Anyone who reads my daughter's blogs knows that she majored in film in college and is a sharply opinionated, highly critical movie consumer. We have had endless conversations about film in general, and in many places we are in agreement. There are, of course, places where we disagree and probably the strongest disagreement we have regarding film direction is the Coen Brothers.
Now I love the Coen Brother's body of work. I think that they approach each film using a different culture to stage their story in and with keen accuracy, peg that culture exactly every time. They have a very odd but dry sense of humor that entertains me a lot, and I'm not much of a tolerant comedy viewer. I want smart comedy, not slapstick or broad stroked sophomoric humor -- I have no patience for that. Their comedy rests in the decisions that their characters have to make throughout some admittedly absurd positions that they find themselves in. Their characters are broken people in many cases, making bad decisions that land them in the worst possible circumstances and then, when trying to rectify these things, force themselves into even worse situations.
The Coen Brothers' strength is in their choice of settings, their characterizations and in their direction of the actors; the characters carry the stories and do it well. The images that come into my mind when I think of the Coen Brothers always make me smile: Holly Hunter as the poor county detective who wants a baby so badly, in one of their early films, Raising Arizona. She falls in love with a criminal, Nicholas Cage, she is booking in the jailhouse. They devise a scheme to kidnap a baby that continues to fall into pieces with every ticking minute of the film. John Goodman, a frequent player for the Coen Brothers, climbing out of a hole in the ground after tunneling out of a prison to go visit Nicholas Cage. This enrages Holly Hunter, who sees him as a threat to the baby, when all he really wants to do is put his gang back together and get on with the business of his life of crime. John Goodman shines in the Coen Brothers films; I see him walking down the flaming hotel hallway in Barton Fink, the ruthless, matter of fact serial killer who befriends John Turturro, stuck in a fleabag hotel trying and failing to be a Hollywood writer in a time when all writers in Hollywood were scrambling to avoid being branded as a Communist. I can see the two of them again in O Brother Where Art Thou, a most amusing retelling of Odyssey, set in Mississippi in the early 1900's, where John Goodman, fronting as a bible salesman, lures George Clooney and and Tim Nelson into the woods and beats them silly and robs them of all their money. This movie was really well done, every element of the Odyssey was present in odd but interesting ways. And, of course, one cannot discuss this film without mentioning the brilliant performance by George Clooney, an actor from whom I think the Coen brothers have elicited some of his best performances. His dialogue in this film is just priceless and he plays his character in an understated but very approachable way. I actually saw this film two days in a row in the theater. After I watched it the first time, I came home, collected my boyfriend and his brother and said "you HAVE to watch this film" and I went and sat through a second showing. The soundtrack won numerous awards and was loaded with beautiful music from bluegrass to Alison Krause singing amazing spiritual songs that tied together everything from a baptism in a river to the Sirens singing on the Rocks, intentionally diverting Everett Ulysses MCGill from his quest. Every piece of this film ties back to the Odyssey, from the names of the characters to the places that they end up. If I want to connect to someone regarding this film, all we have to say is Dapper Dan, the pomade George Clooney obsessively put in his hair or "RUNNOFT", which was John Turturro's cousin's way of saying just what it sounds like when describing where his wife went and, of course, George Clooney looking nervously down at the sheriff hunting these chain gang escapees getting ready to set fire to a barn they are hiding in and saying "Boys, I think we're in a tight spot."
The Coen Brothers have used some of the best actors in the business and simply put then in outrageous positions and coaxed them along the journey to extricate themselves from increasingly more complex situations. Gabriel Byrne, the brooding and mysterious Tom Reagan, in the noir stylized mob film, Miller's Crossing; the man who you wonder whether he has any soul until the final moments of the film. Jeff Bridges, the Dude, in the Big Lebowski; a stoner who is just trying to get his rug back. I see him laying in his bathtub, smoking a joint, when he is invaded by a team of "nihilists" who drop a ferret in the tub with him. As he is thrashing around, protecting his "Johnson", the "nihilists" threaten to come back and cut it off if he doesn't produce their cash, which is in his car in the police impound lot, sans the cash, of course. Tom Hanks, in an outrageously over the top, yet convincing performance of a Southern con man in the remake of The Ladykillers. He is seeking, with a motley team of reprobates, to tunnel from an elderly African American woman's home, strongly portrayed by Marva Munson with grace and integrity, into a casino repository. Bottom line in this film, almost everybody dies. And what can I say about Tommy Lee Jones in the stark and riveting version of Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men. His powerful portrayal of the county sherriff, who faces some of the most harrowing situations he has ever experienced, calmly moving forward to resolve the issues, is unforgettable. This film was so absorbing, that I can honestly say, I cannot remember breathing for the entire duration of the movie.
