Today in Michigan it rained;
The sky turned a blue the shade
Of a deep, angry ocean
And the atmosphere cracked
Like someone quite large was
Ripping the sky in half.
It
Was
Beautiful.
Archive for June, 2005
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“Well, at least we can still pass for college students,” I said to Allison as we got out of the car in East Lansing, home to some forty-thousand-ish college-age kids at Michigan State University.
Well, I think we can pass… until I see a freshman. Damn, they look so small!
Or maybe I just look old.
We sat there amidst the relatively small numbers of college students (as it is the end of June and the majority of people don’t go to school then), and as I ate my quesadilla, I watched them. And I thought about this “grown-up” world I’ve been inhabiting for the past couple years, with my office cubicle and my commute downtown and my mortgage payment and my income taxes. And I said, “It’s obvious to me that college students didn’t create this world we live in.”
And I think it’s true — college students are idealistic and passionate, excited and laid-back. This “world” I’ve been living in is absolutely NONE of those things. It is an obvious byproduct of a baby boomer mentality, grown from their parents’ (and probably their parents’ parents) manifestations of industrialization and big business takeover (go watch Wall Street if you haven’t). It doesn’t care about vacations or family time — unless those things can be squeezed into evenings or 10-day windows around Christmastime. It doesn’t even really care about your personal well being, save the fact that you are “well enough to show up for work.” It’s machinistic and reductionistic and individualistic, and when I look at it I see a hopeless, writhing, self-propagating piece-of-shit that makes you crave a bit of Zoloft just so you can get through dinnertime.
And I fucking hate it. Perhaps that’s obvious.
Now, I don’t want to sound like the most curmudgeonly ancient 24-year-old you’ve ever met (too late?), reminiscing ALREADY about “how great my college days were” and that they were the “best time of my life” — how pathetically fatalistic is that; I might as well off myself now — but I can’t deny how much that period in my life influenced/changed/shaped/whatever’ed me. And I can’t ignore the fact that I truly believe people my age view the world very differently from the last couple generations. It’s like we’ve seen the consequences of their choices, and where one result is ludicrous amounts of money, the other is a sad emotional disconnect from their friends and family. I sincerely hope — and I believe it will — that by the time my age group is 60-something and effectively ruling the world, it will look completely different than it does now.
If you liked that, then try these…
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“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
– BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
I talk a lot about God here in this blog of mine. I must say, I wish he/she’d talk back once in awhile, because I haven’t heard a damn thing in a long damn time.
Now, you may say I’m just not listening (and you may be right), but that would bring up a good point: what does God sound like? When he/she talks to you, is he/she softspoken? Angry? Chatty? And how can you be sure it’s not just, well, an over-active imagination - or last night’s greasy pizza, for that matter - talking?
I think I talk a lot about God because I don’t “get” him/her. I really don’t. And I’m the kind of person that needs to talk to figure things out in my head. And since I don’t really have any friends to talk to right now (besides Allison, of course, but that should be understood), I have to talk here on ye ol’ blog.
I suppose I also figure that there’s not much else worth discussing at great lengths. What are we to spend our time on (I’m sure some of you may hate me for this)… professional sports? The weather? Politics? Now, I could probably justify an exception for music, as I am overwhelmingly obsessive about all things related to that topic, but even music eventually gets old unless it connects with some deeper implications and the whole “meaning of life” bit, for me at least. Which is, I suppose, why music remains my path; in my life the musical and the spiritual constantly intersect. (I suppose for other people, the other things I listed might intersect in the same fashion.)
Yesterday I went to a large church-type-gathering on the western side of Michigan called Mars Hill. I’ve been wanting to check this thing out for some time, as Rob Bell, the primary teacher there, has garnered a good deal of respect from me through various projects he’s worked on, articles he’s written, etc. The gathering itself takes place in an old-school run-down mall, with virtually no signs to let you know you’re in the right place until you get out of your car and walk to the door and discover you are, in fact, there. You walk through this time-capsule of a shopping experience circa 1974, and eventually get to what was undoubtedly one of the original department stores, hollowed out and filled with chairs, all facing the center square stage.
I’m not much for “church” anymore, I have to be honest. I don’t know what it is, but I’m just totally burned out on the lingo, the ritual, the people, the smiles, the songs, the everything. It all drives me crazy more than it does anything else. As you probably know, when people gather to “do” church, they do a number of things, but one that is almost always in the lineup is to sing. And sing they did, yesterday, and there I stood, because I’m not really much into participating anymore, either. But standing there… I’m not sure if it was the way the room was laid-out with the focus of everyone being on the center or what, but I felt the sound wash over me like a wave in the Pacific. It was a powerful, physical force that I couldn’t control and couldn’t stop; the only thing to be done was to let it roll.
And it was nice, actually.
I realized that although I wasn’t a part of this group of people — I was an outsider in all senses — but for that moment I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. Somehow, I knew the momentum of noise would carry me along with it to a peaceful place, whether I wanted to go or not… and that was OK with me.
Don’t ask me what this means, because I haven’t any clue. I’m on some kind of bizarre-ass journey called “life” and hell if I know what it’s “supposed” to be. But I think in that moment I determined to make a conscious effort to look at the world as an exciting adventure, not just a rusty merry-go-round. And that, for the time being, feels good.
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Doctor, you say there are no halos
Around the streetlights in Paris
And what I see is an aberration
Caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
To arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
To soften and blur and finally banish
The edges you regret I don’t see,
To learn that the line I called the horizon
Does not exist and sky and water,
So long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
Of parallel shafts of sun,
And now you want to restore
My youthful errors: fixed
Notions of top and bottom,
The illusion of three-dimensional space,
Wisteria separate
From the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
The Houses of Parliament dissolve
Night after night to become
The fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
Of objects that don’t know each other,
As if islands were not the lost children
Of one great continent. The world
Is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
Becomes water, lilies on water,
Above and below water,
Becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
And white and cerulean lamps,
Small fists passing sunlight
So quickly to one another
That is would take long, streaming hair
Inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
Burn to mix with air
And change our bones, skin, clothes
To gases. Doctor,
If you could only see
How heaven pulls earth into its arms
And how infinitely the heart expands
To claim this world, blue vapor without end.
– LISEL MUELLER
If you liked that, then try these…
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I guess it’s safe to say that I’ve been busy lately. Now, that’s no excuse for not writing, I realize, but it’s all I’ve got!
I’ve been back in Colorado for about a week now after my trip to Santa Barbara, California for the Durango Songwriter Festival / Label Showcase. I’ve needed a little time to process; it’s a pretty intense weekend, due to all the criticism (most of it constructive, but still) and “feedback” one receives on their art. Overall and in retrospect, it’s probably unnaturally good for an artist to receive this kind of analysis (self-inflicted and/or otherwise) but that doesn’t make it much easier. I’ve even had a lot of practice with this kind of thing, as when I lived on Martha’s Vineyard for that semester, pretty much all we did was criticize… everything.
A really great part (maybe even the best part) of the weekend was the friends I made; it’s always great to meet like-minded individuals, who, in some cases at least, also happen to be fantastic songwriters. I love having friends in all different places!
All to say that after the dust has re-settled a bit around the corners of my mind, I do think “it” went well. I think I made a good impression on the people that were there and in general, my songs were fairly well received, too. No, I’m not “signed” or anything yet, but that wasn’t really the expected response (hoped for, sure, but not expected). It’s just hard to say what will come out of an event such as this; it seems to me that things happen more gradually than we’d like, but patience and perspective affords us gratitude, which is never a bad thing.
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