Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • A Sequence of Everything Wanted

      “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

      Slow down you’re doing fine
      You can’t be everything you want to be before your time
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      In a dizzying turn of events, last night capped a sequence of things wanted for some time delightfully happening one after the other, from Rome to Athens to Sicily to Florence to… New Hampshire. Life is sometimes simply great timing, realized. To visit the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel and the Acropolis and Mount Etna, to see Michelangelo’s La Pietà and David to bookend an epic trip and then return home to find the elusive Aurora Borealis dancing in my own backyard hours later is a sequence I’ll be processing for some time, thank you. This isn’t meant to be a brag about how lucky the last couple of weeks have been, rather a realization that patiently working towards something combined with a bit of good luck goes a long way in a lifetime. Amor fati.

      The thing is, I wear my impatience on my sleeve (and blog about it more often than I ought to). Some of us simply want to get right to everything as quickly as possible, knowing that time flies and we aren’t getting any younger. Sure, tempus fugit, but slow down—you’re doing fine… Vienna waits for you. Simply plot the steps, do the work, follow through and hope fortune smiles on you.

      Hope is a tricky word, and that’s where impatience comes in. Perhaps the better word is trust. We must trust the process when we build our systems. Work, marriage, fitness level, artistic contribution, social interactions, and yes, bucket list items are all lifestyle choices built on faith that doing this will lead to that. When it doesn’t arrive promptly we restless types get a bit impatient, so a reminder of all that’s come to pass helps now and then. Gratitude goes a long way.

      Life lessons are all around us, if we simply stop rushing about so much and focus on the journey. The biggest lesson is that the journey continues, and each milestone is simply a marker for where we’ve been and what we’ve seen and who we were at the time. What’s next matters too, doesn’t it? Our past is our foundation for the growth to come. We shall get there some day. For haven’t we thus far?

      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Michelangelo’s La Madonna della Pietà
      Michelangelo’s David

    • The Places We Will Be From

      Closing time, you don’t have to go home
      But you can’t stay here
      — Semisonic, Closing Time

      There’s something comfortable about staying in place. Things feel more natural and familiar, after all, and this is where all our friends are. But life is change, and we too must embrace it. Even the farmer, seemingly always in the same place, changes with the seasons. Most of us aren’t farmers, but we ought to listen to the wind and watch the level of the sun and know our place in this world will not be what it once was. We must be change agents for progress to happen.

      Closing time, time for you to go out
      To the places you will be from

      It’s easy to think back about who we were then. It’s harder to imagine who we’ll be in the future, let alone to map the path from here to there very accurately. Surely, there will be unexpected twists and turns along the way. The future is not ours, any more than the past is us today. But we do have the present, such that it is, to do with it what we will. Someday this will be who we used to be too. So we ought to make it a great story.

      Closing time, every new beginning
      Comes from some other beginning’s end

      When one door closes, another is said to open. How many doors have closed already? No matter—not really. What matters is the door opening in front of us, and our willingness to step across the threshold to what’s next. Life is about reinvention, rebirth, renewal. It’s closing time on some older version of ourselves, isn’t it? We can’t stay here forever. But as with any great adventurer, we should develop a strong sense of what’s next.

    • We Can Only Try

      I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness
      In a world where tears are just a lullaby
      If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness
      Maybe not, oh, but we can only try
      — Carol King, Beautiful

      We all know the old expression about the glass being half full or half empty. Are we optimists or pessimists at heart? A stoic might say neither are right, that the glass is simply at the halfway point and we ought to be realistic about that and nothing more. Perhaps. But we all move through this world carrying light or darkness, wearing it on our faces, and the world reacts to us in kind.

      If each step of the journey is the entire point of living, then we ought to find some beauty in the moment. We must learn to carry the light, that we may not stumble into darkness. And brighten the faces of those we encounter along the way. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If beauty is also a reflection of who we are deep inside, shouldn’t that tell us something about ourselves?