Well, I wrote this a little backwards here, but I have to talk about the Coen Brothers use of setting. The first time I watched Fargo, I thought I would die laughing at how accurate they portrayed the upper Midwestern culture. Now, to be fair, this is where they are from, however I am a New Englander who has familiarity with this culture from a 5 year sojourn in the Minneapolis area. The image that will never leave my mind from this film is Frances McDormand, a wonderful actress who frequently works with the Coen Brothers, standing staunchly in her Sorels and parka. A heavily pregnant policewoman, calmly leveling a gun at Peter Stormare who is intently shoving Steve Buscemi's dismembered leg into a wood chipper, just doing her job. Everything from the way people interacted with one another to the types of food they were eating all spoke clearly of the place this story unfolds. The Hudsucker Proxy, set in the 50's in New York City, tells the tale of stock manipulation, conscienceless corporate machinations and a merciless plot to take advantage of a naive young mail room employee, played in a very endearing manner by Tim Robbins. The look and feel of the city was very believable, once again the attention to detail, from the clothes they wore to the places the characters went as the plot unfolds, struck me as cleanly accurate. I grew up very close to NYC; it is the city I know best and, once again, they had it nailed. My favorite quote from this film is Tim Robbins, now the company's CEO, selling the board on his invention, the hula hoop, by saying: "you know,for the kids". Their films in California settings, all set in different time periods, from The Man Who Wasn't There to Barton Fink to Intolerable Cruelty, all pick up some of the superficiality of Southern California culture in an accurate manner. Everything from the costumes to the characterizations of the people in the stories just smack of the laid back yet shallow California stereotypical behaviors.
So the question remains, why does my daughter so intensely dislike this body of work that I love so very dearly? She would tell you that all the Coen Brothers' movies are the same; that they tell the same story over and over in the same way. Of course, I always beg to differ and disagree with this assessment. We are both strong minded, stubborn people with hard held opinions,and I simply cannot get her to see the fun in the quirky characters, the incredibly bad decisions they make and the complete disasters they create for themselves. The unexpected twists and turns in the plots and the amazing strength in the portrayal of the settings are always entertaining to me, but, alas, not to my daughter. It is odd to me, because there certainly are directors whose work we both love, that also always create quirky characters in odd situations that can make one squirm while watching them extricate themselves from their situations. John Waters and David Lynch come to mind as two examples of directors whose films we both adore and bear some similarity to the oddities at hand here.
It is a debate that I have long since ceased having with her, although it continues to occupy my mind as a disconnect that just shouldn't be. We each have our likes and dislikes when it comes to the subject of film, and rarely is the time when we can move each other off dead center regarding our opinions of these works. I have quite a few people who always willingly want to come and view the latest offering of the Coen Brothers with me, but, alas, my daughter is never one of those people. I can never share with her my delight in their latest work or even broach the subject of a discussion on this topic. I could argue the point that many directors bear a similar style in each of their pieces, whether they be suspense, horror, drama, mystery or comedy, but this argument seems to carry little weight with her. Not wanting to have an ongoing argument with my progeny, I have stopped attempting to draw her into the Coen Brothers fold and accept that this is something we will never share together.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Music = Life
Yeah, I stole that phrase from Hot Topic. It says it all for me. Every song I hear, I can remember either an incident in my life or the first time I heard the song or the feeling I had at some point when hearing that song; where I was, what I was doing. I think of my mind as a relational database with a complex index, and music is very much a part of that index.
How to discuss the intense importance music has in my life? There are so many ways, so I will explore a few of them here.
