Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • Beyond the Same Place

      “For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature!…A man of mediocre talents always remains mediocre, may he travel or not–but a man of superior talents, which I cannot deny myself to have without being blasphemous, becomes–bad, if he always stays in the same place.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

      There are forces that work on you when you’re in the middle of travel. Time flexes, and the clock you’re familiar with slips off-kilter. Truthfully, it’s us that slips off-kilter, the clock remains indifferent. Travel forces adaptation and change. Those who stubbornly hold on to their routine aren’t rewarded with the benefit of transformation. Let the world wash over you and the old ways of thinking are swept away. You’re carried to new ideas and lifted to new places.

      In one evening of wine-fueled conversation I practiced German with Austrians, French with a well-travelled Frenchman and discussed the origins of Christian names with an Irish woman. Moments like that remain locked in your mind, even as it releases you from your previous way of looking at the world. We can never stay in the same place, we must reach beyond to grow.

      We’re all on a path of becoming something more than we might otherwise be. Travel done well is a shock to the system, allowing us to get past ourselves. It can’t help but make us better at our work, for it surely transforms us as people.

    • Love and Limes

      In the empire of the senses
      You’re the queen of all you survey
      All the cities all the nation
      Everything that falls your way
      There is a deeper world than this
      That you don’t understand
      There is a deeper world that this
      Tugging at your hand
      Every ripple on the ocean
      Every leaf on every tree
      Every sand dune in the desert
      Every power we never see
      There is a deeper wave than this
      Swelling in the world
      — Sting, Love Is the Seventh Wave

      We’re aware of the hate-mongers pitching their mantra of fear and scarcity and race theory. We’re aware of wars and desperation and greed even as we wake in relative peace, paying for the sins of the world with higher supply chain prices and a distinct and distressing shortage of limes due to climate change and drug cartels playing games. What are we to do in this scenario? Hoard? Buy more ammunition and higher fences?

      Maybe the answer is to be better ambassadors of truth and understanding. To embrace our community, warts and all, and make something of it. To go out into the world and embrace cultures distinctly different from our own and show them that we’re not as bad as what they’ve heard about us either. Maybe we ought to double down on love and respect.

      The carefully curated news washes over us, wave after unrelenting wave. We either accept their view of the world or we make one of our own. They say that the seventh wave is the largest of all, the one that surfers seek out and sailors watch out for. We might think of it as the wave that will wipe us all out or the wave that will wash away all the madness in the world. I guess the answer lies in which wave has the most mass and momentum as it heads for the beach.

      Creative optimism and a healthy dose of love ought to trump hate and madness. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. When it gives you limes make margaritas. But let’s stop all this bickering and enjoy a drink together. For we have work to do.

    • Get Outside

      If you can’t decide what you want to do
      If you can’t stand what people say to you
      If you can’t see when your eyes are open wide
      If you ask yourself what your doing and there’s no reply
      Get outside
      — Robert Palmer, Get Outside

      Sometimes you reach the end of the day and you don’t know what you’ve done with it. You check the boxes, have the conversations, do the work… and everything seems off anyway. These are days to get outside and feel the world.

      Yesterday, after entirely too much madness in my life, I walked outside to seek answers in the blooming lilacs. Like so many flowering woody plants their blooms are here today, gone tomorrow. Yet their fragrance is one of the most familiar of all. They make their mark on the world and recede from the scene as summer heat approaches.

      I want to tell them not to go. Stick around a bit longer. But of course this isn’t the way the world works. The lilacs remind us not to blink. It’s now or never, friend. Get outside and linger with them before your opportunity is gone. How many more lilac seasons do we have left in us anyway? We throw out our days as if our account is unlimited.

      Why do we spend so much of our time indoors when the world whispers to us in this way? We ought to be more present with the larger world. We ought to embrace the changes that wash over us whether we want to pay attention or not.

      The lilacs will surely return again next year—but will we be here to enjoy them? To every thing there is a season. The future is a fool’s game. Our moment is now. Get outside and find it.

    • Where Deep Roots Grow

      From the bottom of my heart
      Off the coast of Carolina
      After one or two false starts
      I believe we found our stride
      And the walls that won’t come down
      We can decorate or climb or find some way to get around
      Cause I’m still on your side
      From the bottom of my heart
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coast of Carolina

      Long-term relationships are about finding the space to grow together. We’ve all seen examples of couples who find a way to make things work because they want to make it work. We’ve seen the opposite too. The thing about walls is they’re always there—we either find a way around them or we let them close us off from the people who are most important for us.

