Category: Planes

More developed ideas, conversations, narratives, and philosophies.

The New Almost Normal

Published on May 23, 2025

Almost, nearly, next to, practically, virtually, pretty much, just about, perfect. Or talented. Or holy. Compassionate, professional, persuasive, convincing, genius, helpful, useful, good enough, or just enough. And that’s on the plus side, Imagine yourself as the absolute antithesis: almost unbearably, dispassionately, sadistically, cruelly, mischievously and maybe also horribly perfect. Or wealthy. Or powerful. That’s what the dream of absolute power sells you. That if you had enough power, you could be perfect. Like that little girl in the story by Saki, you could be “horribly good.”

But how does that work out? Once you’re “almost” something, you stand at the edge of a chasm so vast and endless that you are damned, like Zeno, to forever advance from your position at 99% to a full 100% in half-lengths that never get you any closer than half way there with each step.

Because perfect is a pipe dream. Just like forever. Or never, for that matter. These are ideas that convince you to chase your tail, sell yourself into wage slavery, cut off your nose to spite your face, or surrender yourself to an unseen, unverifiable, uncommunicative, and otherwise unpleasant dictator you created to relieve yourself of personal responsibility for why you live and die.

Think of it this way: we’re almost ready.

To start. To evolve. To grow. To prosper. To destroy. To decay. To diminish. To die.

That’s a lot of chasm to cross. And not a lot of time to get there, considering the only time we have is almost gone, nearly wasted, and just about up.

On the other hand, that last one percent is not as far as it looks. Objects in the mirror can sometimes be closer than they appear.

23 May 2025

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Here and Back Again

Published on May 18, 2025

Sometimes it’s funny the way the world looks different when you learn a new thing or catch a strange foreign film or think at least to yourself that you’ve come up with an idea, the result of figuring out exactly why the world thinks and acts like it does, what it did differently yesterday, and what it’s likely to slowly shift into doing for real some time early tomorrow afternoon.

For example, when you hear an expression like “you can’t get there from here” and realize it’s not about physical geography or Cartesian geometry or directions read from a greasy Texaco road map you borrowed from a guy in a diner who reminded you of somebody you probably (and unfortunately) owe some money.

No, the “here” in the expression isn’t about space. It’s about time. That makes it less like an artist’s Atlas rendering of hundreds of points all leading to a fictional made-up place like the center of the universe like Camelot, Rome, Dallas-Fort Worth (where you have to change planes, whether your final destination is heaven or hell), or your favorite cultural center catering almost exclusively to your organic, all-natural, and ultimately despicable sense of good taste.

No, the map doesn’t point to a place. “Here” is right here. Right in this exact spot. There is no other it, except this It. It is right now. It isn’t and will never be anywhere or anytime or anything or anybody else.

You can’t get there from here. It’s a lie. And yet, it is not a lie.

Think of it like this: imagine you are right here. Right now. Fortunately that’s not very hard. In fact, you’re actually not capable of doing anything else. And you’ve been doing it all your life, so you know that it looks like.

That’s how the world actually works. We – and I use the term to clarify that I don’t mean just people who look like me, speak like me, act like me, like me, wanna be me or find a cave or institution or hole or some other place so dark, isolated, and empty that you can imagine that you are the seashell that sounds like the ocean to drop me in – I mean each one of us, no matter and probably in spite of how you use that word to exclude or include anything you deem worthy or appropriate or holy or special or magic or precious, animal, vegetable and/or mineral, whenever it suits you. We exist in a world where all you are really allowed to do, all you are required to do, maybe even a little compelled or driven to do, is what you can do better than anything else alive. At what you do, you are the absolute best at it.

First imagine what you think that talent or ability or natural inclination might be. Yeah, your unique thing that makes you a better you than anyone else could ever be. It’s pretty good, right? Something that’s probably even a little cool. If they didn’t each have their own unique thing, people – even relatives – would likely be a little jealous. Face it, you’re a pretty big deal when it comes to getting it done.

Better make sure that skill you’ve got isn’t failure. Although a lot of other people might tell you that’s all you’re good at. And besides, if you’re an absolute whiz at failure, that’s not failing. Or Failure.

Because you can’t there from here, no matter what you do.

Sri Ramakrishna said, “If you get drunk off a single bottle of wine, what do you care how much of other spirits the store carries?”

You are here. You can’t be anywhere else. There is no there.

18 May 2025

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Ameri Can

Published on April 26, 2025

America doesn’t need Democrats to save it. It doesn’t need Republicans. It doesn’t need liberals or conservatives, leftists or righties, centrists, Independents, old school or new wave, fundamentalist or radical, or any other kind of way to divide, disappoint, distract, dilute, dullen or deaden all of us. In separate boxes, on separate lists, in separate discussions, decisions, and definitely on separately and securely maintained documentation.

We need to stop writing this shit down so it can be spoken aloud.

That is not America. This is not America.

It may be an idiotic thing to say, but America is not that easy to destroy. If you believe in the ideal. If you actually live your life as if the ideals by which this country was founded are real, in the way that so many will swear that their own personal savior is alive and well and still talking to his people the way he talked to people 2000 some years ago.