First is the strong flash of memory I will have when hearing a song. I can picture that incident or place or person that evoked feelings in me mimicked in the song. When I hear "Wild Horses", I can smell salt water, feel the sand beneath my feet and remember a hellish night when I was a sophomore in high school, tripping on the beach, and someone decided they didn't "like me" and tried to pick a fight with me. Her name was Gail and I remember the psychedelic terror I felt, as I was a lover, not a fighter (at least in that part of my life). When I hear "Like a Rolling Stone", I can see myself as a 12 year old, walking down Sterling Road in Trumbull, CT, listening to the song on my transistor radio, held up to my ear and contemplating the nature of the grating sound of Bob Dylan's voice as opposed to the delight and immediate identification I felt with the lyrics of the song. "Terrible Lie" brings me to the NIN Self Destruct Tour, standing there, mesmerized by Trent Reznor, swaying to the music and singing at the top of my lungs, totally in love with him and his music. I can still feel the energy in the room, it was so powerful as to be overwhelming and I see my beautiful, young daughter next to me, sharing and delighting in the experience. I can see the clothes we were wearing, I can smell the crowd; the sweat and the testosterone just oozing all over the place. The smoke filled room was like a complete break with reality, as if we were the only people on earth and this was the surreal moment to be in, right here, right now. "What a Wonderful World" sends me to 1998, on July 4th, sitting on the levee in front of the arch in St Louis and watching the fireworks over the river. "Shine on, you Crazy Diamond" carries me to the deck of my house in Vermont in 1981, standing there, listening to it blasting on my stereo and looking out over the mountain I just bought, absolutely delighted with the awesome natural beauty and the dramatic buildup of that song in my ears, my arms held out wide, welcoming the experience and my new home. There are so many of these, almost every song evokes a memory, and I could fill up a hundred blogs with these memories.
Many times the memories are attached to live performances by the artists. I mentioned one of those above, NIN, and those who know me know that I am obsessed by live music and will spend many dollars going to see musical performances that I feel I can't miss. I have traveled across state lines, across a thousand miles just to attend a performance I needed to hear. I have been going to concerts since I was 10, and I can recall everything from Jimi Hendrix to the Doors, the Four Seasons to Charles Mingus and Taj Majal. This is probably my most strongest addiction. There simply isn't anything I have ever felt that comes close to the energy that is generated between an artist on stage and the reaction in the audience. It can be so powerful as to stagger me or bring me to tears or to dance until I want to drop and to just laugh in delight. What can be better than the incredible power of Metallica on a stage and the amazing connection they have with their audience; you can just feel the love and the excitement right down to your bones shaking from the volume. Or to sit in a symphony hall and listen to a Beethoven Symphony being performed, where you can hear a pin drop in the audience and see how they are completely absorbed in every sound coming from the orchestra. How can I describe the shiver of delight I feel when I am at a performance and the artist picks exactly the song I wanted to hear? Many songs will evoke artists' performances for me and, again, if I listed them all, I would fill up pages and pages of these memories. I have a collection of ticket stubs that dates back decades and I treasure every one of those performances; I can recall every one of them and hear them in my head, see them in my mind and most importantly, I can FEEL them as if they happened yesterday..
Then, of course, there are the breakup songs. Everyone has them; I'm sure of it. I have at least one attached to every breakup, with possibly one exception. These are songs that will immediately overwhelm me with the feeling of sadness I felt when they were adopted as a breakup song. Once I made a cassette tape of all of them, and found that I really couldn't listen to all of them like that, so I chucked it after creating it. A partial list of these songs would include: No Regrets, Tom Rush; Wish You were Here, Pink Floyd; You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones; Missing You, John Waite; Flyaway, Joan Osborne and Jesse, Joan Baez. It doesn't matter how long ago the breakup was, hearing these songs will always evoke sadness and a lump in my throat, if not tears in my eyes. These are the sad breakup songs, there are also angry breakup songs. My current favorite that my daughter shared with me is called Aftermath by a band named Battery. It has surpassed You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette as my favorite pissed off breakup song.
But that is the purpose of songs, I believe. It is to express an emotion, a feeling about an incident, a statement of position on an issue; there are multiple reasons that drive someone to write a song. Sometimes that purpose isn't so clear and sometimes it shines out, as clear as the blue sky in Vermont on a beautiful summer day. Songs, of course, are open to interpretation, and you may not hear in a song what the writer heard when they wrote it. Actually this is quite common, and there are many artists who won't discuss the "meaning" of their lyrics, preferring to allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. So, following that train of thought, I "use" songs to express the emotions and incidents in my own life. I feel a connection to the artist who wrote the song and a sense of appreciation that they were so incredibly capable as to connect me to my world with something as beautiful and wondrous as music.
