Category: Conversations

More developed ideas, conversations, narratives, and philosophies.

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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The Old College Try

Published on April 19, 2025

You can’t make this shit up. But somebody has to, right? It doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere in full bloom without first starting as a seed before it germinates, breaks through its shell, sends out roots and tendrils, shoves it’s way through the surface into the sunlight, soaks up the sights, sensations, and a couple bowls of soup on the way. It got here, this shit, like everything else does. One piece at a time. And time may be an illusion masking the fact that past and future are both shadows that only exist in the here and now, but sometimes it certainly feels like a minute. So you’ve seen this shit before. You can’t pretend you didn’t see it coming.

So if you didn’t make it happen, how are you part of it? Because you are, you know. We’re all connected; there’s no real or permanent separation between you and me and us and them. You have a role and you play it. Just like everything else. It’s like a round table though, because there is no head. In true egalitarian fashion, the one with the skill required for the issue at hand takes point for a little while, to address what they can direct better than anyone else around. And then when somebody else’s strong suit needs playing, that person takes the wheel. Until the next one.

Does that leave anything behind, any scraps, money on the table, cards unplayed, debts owed, or grudges unpaid. Sometimes. But it beats the alternative. Because there really isn’t an alternative, is there?

19 APR 2025

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An Actor Prepares

Published on April 18, 2025

At what point in your life do you look back at what you’ve been doing up to that point and say to yourself, “Man, that shit we just went through was the worst thing that could happen to a person. And it was completely and absolutely our fault. It’s there a really bad actor in this scenario, you’re it. No excuses, alibis, justifications or obfuscations. Tag, you’re it. There’s no way to talk, walk, dance, sing, shimmy, wiggle, slide or slither out of this one. If you try that one again, you’ll end up dead.”

And how many times have you seen or will you watch that movie? Make your friends or lovers or kids or grandkids or work associates or teammates or even mortal enemies watch it with you? How many times will you switch the channel to it if it’s on? It’s your favorite feature film. It’s the greatest story ever told, because it’s about you. And you’re the star, the narrator, and the director. You picked the music, the scenes, and the lighting. You got all the best lines, had the best pieces of business. Looked like you owned the set, the scene, and the show. It must have made money, right? Because we’re all still here. Oscar worthy, that’s for sure. And since as they say you are always your own worst critic, you’ve really no worries about your rating or star power. It’s in the bag. If there was a better, higher budget, better marketed film out there, you’d be in it. And have a piece of it too.

But whose film is it really? How many of your supporting actors think it’s their film, or have agents and friends telling them it should have been theirs? More than you’d like to think. If you do think about it.

At the end of the real film, the final reel, will it really matter whose name came first or which was in the larger typeface?

19 APR 2025

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