The point is that all these folks who are in “power” don’t own America. They don’t even run it. They all work for us. They are our employees. The executive, legislative, and judicial branch, and every department, unit, field office, division, and individual representative. They report to us. And their employment contract is the Constitution of the United States.

Not standing up to a bully isn’t just cowardly or shameful. It’s breach of contract. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence, aisle, country, or any other dividing line you are. Or at what level.

I have one thing to say to all of them. Do your jobs. For me, your boss. Or you’re fired.

26 Apr 2025

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For Art’s Sake

Published on April 23, 2025

Maybe it’s because I’m a musician, or due to having been read to a lot before I started to read for myself at age 4, or because my family seems to be filled with generations of marvelous storytellers. Maybe it’s because I’ve studied for many years the bardic traditions of the Druids. But if seeing is believing, then hearing is belonging.

For me, audio books are both a natural progression and a journey backwards in time. By this I mean that anything I read, in my head I imagine either reading it aloud or having it read to me. It becomes a conversation. Granted, it would be difficult to have a conversation in real life as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You’d have to stop for meals, a couple of naps, restroom breaks, and the endless stream of diversions that inevitably break up a three-day encounter with another person. Even if you reduced or compared it to that most modern of contrivances, the binge watch, it would take quite a chunk of time – and the rapt attention of both parties – to commit to, engage in, and successfully complete such a talk.

That’s one of the reasons why I’ve started several novels but never finished them. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to talk to me for that long. So, I keep it short – missive like this one, poems, songs. It’s not that I can’t extend an idea or premise out beyond the horizon – and anyone who’s talked to me in person knows I am capable of extemporaneous speech for quite a while. But sometimes, it’s better to take medicine – or poison – in small doses. Think of it as an inoculation against the doldrums.

One of the reasons I don’t play live music much anymore is the absence of a conversation. Again, maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the people who come to the places around here that are available for gigs, where like in a casino, the band is an amenity like the all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s a loss-leader, as far as the venue is concerned, because people aren’t really coming in to see the band, but to eat, hang out with their friends, or get drunk. A live band in those kinds of situations needs to be more like a juke box, pumping out familiar sounds at a chat-enabling volume, not placing too many demands on the royal ear, so to speak, and definitely not presenting anything confrontational, controversial, confusing, or confounding. Consider yourself part of the furniture. Or worse, a mere player in a tribute band, actively pretending to be someone you’re not, someone completely different, someone worth listening to.

There are music venues that are not like that, of course. But they are becoming harder and harder to find. Odd, because when you consider the performance rights dues that a venue has to pay to support cover bands, radios, or juke boxes, original music is much cheaper. And since the patrons aren’t coming to see the band anyway, from a purely objective point of view it doesn’t matter what they play. So long as it is comfortable, right?

But art is not supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to show you something, make you feel something. A live music event is an experience: a specific time and space coordination that exists only now and involves absolutely everyone in its presence. Performers, promoters, patrons, bartenders, wait-staff, and even random passersby. It is a feast for the senses. And too many people these days seem to be too satisfied with pre-processed, microwaved, and poorly presented fast food that looks nothing like the pictures on the menu.

So many people are dying to simply talk to another person. Or to be heard. And yet we isolate ourselves more and more, not demanding greater physical or emotional interaction because we’re taught it’s unsafe, unsanitary – or maybe just “insanitary”.

Maybe that’s the problem. The conveniences we have demanded are now mandatory, and the entire might of civilized society is conspiring to keep us from actually touching each other.

So, if you can’t see live music, or a live play or dance recital, or poetry reading, go to the library on the weekend and watch the faces of children during Story Hour. Let their joy seep into your pores a little. Maybe you’ll remember what it’s like to be part of a tale, story, legend, myth, or history. Instead of just watching it go by or swiping left.

23 APR 2025

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A Song to Sing

Published on April 20, 2025

One of the things that I fear people asking, that I imagine to be the greatest torture in the world to which I can attest with personal experience in the matter, is “What kind of music do you play?”

Ok, so maybe that’s a first world problem. Could be that most people even in the most obscure, bizarre and strangely unusual circumstances would not find themselves needing to consider it. And I’m ok with that if you are. I mean, what I’m not able to communicate will be more than offset by what you’re not able to understand, right? And visa versa.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there really were specific types or genres of music that folks use to clearly define the sounds they hear, imagine they’re hearing, or wish they could hear, when their lives, like a Broadway or Hollywood musical, need some music or a song to get through a particularly thorny plot point or epiphany. But the truth is, those common shared definitions don’t exist. Ask any two people on the street to define jazz. Or punk. Or country. Or classical. Now ask any two musicians. Of the four answers you have, do any agree with your own descriptions?

When I was at Berklee, one of my professors told us that when Duke Ellington was asked that question, he replied, “Why, beautiful music, of course.” I’ve used that answer since myself, but I always feel both a little guilty – and also a bit skeptical. After all, beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. There are more ways to divide the spectrum of beauty than almost any other abstract notion in human history. As my dad used to say about working at the Detroit Department of Sanitation, “It may be shit to you, but it’s our bread and butter.”