      There are days when I quietly quit the world, feeling it’s not my role to be positive or to contribute to the greater good. I’ve done my part, I think to myself, and now it’s time to be less generous with my goodwill. Eventually I snap out of it, shaking off the narcissistic self-talk and come back to the light. What are we here for, after all, but to contribute a verse? Why squander that? We can only try to make that verse beautiful, that others may see.

    • To Follow the Call

      “When one thinks of some reason for not going or has fear and remains in society because it’s safe, the results are radically different from what happens when one follows the call. If you refuse to go, then you are someone else’s servant. When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost. Everything in you knows that a required adventure has been refused. Anxieties build up. What you have refused to experience in a positive way, you will experience in a negative way…
      Your adventure has to be coming right out of your own interior. If you are ready for it, then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It’s the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules.” ― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      We have people in our lives who would read that passage from Joseph Campbell and shudder at the very idea of answering the call. They’ll throw all kinds of logic at you about why this is not a good idea at all, not nearly as good an idea as staying the course and following through on the path chosen for us. It’s an attractive rut to stay in place, doing what is expected of us, with a promise of retirement and a few healthy years before we die. It’s a Siren’s song that has lured many a soul to the rocks.

      Thoreau said something unnervingly similar, didn’t he, when he observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”? We may either look inward and refute the observation or find it rings true, but we may never be fully the same having seen the truth within us. Still, every day is a new opportunity to step into who we really are. Every day we may follow the call or go on killing the dream. We must choose wisely which voice we follow, remembering that the rocks are closer than we might believe.

      Alone on a midnight passage
      I can count the falling stars
      While the Southern Cross and the satellites
      They remind me of where we are
      Spinning around in circles
      Living it day to day
      And still 24 hours may be 60 good years
      It’s really not that long a stay
      Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle

      Joseph Campbell is very much in the “follow your bliss” camp. He’s largely the originator of the term. There are many who mock this following your bliss strategy as impractical at best and self-deceptive folly at worst. The question is, if we may have our 60 good years doing something we absolutely love—that calls to us—or if we will forever shelve that for what the world wants of us. What will it be, for you and me?

      Perhaps the answer is to follow our call, instead of bliss. Sure, it’s the same thing, but the optics are better for the person who knows what they want and seizes the moment attempting to achieve it. What is the difference between a start-up entrepreneur in the garage and a poet writing in a cabin in the woods? The former have better marketing budgets. We glamorize the chase for a personal fortune but mock the chase for personal enlightenment.

      Whatever our path is, whatever our call, we ought to feel the urgency to follow it immediately. For the rocks are getting closer and there’s no time to waste. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Songs of Freedom

      Old pirates, yes, they rob I
      Sold I to the merchant ships
      Minutes after they took I
      From the bottomless pit
      But my hand was made strong
      By the hand of the Almighty
      We forward in this generation
      Triumphantly
      Won’t you help to sing
      These songs of freedom?
      — Bob Marley, Redemption Song

      We forget, sometimes, the progress we’ve made generation-to-generation through the years. In my own lifetime I’ve seen the pivot towards acceptance and inclusion, and of course the strong, often violent reaction of those who don’t want to change. It’s always been this way. Still, we progress.

      Call me an optimist, but I take the long view on social change. There is a growing awareness of the stakes, even as there’s been growing momentum on the side of autocracy. Populism swings to and fro like a pendulum, fueled by whatever information or disinformation is consumed. The old ways die, but so do memories, and we often repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It can be frustratingly obvious how manipulated we all are at times.

      Once someone is free it’s pretty difficult to ask them to put the chains back on. That requires force. And there are plenty of examples of that in the world too. Places where democracy never took hold, or extremists grabbed power. It can happen here too, should we let the pendulum swing too far.

      Sure, I’m an optimist, but I can’t even convince some of my closest friends that the guy they want to be king is a conman. These are dangerous times for freedom. Never trust someone who tells you they know what’s best for you. They’re almost certainly talking about what’s best for them. But enough have bought in that half the country thinks we’d be just fine slipping backwards. American authoritarianism has legs and some powerful financial backing.

