Alexandersmap

    Category: Music

    • 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.

    • Outward Expression

      “I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.”
      ― Henry David Thoreau,       A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      There’s a tricky thing in writing—deep introspection is conveyed through outward expression. When you read a lot you stumble on some deeply damaged characters who had the courage to put it all out there on paper for others to see. I’ve mined myself similarly, but I don’t have the deep scars that others seem to have. Blame it on a good family growing up, but the fuel for the writing isn’t to draw out the pain of the past but rather to tap into the experience and intense gratitude of being alive at this time. That doesn’t mean there aren’t scars, how does anyone live an unsheltered life without scars? That which you once were is a memory that haunts you or spurs you towards becoming a better person. I’ve long ago buried the character I hated in myself, though he keeps trying to crawl out of his grave.

      Decide what to be and go be it.

      There’s a feeling that comes over you when you decide what to be. It’s like a magnet that pulls you in the direction you want to go in. My sailor and hiker friends know this, for it relentlessly pulls them towards their True North. I smile when someone questions why someone would put all their eggs in one basket. If you haven’t found your basket you can’t possibly know why others do what they do.

      “I don’t want to swim in a roped off sea.” — Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle

      We all have our calling. Do we listen to it or to the helpful guidance of others? When you find that direction, killing time on other things feels like you’re strangling yourself. Urgency and purpose demand your attention. The only way forward is deliberate action. Growing outward requires we stretch ourselves beyond what we once were, and then to keep doing it over and over again. To reach out towards where we want to be often means pulling away from what we once were.

    • Starting Over

      Well the road rolls out like a welcome mat
      To a better place than the one we’re at
      And I ain’t got no kinda plan
      But I’ve had all of this town I can stand
      And I got friends out on the coast
      We can jump in the water and see what floats
      We’ve been saving for a rainy day
      Let’s beat the storm and be on our way
      — Chris Stapleton, Starting Over

      There’s an interesting twist to writing a blog every day; you start having conversations with friends and family who know perfectly well that you write a blog every day, may read the very words that you write and offer commentary on those words the next time you see them. And what, dear writer, do you do with that? Do you carefully edit your blog posts? Shut it down and write anonymously? Or just say the hell with it and write whatever you want to write about? The answer, I think, depends on who you’ve become during your passage through time. This blog isn’t a journal, definitely not a diary, but well-meaning friends and family interpret each post in whatever way they will.

      With that in mind, beginning this blog post with the lyrics to Chris Stapleton’s Starting Over might seem risky, inviting all sorts of interpretation about the restless state of my wandering soul. This is the latest in a string of “hit the road” songs that stir the imagination, right there with Bob Seger’s Roll Me Away and Lord Huron’s Ends of the Earth. I could write a blog post on escapist songs that carry you from here to, well, there. The reason these songs stick is because they resonate. Secretly, we all want to fly, don’t we?

      This month the house was turned upside down as a few rooms are getting painted. One room grew to two, and now a third (it’s a slippery slope, this home remodeling business). When you start moving your collection of things, you get a sense of time spent in limbo. Some of that accumulated stuff has grown a thick layer of dust that you weren’t aware of. The funny thing about dust: it collects on the things that feel most permanent to you.

      Travel is a way of clearing the dust that accumulates on yourself. It sparks the imagination, changes perspective, and informs you about the world outside your comfort zone. Staying in one place just gives the dust a place to land. You ought to fly away now and then, just to feel the changes that have come over you.

      This week my father was moved from his home to a care facility to assess his dementia. It seems the accumulated dust in his brain is getting worse, and the only viable answer was for him to leave his nest and land somewhere else for a little while. It serves as a reminder that none of this is permanent, everything changes, and if you want to fly from the nest you’d best do it while you can. Every day you can start over, until the day you can’t.

    • Bluebirds in Winter (Playing the Long Game)

      Many moons I have lived
      My body’s weathered and worn
      Ask yourself how old you’d be
      If you didn’t know the day you were born
      Try to love on your wife
      And stay close to your friends
      Toast each sundown with wine
      And don’t let the old man in
      — Written by Toby Keith/sung by Willie Nelson, Don’t Let the Old Man In

      There are few things more beautiful than a bluebird set against snow on a brilliant, sunny day. But bluebirds don’t just randomly show up to brighten your snowy landscape. If you want bluebirds in winter you’ve got to give them a compelling reason to visit. The work starts in the longer and warmer days establishing a consistent and reliable place for them, to be rewarded when the days grow shorter.

      Age is an attitude. Sure, you might make a case for the gradual breakdown of the body, but with consistent effort you can control the rate with which the body breaks down. There are plenty of voices out there pointing towards habits and social norms dictating our long term health and vibrancy, not the number of trips around the sun. We all know people who defy expectations about age, bouncing around well into their 90’s and beyond. And we can rattle off examples of people who died too young, with the wheels coming off at a shockingly young age.

