Thin man (haiku)

Thin man,

thin cane;

long shadow 

Josh Ritter on creativity

Songwriter, Josh Ritter.

“Sometimes struggling for originality can really hamstring the work of just writing a song and getting it done and singing it. As time goes on that definitely becomes a thing. You find you live in other people’s shadows, unless you try and do things that are different each time,” 

How is enlightenment like a fish sandwich?

And then he stepped outside and it was still raining…

It was a unique morning and he didn’t know what to expect from the rest of the day. But that probably meant the rain was fine, and it fit his hazy mood. How is one supposed to feel after achieving enlightenment?

There was a glide to his step, not to be confused with the kind of glide that might come with self-confidence, it felt more like how he typically experienced his morning commute—almost on autopilot.

The surprise sting of hot coffee on his tongue subtly confirmed that, yes, another day was underway. He was already at the office standing in front of the water cooler about two hours after his grand realization. A life’s worth of searching had come to an end earlier this morning. He had come to the end of the universe and saw what’s beyond it.

On the surface, he seemed a sensible man, reliable and steady to his coworkers. Truth be told, he was a restless searcher toiling away each waking hour with no idea what he was working toward.

“The search for the missing center,” that was the subtitle of his book, a book he’d been working on for more than 20 years. He had no clue what that meant. He just knew that he needed to keep on writing.

That is, until this morning when a toe strangled by a blanket almost led to his death.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? That a man could die from a having a blanket rapped around his toe in his sleep? But it can happen.

If his blanket hadn’t cut off the circulation to his toe, if the pain and confusion to which he awoke didn’t send him into a state of shock (and we all know that shock can be deadly) his wife would have never uttered the words that led to his epiphany.

Up to this point, even though he had a nice home, loving family and two relatively new cars in the driveway, he saw his life as Shakespearean and in some ways, tragic. Failed efforts to love those around him kept him up nights. He did his best to burn the candle at both ends. He marked his path with the clues left by other artists that came before him.

Vincent VanGogh saw the world as extreme. John Lennon saw the world as lonely. Diane Arbus knocked against ideas of beauty.

As he lay there sipping water his wife—who could run mental circles around him—wanted to relieve his suffering. She searched Web MD on her iPhone, gave him blankets and water. And also, as a side-note, she put all of the Shakespearian drama of his life into perspective.

The framework for his life was set by his heroes. His path was lit ablaze by his personal quests. From what he had seen, all artists propel themselves through life like this, raging against the night until they’ve made a big enough spectacle of themselves to light the way for the next in line.

As far as he knew, none of them ever managed to get their burning questions answered.

But now here he was, sipping water in bed with the circulation returning to his toe, and his wife, almost in an offhand manner had just blurted out his answer, THE answer to life the universe and everything.

The missing center he spent the last 20 years documenting in his book was at last, filled in. A lifetime of searching was finished. His own actions made more sense to him now, so did the actions of those around him.

He was glad. For a second, he felt overwhelmed, but then, underwhelmed.

He took her iPhone and dialed his friend.

“I feel like I’m John Cleese in the middle of a Monty Python skit,” he said to his friend who was in his car, about to start his morning commute. “I feel like I’ve come to the end of the universe and someone has just handed me a fish sandwich.”

In his best Cleese impersonation, “Is that what I came all the way here for? A fish sandwich?”

“Yes, here you go.”

His friend chimed in.

“Well, I hope it gave you peace,” said his friend. “I’m all for a feeling of peace.”

It did feel peaceful, but with a twist of befuddlement.

LIGHT TO CEREBRAL IS THE THROUGH

Windmills of salt voices draw in

the darkness; Voices of a world that

become the has of an eye; The has

of the eye that home tricks.

A conscientious moon launders all assertions…

“Help me create….”

Is there really such a thing as nightsilver illness?
What about the white and of at convictions?

At convictions, the wine moon surfaces willfully.

Willfully…

The white piece of paper…

The poem…

Paul McCartney, Tom Waits, Johnny Carson and Peter Pan on aging

As I look at my graying muzzle in the mirror I wonder if I’m at a crossroad. There was a time when people guessed my age to be much younger than I was, but as I enter my 40s it’s looking less and less like I belong on the set of “21 Jump Street.”

Does Sir Paul McCartney feel too much
pressure to maintain the brand and remain the cute one?

Thanks to my flat caps and round wire-rimmed spectacles, I’m looking more like I belong amongst my favorite Moveable Feast writers from the 40s: Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, Samuel Beckett, Langston Hughes.

