The Magic in Words

"Not all those who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien

When did you most recently allow yourself to wander? What did you discover when you did so? What prevents us from wandering more frequently? 

Like most people, I'm a creature of habit. I practice my guitar a certain way, I do similar exercise routines, I often read in the morning. But months ago - after hearing Tolkien's words cited by a composer I admire as he described his process - something shifted in me. I decided on the spot to begin integrating a small dose of wandering whenever I picked up my guitar. How could doing so possibly hurt?  

After several weeks, a small but noticeable effect took hold. Some of my improvisational ideas began to feel less predictable to me. Though I'm sure no one but me would notice the difference, something definitely opened up as I allowed myself to wander more in the musical unknown. Fresh songwriting concepts soon presented themselves. It's been magical and thrilling.

This morning, more magic. I decided it was time to share here what I've discovered about wandering and the connection to that composer's use of Tolkien's words. As I began typing, I mistakenly inserted the word wonder into the Tolkien quote. Isn't it intriguing how the words wander and wonder share five letters? I can't recall ever taking note before of the magical connection between those two words. Have you? 

A Better World

I'm confident saying each of us has fantasized at least once over our lifetime of one thing that could make the world a better place. In this moment, what one thing comes to you?

Although I've indulged in this harmless fantasy more than a few times, the one thing I seem to come back to most predictably is empathy. Imagine if every one of the over eight billion people alive today had even just a little more empathy. How could the world not be a better place if all of us more routinely took the time to walk in the shoes of those we encounter? 

Reviewing my bumpy journey, my lowest retrospective moments are often connected to instances when some base instinct - judgment, spite, envy - displaced my empathy. Often, I re-play those instances in my memory until I'm the person I wished I'd been. I want to believe that this strategy - i.e., re-inventing moments when empathy was not my automatic response - has helped me be more mindful in parallel situations when they later occurred. 

What are some of your strategies for continuing to expand your empathy? Who in your life most embodies this noble instinct? And what's another thing in short supply that you think could make the world a better place?     

Repayment Day

Over the thirteen-and-one half years I've been blogging - aside from my wife and daughter - there have been perhaps three dozen other regular readers who have made more than a handful of public comments here. Though I disabled the "followers" widget from my home page many years ago, I also know there have always been some other regular non-commenting non-family readers. I know that mostly because those folks have frequently communicated with me offline, in some fashion, about posts they've read.  

I'm grateful to everyone in all three groups - frequent commenters (past & present), infrequent (past & present), and non-commenters. And, if you are what I've come to call a "passer-by" - comment or no comment variety - thank you for reading me today, although you can stop now. Almost everyone else: Feel free to skip the next paragraph. It is pertinent only to one person from group #1, present tense variety.   

Thank you for taking eighteen minutes out of your life this morning to make comments on four of my posts. Although this is not the first time you have written more than three comments in one day, and it's not even your record for most comments made in one day, because I happened to be writing a post on a different subject as your comments arrived, I was able to notice how much time - at minimum - you spent today on a task that rewards me but gives you nothing in return.  

Back to everyone from all three groups and any passers-by who ignored my earlier suggestion. If there is a way I can re-pay any of you for reading or commenting, please tell me what that is. Connecting in a small way with anyone who has taken precious time to read or comment here has been - since March 2011 - a powerful and affirming experience for me. If I'm able, I'd like to reciprocate. 

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Maiden Voyage

Here I Go Again

What did this camper/student take away from a week spent with eighty-nine other guitarists, not including the faculty?

* From his fellow students, he re-learned that the people he gravitates toward are those who are genuinely good listeners in a non-musical context, e.g., sharing a meal. Since good listening is a critical skill for any musician, it follows that some of those same people are the ones this student wanted as jamming partners, technical skill aside.

* From the faculty, he re-learned that kindness - in demeanor, in language, in delivering critical feedback - trumps all. How well someone plays, how many famous people someone has played with, how much praise is heaped on someone by their talented peers, matters far less to this student than if that someone appears to be a kind human being.    

I need more time to fully process what I learned about guitar and what I learned about my playing this past week. Periodically reviewing my notes will help me with those things. But what I learned about myself as a person this past week is how much work I have to do. Not terribly profound or unique but clearly true. Fortunately, every day I'm alive gives me time to practice, both my guitar as well as all the other stuff. Here I go again.  

The Sixth Inning Stretch

On my seventy-fifth birthday in November, the years 2009-2024 will represent exactly 20% of my life, i.e., five parts, each fifteen years long. When this arbitrary mathematical marker interfered with a recent meditation, I was unsure where it would take me. But as is my lifelong habit, soon after my return, I began writing. Perhaps some of you will follow me down this short four-pronged path? I found it instructive; I suspect you might as well. 

* Depending on your age, divide your life into between two and five parts with an equal number of years in each part. Then, write down the years of each part, e.g., in my case, part five reads 2009 - 2024.