      Really, I can’t even believe I’m writing this blog. It seems so obvious to so many of us what the logical path is that it’s hard to see that we’re just consuming a completely different information diet than the other half of the country. Half. The. Country… Good God. If there’s one thing true about humans, it’s that we don’t always do what’s logical. And so it’s clear that we have to look to the next generation for help. I think that they’re paying attention. Aren’t they? Aren’t we?

      Logic only takes us just so far. Emotion is what always brings voters out on election day. Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?

    • Who I Am

      When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
      A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical
      And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily
      Oh, joyfully, oh, playfully watching me
      But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
      Logical, oh, responsible, practical
      Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
      Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical
      There are times when all the world’s asleep
      The questions run too deep
      For such a simple man
      Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?
      I know it sounds absurd
      Please tell me who I am
      — Supertramp, The Logical Song

      The beautiful thing about moving through a few decades is rediscovering the soundtrack of your youth well after you rejected it for the waves of more current music that followed. Supertramp was one of those late 1970’s bands that I loved for a time, forgot all about, and delight in all over again when I hear one of their best songs now. How is it a band with as many hits as they had isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame yet? Because they were surfing the wave instead of creating the next one? Spare me. Music stirs feelings deep within us, and Supertramp created some timeless masterpieces that still ring true. But I digress…

      The other beautiful thing about moving through a few decades is that sense of momentum that comes from focused living. We learn what works for us and what we’re good at. We lean into mastering a few skills that make us uniquely positioned to do well in some niche of life. And if we’re lucky, we collect a few people around us who like us for who we are.

      Who we are…. That’s the real trick, isn’t it? We spend a lifetime figuring it out, finding our way, embracing change for change’s sake, just to keep marching onward and upward. Until one day we hear an old song that makes us remember that part of us that we left behind that still whispers to us in the quiet moments.

      The thing is, most people don’t want to wrestle with such things as who they are, let alone who I am. Generation X kept all this stuff to ourselves, leaving it to these generations that followed us to put it all out there for the world to deal with. I admire that about them even as I roll my eyes at the drama in it all. Be who you are, I’ll do the same, and we’ll both agree to respect each other’s differences. It’s the provocation that irritates. It asks that we not be who we are but to reach across that invisible threshold and become something more. And sure, sometimes we need to do that too. Just meet us halfway.

      I’m not much of a musician, for I was afraid to pursue it for where it might have brought me once. But I know it’s in me still, as untapped energy put into other places. Writing was once like that for me too, but now I regularly dabble in words. The beautiful thing about moving through a few decades is we have the time to let go of the things that were holding us back from ourselves. From who we really are. Less sensible, perhaps, but possibly more wonderful. Beautiful. Magical.

    • Time to Check the Dial

      I raise my hand and touch the wheel
      Of change
      Taking time to check the dial
      — Cat Stevens, Lilywhite

      Are we halfway through another month? We ask, “where does the time go?” while all along we know; we know. These are days to remember, if we’d only stop rushing through them as if each isn’t precious.

      We make too much of such things as time, instead of just living in it. We calculate the time it takes, the time since, the time too. We ought to focus on the seasons and the tides and the incremental changes that come with staying with something long enough to be aware of what’s different now. Awareness matters so very much—why do we distract ourselves so often, that things slip away in the absence of attention?

      This trip around the sun we’re all collectively on is full of the memorable and the forgettable, but they’re our shared moments just the same. I’m learning to stop rushing so much. I’m learning to slow down. Still, time flies just the same. And there’s that word again.

    • A Great Day Not to be Dead (With the Egopantis and Thee)

      I thought about my car crash and my close call
      I started getting sentimental
      I said, I love this house, I love you guys
      I even love my rusty old car outside
      And I’m so happy to be alive with you
      Let’s do all the things we always said that we would do
      ‘Cause it’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      It’s a great day
      And it’s a great day to not be dead
      — Don White, Great Day

      “The Bull Run has been a Tavern for centuries and was the first stop on the Boston-to-Albany Stagecoach route in the 1800s.” — History of the Bull Run Restaurant

      Mounted to the fireplace near the bar of The Bull Run is the head of a creature they call the egopantis. When you see it, you’ll never really forget it, mostly because your first and last reaction when seeing it is, “What the hell is that thing?” Could it be a bear or a buffalo with a distinctive facial birth defect? Or someone’s art project made eternal? The tall tales told by the establishment are enjoyable but only lead to more questions. The only certainty as we navigate fact and fiction in this complicated world is that most answers are a load of bull. So we’d clearly come to the right place.