This metamorphosis wasn’t a conscious change on my part. I just looked in the mirror one day and it was like Eugene O’Neill was looking back at me.

If I were to shave my beard and get different glasses, I would look younger. But what would be the point? Taking it a step further, wouldn’t putting energy into looking younger eventually be to my detriment?

As Paul McCartney dyes his hair and continues to shout, “She was just 17 and you know what I mean” into microphones around the world he is looking sillier and sillier.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I would bet that my favorite remaining Beatle is feeling immense pressure to fend off the flow of time.

I’ve had my own Peter Pan complex through the years. I thought snow on the roof meant a brittle mind, so I fought against the idea of aging.

Enter Tom Waits, a throwback crooner in a porkpie hat who embraces all things old. To hear him sing “you’ll have a head start if you are among the very young at heart” is a blessing and a curse.

The snarl and crack of his voice illustrates all too well that none of us are going to get out of this world alive. But beyond the deterioration is something else—a hint of the light coming through the cracks.

Getting to the light in this case seems to mean accepting my fate. If I can’t turn back the clock, there really is no crossroad—just the chance to compose myself, get my bearings and proceed with dignity.

In his autobiography Steve Martin credited Johnny Carson’s longevity to a kind of dignity that one gets from knowing and accepting who they are. It’s what let Carson go gracefully through the years.

Have you seen Sarah Jessica Parker, Bruce Jenner, Madonna or Mariah Carey lately? You can only keep things together for so long.

Getting back to the Tom Waits example, I used to think the man who intentionally inserted the sound of vinyl’s pops and clicks into his CDs was the farthest thing from my Peter Pan vantage point.

Now with the advantage of age-given wisdom, I see him singing “Young At Heart” in a whole new way and I am thinking that spackling your face and dying your hair not only eats away at your time and money, it also gnaws away at your psychology.

Mental health professionals will tell you that giving mental energy to things you can’t change is a sure path to depression. Isn’t holding yourself to an artificial ideal doing exactly that?

Shouldn’t McCartney look more like a gray bard who has weathered a life on the road by now? Doesn’t he deserve the respect that would come with that?

We do have to pay the price of time, but who defines what that price should be?

Brandi Carlile: Doing things her way means staying young at heart

Fans may be used to Carlile's versatility. Her musical palette has always included country, rock, folk, pop and gospel — often heard within the space of just one song -- but the handclaps and bright background vocals on "Bear Creek" are another story. Her latest endeavor is decidedly upbeat.

Q: A lot of [lyrics] on the new album seem like they are from a kid's point of view. Is there a child that you were thinking of when you were writing the songs?

A: In general, I think me and the twins sort of have a childlike essence about us. We don't have regular lives or regular jobs and when we get days off we do childish things—jump in the lake and go fishing and try to find frogs and we go to Disneyland. We like to ride roller coasters. There's a part of us that's really in touch with that because in some ways we haven't exactly had to grow up and act like we're adults. You ever read the book “The Little Prince?” I love that book. But, it sort of speaks to that mentality. I turned 30 when we were writing the album and I think all of us do generalize, where we're kind of finding ways to bring that sort of childlike essence into our adult lives. Those kinds of things are coming out in our songwriting, for sure.

Q: Between the last studio album and this album, was there something you were thinking you wanted to try or do differently on the new album?

A: Not consciously, but in retrospect I could see how that happens. Our first three albums on a major label were all sort of in this pressure cooker of an industry, like when you're in school or you're starting a new job for the first time, you're just learning a lot of hard lessons and you're trying things that are difficult. There's this labored feeling — our records definitely aren't labored in a negative way. But I do feel like this record was free of any of that, just because of the absence of a producer and the fact that we recorded it in a town where there is no industry. It just felt very free and raucous and fun and despite the somber connotations that are attached to the songs in the lyrics, there is an element of fun. Maybe that was where some of this childlike essence is coming from.


Q: My son is 5. My wife was talking to him about singers and she told him there are stars and legends. He wanted me to ask, when are you going to be a legend?

A: I want to know the same thing. I think I would have to be at least 60 years old to be a legend. You have to earn that title.

Q: I'm thinking about “Just Kids” on the latest record. That keyboard-based, atmospheric song sounds very different from the other songs on the album. I can picture that song on an experimental electronic album.

A: Yeah, yeah. I love that song.

Q: But when you turn something like that in, do they look at you like, “Hmmm, where's the acoustic guitar?”

A: If you give 'em three to work with they let you kinda go crazy on the rest of the record.