      We know there are no guarantees in this world, but barring accident or underlying hereditary conditions, when we die often comes back to how we live. Which makes you think, as you see the days fly by, how are you going to play this hand? What are the habits and norms that are going to dictate how we feel when we wake up tomorrow morning, or how we feel in five years? What can we do today to feel better in ten years than we feel now? Shouldn’t we focus on doing more of that?

      If we want to play the long game, we ought to walk away from the short term temptations that compromise our fitness tomorrow. Eat well, drink less, move more, experience something new every day and spend time with friends and loved ones. The long game means putting our bodies and minds in the best possible position to meet the future.

      Remember the old expression: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is right now. What are you building towards? Best to get started today. Plant that tree. It’ll give you a place to hang the bluebird feeder.

    • Moving on, Always

      What if we could stay together
      And simply move on day after day after day
      Sun and stormy weather
      You and I together
      Moving on always?
      — Ryan Montbleau, The Boa      t Song

      There’s a time warp experience to walking on the same beach with the same person from one year to the next. On an unusually warm Saturday in February I took a 3 mile walk on Hampton Beach with my bride. We had plenty of company, for everyone else had the same idea. Power walkers, casual strollers, hard core swimmers, horse riders, and seemingly every dog in New England chose to be on the same beach at the same time. But at low tide on that particular beach there’s no shortage of elbow room.

      I tend to celebrate quiet beaches more, but the people receded into the background on this walk. For it was a walk through time. Reflecting on the past, talking about the future, observing the present stepping across the fragile hourglass of life as we moved across the sand beneath us. She talked about time spent right in this very spot as a child years ago, the memory still fresh in her mind. I recalled a similar walk several years ago and her same observation, when we were both so different and yet the same. Everything changes on the beach, including the people who walk it.

      The parade of dogs kept bringing us back to the present. Dogs of all shapes and sizes celebrating the moment at hand. Dogs, like children, have a way of bringing you back to the present. And there we were, walking the beach, considering the deck of cards we’re playing at this moment in our shared life, knowing the challenges coming soon but assessing the opportunities too. You can cover a lot of ground walking the beach, even when you can see the end clearly from where you began.

      Sand and warm sunshine Saturday, snow on Sunday. Sun and stormy weather, all in one weekend. Such is New England. Life isn’t always a walk on the beach, but then again, on some precious few days, it is.

    • Meaningful Todays

      “So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists.” – Blaise Pascal

      Pascal died at the age of 39. His measure of time that was his was relatively short compared to the average lifespan today. But we all know the deal. No guarantees about tomorrow and all that. You may have read a blog post or two from this writer about it along the way.

      Shah-la, la-la-la-la live for today
      And don’t worry ’bout tomorrow hey, hey, hey
      — The Grass Roots, Let’s Live For Today

      Sure, let’s live for today, and make the most of it, but remember to hedge our bets about tomorrow. Don’t throw away your future being reckless with today, but also remember not to be reckless with today by staking all your hopes on a future that could fall away in a second. Make the most of this moment at hand, while keeping the 401(k) in the back pocket.

      Have you ever stood next to someone who radiated energy? Fully alive, vibrant, aware of the moment—living in the moment. Not delusional about the challenges life throws at you, but also not pissing it away in drudgery or low agency. Instead they dance with life. Grab the moment and make something memorable and meaningful of it. String together as many meaningful todays as you can muster. That’s not drudgery, that’s purposeful.

      Stick with what that which is ours alone. Live it with a gleam in your eye and a thirst for adventure. Making the most of what we have in this moment. Sounds a bit more fun than deferring to tomorrow, doesn’t it?

    • Can’t See the Open Road

      Mellow is the man who knows what he’s been missing
      Many, many men can’t see the open road
      — Led Zeppelin, Over the Hills and Far Away

      Huddled in a group at an Irish pub, four men scheming for the future: one free of obligations and ready to roam, one surfing the peak of his career and working to cash in before it crashes, one just riding the swell and hoping this time—this time— he’d caught the right wave, and me, a would-be writer and wanderer observing the human condition. I’m surfing my own wave, of course, but don’t we all dream of coming about, hoisting the main and sailing away instead?

      “We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

      Nowadays we can all see what we’ve been missing in YouTube videos, Instagram and Facebook posts, or wherever you choose to live vicariously through the lens of others. My own favorite footage often involves drones flying above stunning landscapes, as if I were flying myself. And don’t we all wish to fly?

      But the question is, do we wish to fly away from something or towards something? For life is short and we can’t waste our precious time running away from ourselves. Yet so many do, in distraction and debauchery and debate. It’s easy to run away, but impossible to really get away from that nagging discontent.

      Old friend Henry David Thoreau pointed out that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” He would also say that, “So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”

      In other words, life is change, everything is changing around us even as we debate what we ought to do with ourselves. Which brings me back to a constant refrain: We must decide what to be and go be it. And be content with that which we leave behind.