* Looking at the years comprising each part, do a brief automatic writing exercise, capturing the first several things that come to mind that occurred during those years. Capture as many or as few as you like but avoid overthinking, evaluating, or editing. Just write.  

* Next, give each part a descriptive name/title/heading. Again, avoid over-thinking; go with your gut. If you want, you can re-name any or all of the parts after you do the final step. For example, my part five ended up being later re-named "The Post Full-Time Work Years". 

* Last, try to identify at least one predominant feeling attached to what you captured in the second bullet above. Dig deep here; try to be as specific as you can. For example, I wrote "most personally satisfying" alongside part five vs. a word like "happy", which is accurate but less precise. It's possible this final piece will end up being the most challenging and most revealing for you. It was for me. 

"And now a quarter of my life has almost passed, I think I've come to see myself at last."

If anyone has contact information for John Sebastian, please ask him on my behalf if he stands by the sentiment expressed in that lyric from Darling Be Home Soon, written in 1966 when he was twenty-two years old. Since Sebastian is now eighty - making twenty-two close to a "...quarter of his life..." -  it's a fair question, don't you think? And how about you? Would you assert that you were able to "...see yourself..." when a quarter of your life had passed? I know I wasn't that precocious. If I shared with you my title for the second 20% of my life, i.e., from age sixteen through thirty, you'd know for sure that John was way ahead of me. 

  

Skipping the Occasional Meal Together

Watching my wife lost in her garden early today, I thought of instances when she's commented on me being in a musical trance. Soon after, it dawned on me what a gift it is that our individual interests don't necessarily always overlap. 

Although powerful music gives my wife as much pleasure as beautiful gardens give me, I believe the solitary moments each of us have spent consumed by our passions have strengthened our bond. This is so in part because those moments have helped animate many of our subsequent conversations, like the one we had later in the day.    

Have you known couples who appear to enjoy doing almost everything together and spend very little time apart? I have; bravo to them. I'm guessing no one who knows our forty-six-year partnership well would ever describe us in this fashion. Bravo to us. Although I'm good with "...for better or for worse..." and proud of how I've risen to the occasion with respect to "...in sickness and in health...", I'm also relieved those vows say nothing about "... having lunch together every day..." 

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Magnet? Glue? Dessert?

Hypocritical Ambivalence

 ambivalence: the coexistence of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action.

That dictionary definition of ambivalence perfectly describes my everyday attitude about how most of us - willingly or not - have become insidiously tethered to technology. My positive-negative toggling about this modern-day blessing/curse frequently gives me whiplash. To wit:

* I'm a blogger who lusts after readers. But ... I stubbornly resist using my cell phone for anything but the most basic tasks. I also resist giving out my always-asked-for e-mail. Unless, that is, you want the URL for my blog.   

* I cherish the efficiency of bar codes at supermarkets and the ability to communicate with multiple people using a group e-mail and online resources that make research easier. But ... I'm easily triggered by the use of cell phones within nanoseconds to retrieve a factoid - before anyone has a chance to exercise their memory or otherwise use their brain - and indiscriminate dependence on any social media for commentary/punditry, and unquestioning belief in the "truth" of anything found online, e.g. Wikipedia.

* I like having a watch that tracks my steps, and GPS to help me avoid the directionally-challenged who roam among us (although I reserve the right to say it's advisable all of us should know north from south and east from west), and lots of choices of easy-to-access music and other entertainment content. But ... I really don't like the intrusive, ubiquitous beeping/buzzing/purring/meowing of watches, or automobile instrument panels, or everything, or so it seems. Quiet moments, revealing conversations, even intimate encounters are constantly at risk of being invaded by some infuriating sound or worse, a snippet of song.  

I considered using my oldest series - Words That Can Haunt Me - as a way to frame my ambivalence about today's kowtowing to technology. But in the end, it's not the word ambivalence that haunts me. It's my own surrender to select pieces of the technology that prompted today's reflection. At its base, I guess it's my hypocrisy that haunts me.

A Pesky Dilemma

How is it that the short, episodic chapters in Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) worked so well for me as a reader? Ever since finishing Anthony Doerr's mind-blowing novel a few weeks back, I've been trying to land on a satisfactory answer to that question, given how bite-size chapters in many other books have predictably annoyed me over much of my reading life.  

"Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one - that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes." 

Could it be as simple as the reliably rich insights found throughout Cloud Cuckoo Land?  Perhaps, though I do wonder if worthy insights in some of those other books were overlooked simply because I got put off too quickly by bite-size chapters, especially when the prose wasn't as muscular as Doerr's.