So, I sought to share this appreciation and wonder with my child. I began singing to her while she was still in the womb, and have continued that practice for all the years we have shared together. Bedtime always included a song along with a book,and I sang her folk songs and children songs and love songs, everything I could muster up in my arsenal to entertain her and share with her the sounds of music. There was always music playing in our house, and she heard music from many decades in her first years. She was at her first live concert at the ripe old age of two, when we drove from Vermont to New York City to take her to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan at Carnegie Hall. It was an evening performance, and the first time she was ever in NYC. Her father and I each had a death grip on her hands, while she walked along, staring up in wonder at the very tall buildings she had never seen before. It is, of course, quite a different environment than the mountain she lived on, and I could see her fascination with the Big Apple, all the concrete and the buildings, all the sounds and smells, the myriad crowd hustling by her as we walked her from the deli we took her to eat dinner to the concert hall. As far as I could see, she was the only toddler in the audience, and I was as delighted with her reaction to the music as I was with the music itself. She stood on her seat and danced the night away, entertaining both her parents and the people around us. We drove her to Tanglewood when she was four, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra performs in the summer. I specifically chose that night because they were going to perform Beethoven's Ninth, and after hearing a rousing performance of Holtz' The Planets, there was an announcement of a program change and the 9th wasn't going to be performed. I was dismally disappointed, when, to my delight, the reason for the change was announced and Itzhak Perlman took the stage and filled the night with the beautiful sounds of his virtuoso violin performance, accompanied by Yo Yo Ma, who,of course, works with the BSO. We laid on a blanket outside with a picnic dinner and just gloried in the joyous melodic sounds coming from the stage. As she grew older, I began to take her to more and more concerts, to the point where ALL my vacation time and money was spent going to concerts, taking her and her friends along for the fun. One of the most joyous and gratifying days of my life was the day when she returned the favor and brought me some new music I hadn't heard before. She handed me a tape called Rage Against the Machine and I smiled a broad smile, thanked her and we continued on our constant concert quest, including, of course, a rousing and inspiring performance of Rage at the Wallace Arena in Fitchburg, MA. We continue to attend performances today when we can, and I always enjoy sharing a musical experience with my favorite person. I am happy that she has adopted my love for music. Unfortunately, she did not get my ability to sing or play music, but that does not diminish the fact that she has the love for music that I do.
Performance, that is where I will end this discussion. I learned to play the organ at the age of six, and took organ lessons for the better part of 10 years. I could sight read, play and sing songs, and did so for the entertainment of my family. Then, I stopped. I continued to sing along with music in my vast collection, but the performance of music was absent in my life until two years ago. I began to sing with my good friend, who is a singer and rhythm guitar player. We sound really good together, and slowly, we began to build up a repertoire of songs and an act that we took public. I have found this to be an enormous stress reducer and something that generates a large amount of joy in my life. Stage performance is something that I am still learning about every day, and I definitely glory in it. I love singing and having the opportunity to get up on a stage and mic up the performance is a unique and delightful experience that brings me great happiness. I hope to be able to continue to do this for a long time to come. My partner has been encouraging me to begin to write music, and so far, the verses come out sounding like I'm a sophomore in high school again, where I wrote most of my poetry. I am keeping at it, in hopes that my thoughts can be better and more maturely expressed and I can actually produce a song. This will be the pinnacle of achievement for me, and I am very grateful for my partner's support and patience while I feel my way along this unfamiliar but yet oddly familiar road. I am still finding my voice and sing cover songs; it is still most entertaining and I love every second of it. My daughter joins in the fun by assisting me in buying stage clothes and helping to make me the "rock star" she says I have always been. It's all wonderful and new and exciting, easily the best thing I am currently doing in my life. Making music as opposed to experiencing it contains an entirely new set of feelings and I am simply in love with it. It feels as if I am completing the circle and this just feels right to me. It completes my lifetime love affair with music and makes me feel whole.
How to discuss the intense importance music has in my life? There are so many ways, so I will explore a few of them here.
First is the strong flash of memory I will have when hearing a song. I can picture that incident or place or person that evoked feelings in me mimicked in the song. When I hear "Wild Horses", I can smell salt water, feel the sand beneath my feet and remember a hellish night when I was a sophomore in high school, tripping on the beach, and someone decided they didn't "like me" and tried to pick a fight with me. Her name was Gail and I remember the psychedelic terror I felt, as I was a lover, not a fighter (at least in that part of my life). When I hear "Like a Rolling Stone", I can see myself as a 12 year old, walking down Sterling Road in Trumbull, CT, listening to the song on my transistor radio, held up to my ear and contemplating the nature of the grating sound of Bob Dylan's voice as opposed to the delight and immediate identification I felt with the lyrics of the song. "Terrible Lie" brings me to the NIN Self Destruct Tour, standing there, mesmerized by Trent Reznor, swaying to the music and singing at the top of my lungs, totally in love with him and his music. I can still feel the energy in the room, it was so powerful as to be overwhelming and I see my beautiful, young daughter next to me, sharing and delighting in the experience. I can see the clothes we were wearing, I can smell the crowd; the sweat and the testosterone just oozing all over the place. The smoke filled room was like a complete break with reality, as if we were the only people on earth and this was the surreal moment to be in, right here, right now. "What a Wonderful World" sends me to 1998, on July 4th, sitting on the levee in front of the arch in St Louis and watching the fireworks over the river. "Shine on, you Crazy Diamond" carries me to the deck of my house in Vermont in 1981, standing there, listening to it blasting on my stereo and looking out over the mountain I just bought, absolutely delighted with the awesome natural beauty and the dramatic buildup of that song in my ears, my arms held out wide, welcoming the experience and my new home. There are so many of these, almost every song evokes a memory, and I could fill up a hundred blogs with these memories.