The beauty you see, absorb, and reflect in the world, and the music you hear, internalize, and echo back to the cosmos, are in that respect very much the same. In many ways, you find the beauty or song you need at the precise moment you need it. That’s why it makes such an indelible impression. Just like you are not the same person from one set of space-time coordinates to the next, but are constantly if unconsciously evolving into something never before quite finished, you’re never really done with beauty and music because once they’ve touched you, they’re never really quite done with you either.

That’s what makes the question so difficult to answer. Not just because the answer changes, but because it doesn’t. It’s the etudes you first learned to play before you knew the names of the strings on your violin. It’s the first piece you practiced for hours preparing for that piano recital. The song you wrote after coming home from your grandfather’s funeral. The tune on the radio when you stormed out of the house and broke up with your first girlfriend. The last of music you hear before you die, when you don’t know you’ll never hear anything else.

In a brief bio of Sandy Denny, I read, “The mark of a great singer is that he or she always tells a personal truth regardless of the given material.”

So you sing your song or somebody else’s, regardless of who actually wrote it. And that’s the kind of music you play. Because nobody else can.

People will keep asking, because they don’t recognize their own life’s soundtrack. And your answer will never be their moon or its light, or even a reflection in a dewdrop of water. But it may be useful as a finger pointing the way.

20 Apr 2025

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Too Fast, Too Young

Published on April 19, 2025

When people talk about all the celebrity deaths at age 28, it’s always to ask, “Why did they die so young?”. But as these folks occur among your own peer group, your perspective changes.

In my own case, I find myself asking, whenever reflecting back on it, “What did I do to live so much longer?”

What would [great deceased artist] sound or look like or talk about if they were still alive today? Imagine what you could do at 28 and pretend you could still do it the same way today. What would THAT look like? Wouldn’t you start to figure at that point that you’d given a lot already, and didn’t feel it absolutely necessary to pull it out of mothballs and get a few dollars for it?

You say, well, there’s all kinds of folks out there who are your age and older who still seem to be living an authentic experience and sharing it in some way with millions of other people. Lots of artists who influenced you growing up that are still around and making it happen.

And I say, well, they all lived past 28 too. Everybody’s got to live their own life or someone else’s. And everyone one of them is different. Except for one thing: we all survived our Saturn return. And we survived by changing something in ourselves. Not the same thing, of course, but something.

If we can get past that, then we can think on what I actually wanted to talk about.

When I ask the question, “What did I do to live so much longer?”, what I really mean is something completely different. What I should have said, and what I was really thinking at the time, was “How did I actually live longer?”

Did I just give up sooner? Did I not have the inner drive to make a bigger or better impression? Was it just never in the cards? Or was I really just afraid: scared of producing the frequencies that would destroy the record player? Does any of that really matter? Then, or Now?

The answer is, “I don’t know.“

The path is where you have your feet. You don’t have a map, because you are the territory. All you do is keep moving forward. Many years ago I wrote the line, “The path I’m on doesn’t have a name. It’s not done yet.”

I haven’t wasted 38 years since just worrying about that. There are too many much more important minutes to consider and live in right here and now.

You can’t worry about how you’ll get through the next five minutes. You already have.

And here we are. Still standing. Still here. With most of ourselves left.

What now?

20 Apr 2025

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A Walk In The Rain

Published on April 19, 2025

Well, into every life a little rain must fall, and the careful man learns to keep himself dry.

Another great line from The Bat (1959) starring Vincent Price and Agnes Morehead – two paragons of the styles of performance they each represented. Whatever that means to you. They’re both very watchable, to me. And ever since I learned that Agnes played Orson Welles’ love interest and confidante Margot Lane during his stint as radio’s The Shadow, I’ve liked her even more. Vincent? Well, he loved art and wine. But I often wondered why he bothered wearing disguises in any of his movies. He was usually the only really tall person in his films. So who could that masked villain be? It isn’t gonna be the little guy. But I digress – as always.

Back to the quote – and in this movie, it’s the chauffeur who gets the best lines. I would extend this a little further: rain is going to fall, but it’s not always in your best interest to hide under your umbrella. As the Sufi saying goes, “Never name the well from which you will not drink.” In the desert, a drop of hot sweat can seem like a cold drink.

The trick is when the rain does fall, to find a use for the water. And make sure it’s appropriately distributed. Is that some kind of socialist ideal? Not at all. No more than public highways, law enforcement, armed services, or health and welfare safety nets.

The other thing about rain is it’s not the same everywhere. Altitude, latitude, and distance from large bodies of water affect climate, seasons change the receptivity to precipitation, and that’s even before you toss in the human factors like lack of green-space, overpopulation, inappropriate ground cover, non-native species, loss of topsoil, carbon emissions, and chemical imbalance.

An inch of rain in one place is a deluge in another. So keeping dry, if that’s what you need to do, is not always so simple. But it’s an important job, particularly if you’re not just looking after yourself. It deserves a bit of study, practice, and consistent application.

Because it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, is it?

19 APR 2025

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