Doerr divides his 622-page masterwork into twenty-four parts, each prefaced by a brief passage from an ancient text by Antonius Diogenes, which itself tells the story of a shepherd's journey to a utopian city in the sky. From there, this gifted author further divides his narrative across three time periods - 15th century Constantinople, 2020, and the near-future - using the stories of five well-developed characters, via individual chapters devoted to their interlocking stories. For me, the architecture was both challenging and thrilling. Did that contribute to my higher tolerance for those short chapters? Perhaps, although again, I do wonder if this kind of structure in a more traditional linear story might have struck me as gimmicky.  

I'm reasonably certain better minds than mine have published well-researched critical theories teasing apart distinctions between best-selling page turners that use episodic morsels vs. books of literary merit like Cloud Cuckoo Land that utilize a similar cadence. I guess my next step is to educate myself to some of those theories. In the meanwhile, I'm curious to know if my pesky dilemma sounds at all familiar to readers out there. If yes, please share with me what conclusions - if any - you've drawn. 

Taking a Third Swing

By the time I got around to attending my first weeklong guitar camp in 2001, I was fifty-one years old. The numerous advertisements I'd seen for these camps in Guitar Player had enticed me through the previous twenty+ years I'd spent studying jazz guitar.  During those years, I frequently wondered how long I'd postpone this experience that was on my list of goals. After all, before I began studying at thirty, I'd spent the previous ten+ years making a living playing guitar to accompany my singing. What would it take for me to finally take this plunge? Aside from remembering how inadequate I felt that week in 2001, all that remains with me now is my mantra when I got home - "never again".  

Reflections From The Bell Curve: School's Out (& In)

In 2016, a good friend and jamming partner talked me into taking a second shot, an experience I wrote of in the post above.  At that point, I was five years into my project to memorize 300 jazz standards, started soon after leaving the world of full-time work. I guess I felt ready for the challenge. Although my sophomore effort ended up being a marginally better experience than my maiden voyage in 2001, I still returned home discouraged. I had some good moments jamming with my friend in the cabin we shared but - surrounded by guitarists who intimidated me - I barely played in the classroom settings and skipped performing at the student concert held on the final night. Though I don't recall saying "never again" again, I probably thought it.   

And yet, later this month, I'm taking a third swing. I cannot identify the logic for me doing so. It's been eight years since my last guitar camp experience but wait. Read that again. Camp? At seventy-four? With or without a guitar, how do I make this sound less weird? More important, how do I ensure I don't return this year either saying or thinking "never again"? 

Words for the Ages: Line Thirty-Two

"Our differences do a lot to teach us how to use the tools and gifts we've got." 

Although I took two small liberties with the lyric above from I Won't Give Up (2012), my doing so takes nothing away from the message Jason Mraz delivers in his excellent song. These are seventeen words for the ages - i.e., a terse phrase that stands alone, is easy to remember, and conveys a universal truth.

And that universal truth not only applies to love. It also applies to us as a species. Imagine if people embraced and celebrated their differences - race, religion, ethnicity - as a way to teach us how to use the tools and gifts we've got. Isn't it safe to say our world would be a more humane and civil place? I have no idea if Mraz had this larger truth in mind when he composed what sounds to me like a love song. But it doesn't matter. His are words for the ages, regardless.

As always, I welcome your nominations for this series of mine, now in its eighth year. Got a different Jason Mraz lyric you think fits the criteria at the end of the first paragraph above? Or, how about a terse phrase from a song by a different songwriter? For the record, the two minor liberties I took were deleting the word "they" in front of "do" and changing "we" to "we've". Apologies, Jason. 

Scuttling Saint James Day

Every August 1 since 2012 I have proposed here the establishment of a new national holiday in a valiant attempt to rescue August from its barren state. Alas, though all my holiday proposals have been brilliant - Hallmark has a line of cards ready for each - not one has gotten enough richly deserved notice. This indignity is hard to bear in light of the massive reach of my blog. The hoi-polloi can be so fickle. How much can one holiday-inventing genius stand? 

This year, I gave serious thought to proposing August 1 be heretofore declared Saint James Day - honoring my middle name - a superbly logical suggestion given the March holiday that already venerates my first. I know there is guaranteed support for this superlative notion, given the number of people sharing my noble middle moniker as a first, middle, or even last name, e.g., Henry and William - rest their souls - and LeBron. Imagine the cheering throngs. Who knows? Perhaps initiating a Saint James Day movement could have acted as an entree for my blog to finally win over reluctant sports fans who have yet to join the bell curve minions. 

In the end, I concluded that proposing Saint James Day - inspired as it is - crosses an egotistical bridge too far for even this breathtaking mastermind. Instead, I decided that providing the links below for a few of my outstanding earlier proposals is a reasonable compromise. Anyone who wishes to be further dazzled just say the word and I'll forward the remaining nine to you. Resist the temptation to steal my ideas; remember the Hallmark deal.

Reflections From The Bell Curve: August 1, 2014: National Book Day

Reflections From The Bell Curve: National Immigrant Day

Reflections From The Bell Curve: National Gratitude Day