Many times the memories are attached to live performances by the artists. I mentioned one of those above, NIN, and those who know me know that I am obsessed by live music and will spend many dollars going to see musical performances that I feel I can't miss. I have traveled across state lines, across a thousand miles just to attend a performance I needed to hear. I have been going to concerts since I was 10, and I can recall everything from Jimi Hendrix to the Doors, the Four Seasons to Charles Mingus and Taj Majal. This is probably my most strongest addiction. There simply isn't anything I have ever felt that comes close to the energy that is generated between an artist on stage and the reaction in the audience. It can be so powerful as to stagger me or bring me to tears or to dance until I want to drop and to just laugh in delight. What can be better than the incredible power of Metallica on a stage and the amazing connection they have with their audience; you can just feel the love and the excitement right down to your bones shaking from the volume. Or to sit in a symphony hall and listen to a Beethoven Symphony being performed, where you can hear a pin drop in the audience and see how they are completely absorbed in every sound coming from the orchestra. How can I describe the shiver of delight I feel when I am at a performance and the artist picks exactly the song I wanted to hear? Many songs will evoke artists' performances for me and, again, if I listed them all, I would fill up pages and pages of these memories. I have a collection of ticket stubs that dates back decades and I treasure every one of those performances; I can recall every one of them and hear them in my head, see them in my mind and most importantly, I can FEEL them as if they happened yesterday..
Then, of course, there are the breakup songs. Everyone has them; I'm sure of it. I have at least one attached to every breakup, with possibly one exception. These are songs that will immediately overwhelm me with the feeling of sadness I felt when they were adopted as a breakup song. Once I made a cassette tape of all of them, and found that I really couldn't listen to all of them like that, so I chucked it after creating it. A partial list of these songs would include: No Regrets, Tom Rush; Wish You were Here, Pink Floyd; You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones; Missing You, John Waite; Flyaway, Joan Osborne and Jesse, Joan Baez. It doesn't matter how long ago the breakup was, hearing these songs will always evoke sadness and a lump in my throat, if not tears in my eyes. These are the sad breakup songs, there are also angry breakup songs. My current favorite that my daughter shared with me is called Aftermath by a band named Battery. It has surpassed You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette as my favorite pissed off breakup song.
But that is the purpose of songs, I believe. It is to express an emotion, a feeling about an incident, a statement of position on an issue; there are multiple reasons that drive someone to write a song. Sometimes that purpose isn't so clear and sometimes it shines out, as clear as the blue sky in Vermont on a beautiful summer day. Songs, of course, are open to interpretation, and you may not hear in a song what the writer heard when they wrote it. Actually this is quite common, and there are many artists who won't discuss the "meaning" of their lyrics, preferring to allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. So, following that train of thought, I "use" songs to express the emotions and incidents in my own life. I feel a connection to the artist who wrote the song and a sense of appreciation that they were so incredibly capable as to connect me to my world with something as beautiful and wondrous as music.
