out that it was cockatoo all along, told to keep us in line. History is full of such lies disguised as truth. A little skeptical curiosity goes a long way towards finding the real truth. The question is, do we really want to know it, or would we prefer to just drink the Kool-Aid and hope that everything will turn out fine in the end? Give me the clarity of knowing over the haze of belief. Trust, but verify.

    • Creating Temporal Landmarks

      “Temporal landmarks could help assuage that terrible feeling of time speeding up as you age. In what researchers call the ‘calendar effect’, we use milestones to form and retain memories – so university students, say, have much better recall of events near the start or end of term, even when you allow for the emotional highs and lows of freshers’ week or graduation. The more landmarks, the less risk of suddenly realising you’ve no idea where last year went.” — Oliver Burkeman, “This Column Will Change Your Life: The Importance of Temporal Landmarks, The Guardian

      As this is published, it’s a Tuesday. What does Tuesday represent? Taco Tuesday, trash and recycling day on my particular street, the second day of the work week, weight circuit day in my fitness schedule, and really not much else that would differentiate it from Wednesday or Thursday this week. And this Tuesday is a lot like last Tuesday and the one before that. They all blend together, don’t they? That’s why life feels routine; because we’ve built a routine for our life.

      If time seems to fly by faster as we get older, maybe it’s because we have fewer temporal landmarks to frame the days into memorable sequences. We slip into a career, work Monday through Friday week after week, and entire years blend together into one block of our lives. I recently spent seven years working for one company, and the only thing about the job that made one year any different from the next were the big work trips and what happened outside of work that impacted the routine. New product releases, version upgrades, company meetings and even trade shows all blended together into a memory of what I did then versus what I do now. Where did the time go?

      The thing is, in that same time period, I took memorable trips of a lifetime to faraway places, had significant milestone moments with family graduations and the passing of loved ones, and of course we all collectively had the pandemic, national elections, wars and a host of other memorable moments that locked time into amber. We don’t remember each day, we remember moments—and these moments are our temporal landmarks. Some are far more significant and far-reaching than others.

      Where were you when the world stopped turnin’
      That September day?
      — Alan Jackson, Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

      A day like 9/11 is locked into memory, while the world turning in routine on the days leading up to it fade away. We’ll always remember where we were in that moment, just as we do other similar temporal landmarks. We tend to forget the flow of days around those landmarks. And while none of us wish for those kind of 9/11 landmarks to land in our lives ever again, we may use the theory to create more positive temporal landmarks for ourselves.

      So how will today be remembered? What will stand out about this month in five years? How about next year—what temporal landmarks will we schedule into the next year of our lives to make the time really stand out as memorable? The time will flow into our past one way or the other. It’s up to us to make it something more than routine. A temporal landmark is something we’ll remember this time by. Maybe make it something more special than just taco Tuesday.