Skip This List

Though any "greatest" list is inherently subjective based on who is compiling it, to have even a scintilla of credibility, isn't it fair to ask that the compiler(s) has actually toiled in the field - just a little - especially when their list is likely to be widely read, like one published in say, the New York Times? In other words, doesn't any list of "greatest" authors or "greatest" filmmakers or "greatest" plumbers - no matter how subjective - carry more weight when created by someone who has actually written a book, made a film, fixed a toilet? 

In early May, I was excited when a good friend brought to my attention a Times piece called The Thirty Greatest Living American Songwriters. If anyone cares to know how much this travesty incensed me, contact my wife, who suggested medication as my rant approached an hour in length. Is apoplectic an exaggeration? I think not. I have not included here a link for this absurd piece of music journalism lest you waste precious time reading it.

But I did research each of the six contributors to see which of their songs I'd heard. Guesses anyone? And then - to help calm myself down - I listened carefully to Lullaby (Goodbye My Angel) for perhaps the thousandth time. While reveling in the artistry of Billy Joel's modern-day masterpiece, I briefly considered writing a letter to the Times editor, a suggestion my wife made to me somewhere around the thirty-minute mark in my toot. After deciding not to waste my time, I calmed down some more by listening to These Days and By the Time I Get to Phoenix. I knew I'd get around to writing a blog post about the garbage I'd just read but wanted to wait for a clear head. Two + weeks listening to songs by the three most egregiously overlooked songwriters from this insulting list was the perfect recipe for soothing my raging beast. I also listened to some stuff by the songwriters unfamiliar to me from that same list. Before I write of that experience, more calming down is required. Stay tuned and caveat emptor.       

Here's the thing: If you've never spent time carefully analyzing the songwriting craft of the two compositions mentioned above by Jackson Browne and Jim Webb respectively - putting aside the massive, consistent body of work both of them and Billy Joel have produced over the past fifty years - you can't call yourself a reputable music critic. Just try and create something as majestic as any of those three songs, Mr. or Ms. New York Times contributor. I'm waiting. 

Conversational Ping-Pong

"Only connect." - E.M. Forster

Few things get me as reliably juiced as conversational ping-pong. When did this most recently happen to you?

You feel heard even though the back-and-forth between you and the other person is rapid and nonstop. You bounce from subject to subject, but the conversation somehow remains focused. Your energy and attention never flag. You don't want it to end.

Sometimes I walk away from these one-on-one encounters with books to read, movies to watch (or re-watch), or music to listen to. More often, I de-brief the experience via writing; I desperately want to retain the buzz these moments of intense connection deliver and writing about them seems to help with that.  

But even if no books, films, music, or writing spring from an instance of conversational ping-pong, one thing is guaranteed. I look forward to the next time.   

Three Home Runs

Which mother in your life are you celebrating today? It's hard to imagine anyone who has had better good fortune than me in this domain. Three home runs.   

For almost the first twenty-eight years of my life, my mom was the person I knew would always be there for me, in every capacity. She was my coach, my confidant, and my biggest fan. Even when I let her down - which I did continually, especially as an adolescent - she didn't waver. Losing her in 1977 was the biggest loss of my life to that point.  

From almost the day I met my life partner, one fantasy has consistently played out in my head. I wish I could have heard my mom and her laughing together. My mom had the greatest laugh I'd ever heard, until April of 1978. And after forty-eight years, it's difficult for me to single out one thing I most cherish about my life partner. But her laugh - the only clear rival I've ever had to mom's - is right up there. As is her unerring sense of how to be the best possible mother to our daughter. 

My daughter is new to the role of mother. Is it too soon to say she'll be an equal to my mom or her own mother? I don't think it is. She had the best possible model, someone who unfailingly gave her unconditional love, the foundation to being a solid parent. From the day my grandson was born, I knew watching my daughter that she'd fully internalized that foundational message. I've seen nothing since - nor do I expect to - that would lead me to think that will ever change. My grandson's life is getting off to the same strong start as her own, and mine. Good mothers have that impact on their children's lives.   

I hope you've been as fortunate as I've been. If you have, remember to acknowledge the mothers who have shaped you, or shaped your children, or are shaping future generations.

Staying Power

Reflections from the Bell Curve: Liar, Liar

Although it took me almost eleven years to get around to it, there was never any doubt I'd return to Jill Lepore. And what a return it has been.

Lepore's This America: The Case for the Nation is the best book of its kind I've read since 2017 when I consumed Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny soon after its release. Both books are sobering but hopeful and both authors are first rate scholars, astute cultural critics, and compelling writers. And though you can finish either in under a few hours - each is an extended essay in book form - as soon as you finish, I suspect you'll want to reread immediately. I've returned to On Tyranny several times over the last nine years, have already reread This America once and plan to do so a second time before meeting a reading soulmate for a discussion about it next week. Over the coming years, I'm confident I'll return to Lepore's book just as frequently as I have Snyder's. What was the last book you finished that you couldn't wait to return to?   

"Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hatred."

"The nation is often wrong. But so long as protest is possible, it can always be righted." 

"Writing national history creates plenty of problems. But not writing national history creates more problems, and those problems are worse."

How do you know which books will have staying power for you? When a book compels me to write down sentence after sentence - as This America did - I know that book will be with me for a long time. 

Two Firsts I Could've Done Without

Some firsts - first kiss, first concert, first car - connect us with fond memories. Other firsts - first surgery, first heartbreak, first time not making it to a bathroom - are not as fondly remembered. 