      Relationships work when we break down barriers. They fall apart when we let the barriers define the relationship. None of us has to think too long about a friendship or romantic relationship that suffered from one or both parties seeing the differences of opinion but not the way around it. Nothing grows very well in a tight box.

      We live in a world that amplifies our differences. What might grow if we knocked down a few walls instead of throwing up more? The very question prompts a new level of thinking, doesn’t it? Thinking in possibilities instead of limitations opens us up for deeper relationships, wider experiences, and stronger bonds.

      It brings us to a place where deep roots grow.

    • Knowing the Songs

      I can see, it took so long just to realize
      I’m much too strong not to compromise
      Now I see what I am is holding me down
      I’ll turn it around
      Oh, yes, I will
      — Boston, Don’t Look Back

      When you go to a concert to see a band play, are you looking for new or familiar? Go to an Eagles or Paul McCartney concert and it’s a greatest hits collection where you know every song and everyone around you does too. It becomes a sing-along festival. Tasty, but not exactly pushing your boundaries.

      Think about the last time you went to see an up and coming band with all the buzz and you didn’t know any of their songs at all, but want to see what all the fuss is about. That was a voyage of discovery, one that carried you to places exciting and new. You knew you were going to know those songs soon enough when that band broke like a wave over the airwaves.

      That band that you’ve known for years knows the score. They want to play you the new stuff, because that’s what excites them the most. But they know people pay to see the songs they love performed live. So they layer in the new with the old, hoping the ratio is just right to keep the crowd from going flat.

      We humans play our own greatest hits in our head. We tell ourselves we’re going to change but stick with the same soundtrack we had on yesterday and the day before. Maybe we have a circle of fans around us that only want to hear our greatest hits and feel uncomfortable when we start to change. It’s easy to get trapped in that old soundtrack.

      The trick to turning things around is to layer in the new songs. Change a small habit, then another. Learn something new today and stretch even further tomorrow. Pretty soon you’ll find that you don’t look back so much anymore because you’re so busy becoming what you want to be next. We might even find that our best fans enthusiastically go along for the ride, changing with us.

    • It’s All Relative

      Are you having a long day
      Everyone you meet rubs you the wrong way
      Dirty city streets smell like an ashtray
      Morning bells are ringing in your ear
      Is your brother on a church kick
      Seems like just a different kind of dope sick
      Better off to teach a dog a card trick
      And try to have a point and make it clear
      You should know compared
      To people on a global scale
      Our kind has had it relatively easy
      And here with you there’s always
      Something to look forward to
      Our angry heart beats relatively easy
      — Jason Isbell, Relatively Easy

      When you want to reset your brain about minor inconveniences and perceived affronts, take a look at the rest of the world. Take a look at the people you care about wasting away with terminal illnesses. Get outside of yourself and see the pain in another’s eyes. Sure, we suffer too, but aren’t we getting off relatively easy compared to so many?

      I spent two hours on hold with an airline trying to apply a credit from one cancelled flight towards another flight that might end up being cancelled too. There was a time when I might have complained about this, embraced the indignities of modern economics, and pointed out the frustration of the moment for all to hear. I’m not that indignant anymore. What are our problems compared to others?

      There are no bombs dropping in the neighborhood at the moment. No tanks rolling across the landscape targeting my family and friends. We have food and shelter and our health, and a reasonable chance of having each again tomorrow and next year.

      We have it relatively easy. Isn’t that enough? Learn the rhythm of celebrating what we do have. Dance with the world outside our own heads.

    • To Let It Go

      If I could through myself
      Set your spirit free, I’d lead your heart away
      See you break, break away
      Into the light
      And to the day
      — U2, Bad

      When you think about the trajectory of U2 prior to the ubiquitous madness of Joshua Tree, it was Bad that became the song the crowd took possession of. The band carries it, always, but it soars with the collective energy of the crowd. It was the performance that everyone was talking about during Live Aid (at least until Queen took the stage). U2 grabs moments in that way, elevating a simple song about heroin addiction into so much more.

      This desperation
      Dislocation
      Separation, condemnation
      Revelation in temptation
      Isolation, desolation
      Let it go

      Each person who hears the call in Bad feels themselves in it. We never dabbled in drug addiction but we have our own demons. Listen to it now, with the perspective of a global pandemic and yet another war and the collective addiction of social media and its demand to pick sides. Listen to it now having lost something of yourself. Listen to it having seen parts of yourself slip away. It takes on a meaning it didn’t have in simpler times.