So, I sought to share this appreciation and wonder with my child. I began singing to her while she was still in the womb, and have continued that practice for all the years we have shared together. Bedtime always included a song along with a book,and I sang her folk songs and children songs and love songs, everything I could muster up in my arsenal to entertain her and share with her the sounds of music. There was always music playing in our house, and she heard music from many decades in her first years. She was at her first live concert at the ripe old age of two, when we drove from Vermont to New York City to take her to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan at Carnegie Hall. It was an evening performance, and the first time she was ever in NYC. Her father and I each had a death grip on her hands, while she walked along, staring up in wonder at the very tall buildings she had never seen before. It is, of course, quite a different environment than the mountain she lived on, and I could see her fascination with the Big Apple, all the concrete and the buildings, all the sounds and smells, the myriad crowd hustling by her as we walked her from the deli we took her to eat dinner to the concert hall. As far as I could see, she was the only toddler in the audience, and I was as delighted with her reaction to the music as I was with the music itself. She stood on her seat and danced the night away, entertaining both her parents and the people around us. We drove her to Tanglewood when she was four, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra performs in the summer. I specifically chose that night because they were going to perform Beethoven's Ninth, and after hearing a rousing performance of Holtz' The Planets, there was an announcement of a program change and the 9th wasn't going to be performed. I was dismally disappointed, when, to my delight, the reason for the change was announced and Itzhak Perlman took the stage and filled the night with the beautiful sounds of his virtuoso violin performance, accompanied by Yo Yo Ma, who,of course, works with the BSO. We laid on a blanket outside with a picnic dinner and just gloried in the joyous melodic sounds coming from the stage. As she grew older, I began to take her to more and more concerts, to the point where ALL my vacation time and money was spent going to concerts, taking her and her friends along for the fun. One of the most joyous and gratifying days of my life was the day when she returned the favor and brought me some new music I hadn't heard before. She handed me a tape called Rage Against the Machine and I smiled a broad smile, thanked her and we continued on our constant concert quest, including, of course, a rousing and inspiring performance of Rage at the Wallace Arena in Fitchburg, MA. We continue to attend performances today when we can, and I always enjoy sharing a musical experience with my favorite person. I am happy that she has adopted my love for music. Unfortunately, she did not get my ability to sing or play music, but that does not diminish the fact that she has the love for music that I do.
Performance, that is where I will end this discussion. I learned to play the organ at the age of six, and took organ lessons for the better part of 10 years. I could sight read, play and sing songs, and did so for the entertainment of my family. Then, I stopped. I continued to sing along with music in my vast collection, but the performance of music was absent in my life until two years ago. I began to sing with my good friend, who is a singer and rhythm guitar player. We sound really good together, and slowly, we began to build up a repertoire of songs and an act that we took public. I have found this to be an enormous stress reducer and something that generates a large amount of joy in my life. Stage performance is something that I am still learning about every day, and I definitely glory in it. I love singing and having the opportunity to get up on a stage and mic up the performance is a unique and delightful experience that brings me great happiness. I hope to be able to continue to do this for a long time to come. My partner has been encouraging me to begin to write music, and so far, the verses come out sounding like I'm a sophomore in high school again, where I wrote most of my poetry. I am keeping at it, in hopes that my thoughts can be better and more maturely expressed and I can actually produce a song. This will be the pinnacle of achievement for me, and I am very grateful for my partner's support and patience while I feel my way along this unfamiliar but yet oddly familiar road. I am still finding my voice and sing cover songs; it is still most entertaining and I love every second of it. My daughter joins in the fun by assisting me in buying stage clothes and helping to make me the "rock star" she says I have always been. It's all wonderful and new and exciting, easily the best thing I am currently doing in my life. Making music as opposed to experiencing it contains an entirely new set of feelings and I am simply in love with it. It feels as if I am completing the circle and this just feels right to me. It completes my lifetime love affair with music and makes me feel whole.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Year 57, what I have learned so far
I think I would like to begin my blogging career by stating a few things I've learned during my time on this planet. Not so exciting, but my way of breaking into this, as this is my third foray into blogging and I wasn't so very satisfied with the first two.
SO - obviously I'm not going to talk about EVERYTHING I have learned, but will just offer some basic observations I have accumulated along the path I have chosen to walk.
The first observation is quite obvious if you ever find yourself reading a pile of quotations - life is a journey. The journey's experiences are dictated by the path one chooses to walk and the quality of that journey lies partially with chance but far more by how one opts to be involved in the trip. Quoting the Grateful Dead here (in my profile, if you read that far, I did state that my entire life is a soundtrack, but I think that is its own blog subject) "what a long, strange trip it's been". I have alternately loved and hated it, but I am also known to abruptly (seemingly so, I really did think about it a lot every time) up and relocate myself, starting a new path and consequently a divergent journey. My current state is slightly confusing me, which automatically generates a huge pile of thought and then a seemingly sudden action. Right now I am focused on health, and until that quest has been realized to its fullest, I am bound to remain where I am, walking this chosen walk. This too shall pass and I will be able to move on, as the rest of me is quite ready to move on.