Two firsts I've been reflecting on repeatedly over the past several weeks - and I sincerely hope both these firsts turn out to also be lasts - are both connected to a back condition I was initially diagnosed with over forty years ago. Since music has been a thread running through my entire life, the fact that both these firsts are also linked to music is unsurprising.  

The first of these firsts that I hope to never repeat occurred around 1985 soon after I became painfully acquainted with the medical term sciatica. That year, for the first time since I began playing music professionally over twenty years earlier, I was forced to call out sick for a gig. Standing up holding a guitar was simply not possible. Sitting was nearly as bad. Enough said.   

The second first - when my long-dormant condition decided to pay me an unwelcome visit while I was in Spain in March - forced me to postpone a multi-week music class I was scheduled to teach at a local community college in April. I began teaching these courses in 2014 and have otherwise been an educator on & off since graduating college in 1971. Meaning, over more than half a century, I've never had to postpone a single teaching assignment. Another first I'm now hoping won't ever be repeated. 

Good news to finish. My recent second first was accompanied by an outpouring of well wishes. Not only did the volume of outreach take me by surprise - family & friends, students & fellow hikers, book club members & readers of my blog, etc. - the concern others expressed about my absence clearly helped make my setback more tolerable. 

Thanks to all of you. I'm on the other side.       

The Gift of Music

What is your first memory of music that made a lasting impression? What musical memories do you closely associate with certain family members? What place did music have in your home or neighborhood? Much of the research I've been exposed to says lasting musical memories begin building when we're between 12-15 years old. Based on my own life, this rings true. How about for you?

I was fortunate to have two parents who enjoyed music. My father played the ukulele and my mother had a nice singing voice and good ear for harmony. When Dad would play a popular song from the 1930's - the years he and Mom were in that 12–15-year-old range - and my Mother would sing, the songs were unfamiliar to me. But songs like "Embraceable You" or "I Get a Kick Out of You" - and others written years before I was born - occupied a space in my early musical landscape even if they didn't take up as much space as "Where Did Our Love Go", "Surfin USA", or other songs popular when I was an adolescent. 

And now? A substantial portion of my 2026 guitar repertoire includes songs Dad played on the uke while Mom sang all those years ago. When Mom died in 1977, I was still singing rock n' roll in the bars. Dad lived almost another 20 years and by then I had switched to playing some of those early standards in a jazz style, so he got to appreciate this turn in my music. And though both of them always loved and supported my rock n' roll ambitions, there's something comforting about my current musical life taking me back to songs from my parents' impressionable years. To those of you who still have your parents: Why not ask them to share with you the music that made an early impression on them? Then go on your favorite streaming service and make a playlist for them. What a gift that will be.  

My Lost Month

As the lost month of April limps to a close, it's a relief to be moving into second gear, slowly.  

No exercise, not much guitar, and erratic sleep made this month one I'm unlikely to forget anytime soon. And yet, as always, there's much to be grateful for. Foremost among those things is one simple fact: I am healing a little each day. Whenever I caught myself whining, it didn't take much effort to shift my thoughts to the people in my life who aren't healing like I am. And how about these ancillary benefits that my immobilized state facilitated? 

* On more sleepless nights than not, I cracked through to genius level on Spelling Bee. Watch your back, Bill. (And don't tell me Hillary never helps you.)

* I watched the entire six-episode run of The American Revolution, reinforcing my belief that Ken Burns stands alongside Toni Morrison, the New York Times, and the National Park System on any short list of American treasures. 

* I made some headway on my perpetually unmanageable "to read" list. Stay tuned in May for a post or two on the winners I finished while stuck in neutral. The duds? Mum's the word. 

In the meanwhile, I'm looking forward to a nice - probably short - walk later today with my wife. Did I mention how fortunate I am that she was around to assist me for most of my lost month? 

 

 

A Sure Thing

"Writing stabilized thoughts; it allowed you to see connections that thoughts alone didn't."

Gabriel's Moon (2024) is the fifth William Boyd novel I've read since Brazzaville Beach (1990) took my breath away. If you're looking for a novelist you can depend on, end your search. Among novelists I've been newly exposed to since leaving the full-time work world, few have thrilled me as consistently as Boyd. He is a masterful storyteller and gifted prose stylist with an exceptional feel for setting.

"The river was gunmetal green, despite the pale blue, cloudless sky. It was deep, the Congo, and whatever the sky above, azure blue or lowering grey, its color never really changed."  

Gabriel's Moon, told in two acts, has London-based travel writer and reluctant spy Gabriel Dax moving from Leopoldville to Madrid to Cadiz to Warsaw to Rome, each locale coming alive in Boyd's capable hands. I was particularly struck by his depiction of Madrid, having coincidentally just spent a few days there in mid-March on vacation.

"... a kind of agreeable melancholy suffusing the dark, brown, shabby streets ... grand squares and plazas ... proudly situated with their huge, palatial, ornamented buildings ..."

Some years back, I suggested to my brother-in-law that he might enjoy Waiting for Sunrise (2012), my second exposure to William Boyd. He did and has subsequently sent me five novels by this modern-day master, including Gabriel's Moon and the previous novel I finished by Boyd - Solo (2013). Because of my brother-in-law's generosity, I've still got three sure things waiting on my bookshelves. Cool.

Reflections from the Bell Curve: Music Supervisor for Hire