      Even with—especially with—this bruised and battered lens of 2022, the call is the same: To wake up and find hope somewhere above the darkness in the world. Above the darkness in ourselves. To let it go and set your spirit free. It remains a timeless call waiting to be heard.

    • The Place You Were Meant to Be

      Build a new house down by the sea
      Get to the place we were meant to be
      You’ll know it when you smile
      —       World Party, When the Rainbow Comes

      Do you ever wonder why people are drawn to the seashore? Is it the taste of salt, or the sound of waves crashing on the beach? These are lovely things indeed. But I think it’s also the place where our world opens up to the universe, where the view is the same for us today as it was for some soul living 10,000 years ago. And so long as we don’t screw it up it will be the same 10,000 years hence. All rivers flow to the ocean, and so must we.

      Ah, but what of the source? The rivers all flow from the highest points downward. And we often look up and wonder what we might find when we get there. For the mountains whisper differently than the sea, but no less persistently. When you walk amongst the peaks you feel like you might touch the sky, and the song in the wind feels as timeless as the crash of the ocean. Do we become breathless in the mountains from exertion or from awe? I should think both.

      The thing is, we tend to be drawn to the edges; both source and sea. Yet most people settle in between. Is this a compromise between the places we love, or simply a pragmatic nod to efficiency? When you live at one end or the other you necessarily have a longer journey to the middle, let alone to what lies beyond. Crops don’t grow in beach sand or on granite summits. Somebody has to keep things going in the middle. Call it a happy medium if you will. But does settling in the middle like everyone else bring you happiness, or is it just settling?

      Life pulls us in different directions, and most of us settle somewhere in the middle. But the magic resides at the edges of our comfort zone. And deep down you know you’ve reached the place you were meant to be when you smile.

    • Here in My Mold

      ‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life
      Tryna make ends meet
      You’re a slave to money then you die
      I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
      You know the one that takes you to the places
      Where all the veins meet yeah
      No change, I can change
      I can change, I can change
      But I’m here in my mold
      I am here in my mold
      But I’m a million different people
      From one day to the next
      I can’t change my mold
      No, no, no, no, no
      Have you ever been down?
      — The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony

      Do you hear Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” quote in your head reading the lyrics of Bitter Sweet Symphony? This song exploded in the mid-1990’s, becoming a theme song of sorts for Generation X and maybe some of those who followed. How do the lyrics hold up, almost three decades later? I think it depends on how well you’ve broken free of your mold.

      Breaking free of that mold you’ve been cast in and following your heart is reckless. The very idea of breaking free disrupts all you’ve built around you. For what is a mold but that? Our very place in this world is determined by where we place ourselves. Life is change and moving beyond our old self. We must grow and see where the road takes us. Where our heart takes us.

      Watching people you care about quickly turn from vibrantly alive to quickly sliding into the next triggers an urgency to break molds. To do the things you’ve been putting off and live today. This is what the stoics have been telling us all along. Memento Mori. Carpe Diem.

      Get after it already. Follow the road where all your veins meet. We can all change.

    • Holding the Love I’ve Known

      When my body won’t hold me anymore
      And it finally lets me free
      Where will I go?
      Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?
      Or tropical rain?
      Or snow from the heavens?
      Will I join with the ocean blue?
      Or run into a savior true?
      And shake hands laughing
      And walk through the night, straight to the light
      Holding the love I’ve known in my life
      And no hard feelings
      — The Avett Brothers, No Hard Feelings

      I’m watching four people in my family waste away before my eyes. We all have our time, but it still comes as a shock when that time is in such close proximity to now. When you’re the one holding it together for them and others you learn a few things about yourself. Mostly you learn to stop deferring and just say and do the things that need saying and doing.

      I’ve noticed some doubt and regret overwhelm those facing rapidly receding time on this earth. Life is unfair, we all see that and reconcile with it as best we can, but it’s particularly unfair for those who have the rug pulled out from under them in the prime of life. You mean to have that conversation, experience that moment, see that place for the first time or maybe for one last time, and realize that you’ll never reach it.

      What are we to do, knowing we haven’t done all we want to do, but celebrate what we did have the chance to do? To hold on to the love we have known? For that’s all that matters in the end. We make the ripple we make, and hope that the world might feel the urge to surf it. Life isn’t the accumulation of stuff or places or rungs on the career ladder, it’s the people you love in this world.

      We all have our time, sometimes far sooner than we ever imagined. We either hold a grudge with the universe or dance in the time we have left. No hard feelings—only love.