Parenting - I have to say something about this subject, as I see my "children" around me beginning to reproduce. For those who "know" me, it is well known that I had a very short pregnancy, not knowing I was pregnant until I was 6.5 months into the process. Needless to say, not ever planning on having children at all, I had to do what I do best to learn things: I read a huge pile of books and began observation and contemplation regarding this "thing" I had to turn myself into rather quickly, a mom. Parenting is quite the unique situation; I cannot think of anything else one can do to experience this life passage. I gave an incredible amount of thought to how to be a mom, what I didn't want to do and what I wanted to accomplish. Defining my responsibilities was a daunting task, as the list grew rapidly. Deciding how to raise a child, what actions were necessary and which situations I experienced as a child were an anathema to me and I definitely did not want my child to experience; all of these things required a great deal of thought and self analysis, in addition to as dispassionate an assessment I could make of my own childhood; what pleased me and what made me miserable. I came to the following conclusions and hope that I actually did accomplish doing this work in the way I decided was best: I always tried to treat my child the way I wanted to be treated, I always gave her the respect as a person that I wished for myself, I tried to explain every decision I made that was questioned or unpopular with my daughter and I emphasized that every action taken by a person had consequences attached to it that were solely the responsibility of the person making the decision to act. I have always endeavored to provide unconditional love, to be sensitive enough (not my strength) to back off when she needed distance, but to always be there if she needed me for whatever reason; be it resources (very rare) or just an ear to listen. I pushed the importance of education and the value of establishing a style of self learning.
Having said all that, my child is now an adult, and is my friend. I couldn't have asked for anything better than that, really. Having trust issues in my life, and this not being a psychoanalysis of me as a person, I will say she is the one person I trust unconditionally and completely. I am happy to say that she turned out to be a wonderful, intelligent, fun loving, off beat, responsible adult of whom I am very proud. It's all good.
What else have I learned on this journey? I have learned that life is fragile, events are a momentary flash that you choose to participate in or read about later and wish you had been there. People in your life can be transient and some are there forever. I have learned to do what you love in your work or you will be eternally miserable. I have seen that my relentless altruism is a fault that ends up hurting me in the long run, despite my constant need to nurture to replace the lack of nurturing that I experienced as a child. I am still learning that I need to take care of myself instead of putting myself aside to care for others. The only thing that accomplishes is that I am not cared for at all, and this is not the position I want to be in.
I have learned that I have much more to learn, and I hope that I have enough time to figure it all out before I am done. I am struggling to learn now that the opposite of altruism is not being selfish and that I am as worthy of attention as all the others that I lavish it on. I am learning how to be healthier and eliminate the pain that has haunted me for quite some time now. i learn every day that, despite our differences, family has an intangible value that is indefinable to me, but is something that I care to hold on to.
I seek the advantage of community, of a group of reasonably like minded people that can support one another in various ways; that form a group of strength, a group that can be there for one another in times of need. I am not sure where I will find this community, but I am extremely positive that I am not in it right now. I see that this can be a good way to retire from the 9-5 gig, to leverage whatever assets I can manage to accumulate and pool them in a community where I can live in peace and happiness and even comfort. OK, it sounds a bit like a commune, I know, but there are advantages to communal living that will avoid my aging self from being a burden on my daughter, something I am trying to avoid at all costs.
I see in the Asian societies, that the elderly are valued and cared for in the family unit, but this is simply not the Western way, so I seek sanctuary in a place where I can live out my days without worry. Not that I am ready for any of this, but I do think it is going to require some planning and research to accomplish.
Some people tell me that I over think things. I believe that thinking prior to taking action is the better way of accomplishing a long term goal than impulsively acting without thought. I value thinking, as long as one isn't thinking oneself into a circle that ends up forcing inaction. Planning and thinking are things that are my strengths, and I am using them now to put myself where I want to be, doing what I want to do and being with people I want to be with. I am slightly caught in a bit of circular thinking and I am working hard right now to break the circle, to move on and to gain that which I desire.
Changes are coming.
I have learned a lot in 57 years, and with every thing that I have learned, I learned that there is always more to learn. I look forward to every bit of knowledge that I can acquire before I am done. I anticipate every feeling, expect every loss and I am ready to move forward to whatever faces me next.
SO - obviously I'm not going to talk about EVERYTHING I have learned, but will just offer some basic observations I have accumulated along the path I have chosen to walk.
The first observation is quite obvious if you ever find yourself reading a pile of quotations - life is a journey. The journey's experiences are dictated by the path one chooses to walk and the quality of that journey lies partially with chance but far more by how one opts to be involved in the trip. Quoting the Grateful Dead here (in my profile, if you read that far, I did state that my entire life is a soundtrack, but I think that is its own blog subject) "what a long, strange trip it's been". I have alternately loved and hated it, but I am also known to abruptly (seemingly so, I really did think about it a lot every time) up and relocate myself, starting a new path and consequently a divergent journey. My current state is slightly confusing me, which automatically generates a huge pile of thought and then a seemingly sudden action. Right now I am focused on health, and until that quest has been realized to its fullest, I am bound to remain where I am, walking this chosen walk. This too shall pass and I will be able to move on, as the rest of me is quite ready to move on.
