Alexandersmap

    Tag: Mark Knopfler

    • Happily Ever Afters

      He said, “Don’t you know I love you, oh, so much
      And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?”
      She said, “Don’t you know that storybook loves
      Always have a happy ending”?
      Then he swooped her up just like in the books
      And on his stallion they rode away
      — Mark Knopfler & Willy Deville, Storybook Love

      A few days ago I took all the serious books I’ve committed myself to finishing and stacked them gently to the side in favor of the delightful, beautifully-illustrated gem The Princess Bride by William Goldman. If you’ve seen the movie and memorized the lines, the book will be as comfortable as watching it just one more time. And yet the book is mesmerizingly wonderful and transformative on its own. You can’t help but visualize scenes and the actors who say the lines, but there’s so much more to delight in than the movie could possibly offer in 98 minutes, which is the official length of Rob Reiner’s masterful tribute to the book. And it reminds us that books are one of humanity’s greatest contributions to the greater good.

      God knows we could use more greater good. And that’s where you and I come in. We may rise above the dismal Fire Swamp we find ourselves forced to march through and ride off on our own white horse with our friends, to a brighter future together. Looking around at the world today, it surely feels sometimes like we’re deep in a dismal swamp we may never get out of. It’s fair to wonder sometimes, just how the hell do we carry on? Happily ever afters are never guaranteed in this lifetime, but we must live with the hope of a brighter tomorrow to manage the lift we’ve been assigned today.

      And that’s the lesson we’re all learning, isn’t it? Some pages are magical, some quite horrible, but most days lie somewhere in between—a steady march to hope. To face each day with love in our heart and a bit of courage is the way through the dark days to that brighter tomorrow. The irony is that chasing happiness often leads to misery, but following our heart to something greater within ourselves usually leads us to the place we dreamed of being all along.

    • Getting to Deeper Work

      “In an age of network tools… knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction. Larger efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business strategy or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that produce muted quality…. Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

      I think the reason I get up early is to think, uninterrupted. And when I am interrupted, by other early risers or by something as simple as the cat meowing for food my own deep thinking is disrupted, often to a point where I have to put away the work and find a way to reset myself. The beautiful thing about posting a blog every day is I’m forced to find a way through the shallow pool I find myself swimming in back to deeper waters, distractions be damned. But the work never feels the same.

      Noise-cancelling headphones help a lot. When I go deep I’ll play the same song on repeat until I’m done with whatever project I’m committed to finishing. For me, two songs work particularly well for this, Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme (no surprise if you know what my favorite movie is) and Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune because they both quietly soar and have no lyrics to draw me out of my focused state. After years of this trick, playing one of these songs becomes Pavlovian in snapping my mind to attention.

      Long walks in nature help reset the mind when you find yourself in frenetic shallowness, and I have my go-to spots for this too. Walking helps you sort out the puzzle pieces in your subconscious mind, putting all the pieces on the table and shuffling them one step at a time. If the walk goes well you sort things out just enough. But sometimes I find myself dwelling on another puzzle altogether, and realize the distraction wasn’t swimming shallow at all but this elephant in the room that you’ve got to remove before you can properly focus on the original project. Long walks help sift the pieces enough for you to see what you’ve been staring at all along.

      Another trick of the trade that countless brilliant minds subscribe to is strict daily application of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Write whatever comes out of your mind onto the page for three pages in a gushing stream of consciousness until you’ve gotten all the noise out of yourself, and then shift to creative output. I’ve tried this a few times but find myself frustrated by the time spent on Morning Pages that I could be spending on the work itself. The fault isn’t in the process but in my commitment to it. Enough people swear by it that it must work, and to go deeper I might have to recommit to this process myself.

      “The way to live is to create.
      Die Empty.
      Get every idea out of your head and into reality.”
      – Derek Sivers,       How to Live

      Whatever gets you there, deeper work is where we mine the very best of ourselves. Eliminate as many distractions as possible, retreat to your proverbial cabin in the woods and do the work. While there’s still time.

    • Double Four Time: Dire Straits in Four Songs

      October makes me gravitate to a certain style of music. I grow more reflective and pensive as we move past harvest time and into a time of frosts and falling leaves, and my playlist tends to reflect this mood. Van Morrison, U2, Steely Dan all start appearing more than they did in the warmer months with longer days. And so too does Dire Straits. Four in particular become standards of Autumn evenings, which grow longer by the day. A good time for roaring fires and a dram of your favorite scotch.

      Sultans of Swing
      “You check out guitar George, he knows-all the chords
      Mind, it’s strictly rhythm he doesn’t want to make it cry or sing
      They said an old guitar is all, he can afford
      When he gets up under the lights to play his thing”

      This one has to be there, of course. Perhaps you might make a case for Money For Nothing as the “hit” to include on the list, but I’m partial to their first big song. Packed with relentless energy, this one is a great driving with fallen leaves scattering about behind you song. Or maybe early in the evening before the coals really start glowing and reflecting the truth right back at you.

      Down To The Waterline
      “Up comes a coaster fast and silent in the night
      Over my shoulder all you can see
      Are the pilot lights
      No money in our jackets and our jeans are torn
      Your hands are cold but your lips are warm”

      One of those songs that starts in a moody, almost sultry place. But you know its going to burst into flames of passion soon enough, and it doesn’t disappoint. You know these guys lived the portrait they’re painting in this song, going down to the waterline to have some quiet intimacy. The song ends way too soon, like those waterline visits probably did.

      Brothers in Arms
      “Through these fields of destruction
      Baptism of fire
      I’ve watched all your suffering
      As a battle raged high
      And though they did hurt me so bad
      In the fear and alarm
      You did not desert me
      My brothers in arms”

      As a student of the violent history of humanity, I get a catch in my throat when I hear this song. I’ve never been to war, never been in the military for that matter, but I pay attention when those who have tell what it was like. I’ve heard this song resonates with veterans, and while I’ll never fully understand what they went through, I think I can understand why.

      On Every Street
      “There’s gotta be a record of you someplace
      You gotta be on somebody’s books
      The lowdown, a picture of your face
      Your injured looks
      The sacred and profane
      The pleasure and the pain
      Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
      And it’s your face I’m looking for on every street”

      Haunted by someone you once knew, or wanted to know. If The Police’s Every Breath You Take was a “stalker song”, this is a song of longing unfulfilled. And who hasn’t felt that? As Mark Knopfler guitar songs go, this one is right up there on my list of favorites, along with Sultans of Swing and Wild Theme from his solo catalog.