      That we go through our lives with so few opportunities to see good friends over good food and fun live music is unfortunate. Life really should be a celebration; a forever birthday to mark the miracle of our dance through this time and place together. Life really is what we make of it. So we made our way to the quiet town of Shirley, Massachusetts for a night of live music with the beautiful comedic soul Don White. And we found some magic. Not just a strange bit of taxidermy on the wall magic, but the kind of magic that happens when you gather around a table with some of your favorite people in the world to enjoy some live music. We all remember the worst days of the pandemic when we’d wish for such moments to come back again. Here we are.

      A place as old as The Bull Run has seen a lot of characters come through its doors. A night out with Don White, the edopantis and thee was another layer on the life experience cake. We were simply the latest weary world travelers who stopped in for the night. We may not be able to get a room at the inn like we might have once upon a time, but we can surely have a memorable evening. Memories are what stay with us, after all, so let’s do all the things we always said that we would do. We are history makers one and all.

      Egopantis decked out for St. Patrick’s Day

    • Hopeful Endeavors

      “Hours are like diamonds, don’t let them waste” — The Rolling Stones, Time Waits for No One

      “Remember that your real wealth can be measured not by what you have, but by what you are.”
      ― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

      I sat with this blog post a beat longer, deciding for just a moment to finally stop using this particular time to write and instead do something else with it. It’s an eternal theme of where and when to use one’s time. Who’s to say this is the best use of either of ours, dear reader? Yet it could surely be used in worse ways. How do we spend the wealth of our precious time? Surely, time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me… or thee.

      The answer, I believe, is to spend our time becoming. When becoming we are investing in a future self that is somehow better than the current version, assuring something of a better future. Investing is a hopeful endeavor in ourselves. It’s fair to then ask ourselves, what are we doing with our hours, and will spending them doing this improve my lot? To throw away time is one of the greatest of sins against the self, isn’t it? Yet we all do it.

      Looking back on the breadcrumbs that trace my journey to here, I see who I am and who I once was. I’ve become a better version of myself than the character I was then. But I am by no means a finished product. No, I’m a work in progress just as you are. We may be hopeful in our endeavor to become something greater than who we are now, even as we recognize that some things are best left in the past. We aren’t getting any younger, but we may still find hope in our personal growth, whatever that means to us.

    • Leap (Right Now)

      Don’t wanna wait til tomorrow,
      Why put it off another day?
      One more walk through problems,
      Built up, and stand in our way ,ah
      One step ahead, one step behind me
      Now you gotta run to get even
      Make future plans, don’t dream about yesterday, hey
      C’mon turn, turn this thing around
      Right now, hey
      It’s your tomorrow
      Right now,
      C’mon,it’s everything
      Right now,
      Catch a magic moment, do it
      Right here and now
      It means everything
      — Van Halen, Right Now

      Another Leap Day is upon us. Seth Godin’s blog post today suggested this is a great opportunity to leap ourselves. I would suggest something similar. And shouldn’t we take our own advice? Be bold today. Do the thing that we’ve procrastinated on. We won’t have another Leap Day for four years. Imagine, what can we accomplish in that time? Leap.

      When such thoughts creep into my head, a playlist comes to mind. Really, there’s a playlist for everything in my world, and Leap Day is no exception. Today’s theme then must align with the day. What better tune to have in the back of your mind on this day than Right Now? So catch a magic moment. Do it right here and now.

      When we leap, we ought to have a rough idea where we might land. But all leaps have uncertainty to them. That’s why most people never leap at all, but shuffle along in life climbing from one safe landing to the next. That’s fine most days, but shouldn’t we shake it up now and then? Maybe once every four years isn’t enough leaping, but isn’t it a good place to start? We might find we like the journey all the more.