Parenting - I have to say something about this subject, as I see my "children" around me beginning to reproduce. For those who "know" me, it is well known that I had a very short pregnancy, not knowing I was pregnant until I was 6.5 months into the process. Needless to say, not ever planning on having children at all, I had to do what I do best to learn things: I read a huge pile of books and began observation and contemplation regarding this "thing" I had to turn myself into rather quickly, a mom. Parenting is quite the unique situation; I cannot think of anything else one can do to experience this life passage. I gave an incredible amount of thought to how to be a mom, what I didn't want to do and what I wanted to accomplish. Defining my responsibilities was a daunting task, as the list grew rapidly. Deciding how to raise a child, what actions were necessary and which situations I experienced as a child were an anathema to me and I definitely did not want my child to experience; all of these things required a great deal of thought and self analysis, in addition to as dispassionate an assessment I could make of my own childhood; what pleased me and what made me miserable. I came to the following conclusions and hope that I actually did accomplish doing this work in the way I decided was best: I always tried to treat my child the way I wanted to be treated, I always gave her the respect as a person that I wished for myself, I tried to explain every decision I made that was questioned or unpopular with my daughter and I emphasized that every action taken by a person had consequences attached to it that were solely the responsibility of the person making the decision to act. I have always endeavored to provide unconditional love, to be sensitive enough (not my strength) to back off when she needed distance, but to always be there if she needed me for whatever reason; be it resources (very rare) or just an ear to listen. I pushed the importance of education and the value of establishing a style of self learning.
Having said all that, my child is now an adult, and is my friend. I couldn't have asked for anything better than that, really. Having trust issues in my life, and this not being a psychoanalysis of me as a person, I will say she is the one person I trust unconditionally and completely. I am happy to say that she turned out to be a wonderful, intelligent, fun loving, off beat, responsible adult of whom I am very proud. It's all good.
What else have I learned on this journey? I have learned that life is fragile, events are a momentary flash that you choose to participate in or read about later and wish you had been there. People in your life can be transient and some are there forever. I have learned to do what you love in your work or you will be eternally miserable. I have seen that my relentless altruism is a fault that ends up hurting me in the long run, despite my constant need to nurture to replace the lack of nurturing that I experienced as a child. I am still learning that I need to take care of myself instead of putting myself aside to care for others. The only thing that accomplishes is that I am not cared for at all, and this is not the position I want to be in.
I have learned that I have much more to learn, and I hope that I have enough time to figure it all out before I am done. I am struggling to learn now that the opposite of altruism is not being selfish and that I am as worthy of attention as all the others that I lavish it on. I am learning how to be healthier and eliminate the pain that has haunted me for quite some time now. i learn every day that, despite our differences, family has an intangible value that is indefinable to me, but is something that I care to hold on to.
I seek the advantage of community, of a group of reasonably like minded people that can support one another in various ways; that form a group of strength, a group that can be there for one another in times of need. I am not sure where I will find this community, but I am extremely positive that I am not in it right now. I see that this can be a good way to retire from the 9-5 gig, to leverage whatever assets I can manage to accumulate and pool them in a community where I can live in peace and happiness and even comfort. OK, it sounds a bit like a commune, I know, but there are advantages to communal living that will avoid my aging self from being a burden on my daughter, something I am trying to avoid at all costs.
I see in the Asian societies, that the elderly are valued and cared for in the family unit, but this is simply not the Western way, so I seek sanctuary in a place where I can live out my days without worry. Not that I am ready for any of this, but I do think it is going to require some planning and research to accomplish.
Some people tell me that I over think things. I believe that thinking prior to taking action is the better way of accomplishing a long term goal than impulsively acting without thought. I value thinking, as long as one isn't thinking oneself into a circle that ends up forcing inaction. Planning and thinking are things that are my strengths, and I am using them now to put myself where I want to be, doing what I want to do and being with people I want to be with. I am slightly caught in a bit of circular thinking and I am working hard right now to break the circle, to move on and to gain that which I desire.
Changes are coming.
I have learned a lot in 57 years, and with every thing that I have learned, I learned that there is always more to learn. I look forward to every bit of knowledge that I can acquire before I am done. I anticipate every feeling, expect every loss and I am ready to move forward to whatever faces me next.
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