Breathe

Though events and feelings may mercilessly conspire, pressing in, it is always a good practice to remember to breathe.   Not the breathing we do automatically, autonomically, but a slow, deep, deliberate breath through both nostrils deep into the lungs and out like the one I’m going to take a moment to draw right now.  

It is often forgotten, and I had to check on-line just now to be sure, that one of the meanings of inspiration is drawing breath into the lungs.  Nothing, I believe, is more inspiring than that.

in·spi·ra·tion     noun

1.  an inspiring or animating action or influence: I cannot write poetry without inspiration.
2.  something inspired, as an idea.
3.  a result of inspired activity.
4.  a thing or person that inspires.
5.Theology

a.  a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul.
b.  the divine quality of the writings or words of a person soinfluenced.
6.  the drawing of air into the lungs; inhalation.
7.  the act of inspiring; quality or state of being inspired.
When things are heaviest, and darkest, pause to take as many slow, life giving inspirations as you need to keep going up the treacherously slippery hill that is life sometimes.

Scoundrel’s Refuge

I’m fighting here, back to the wall, pen in hand, as always, and feeling a bit desperate as I am unable, day after day lately, to catch up on my sleep.  Eyes pop open after a couple of hours and nothing I do seems to get me close to a good night’s sleep.  I wonder idly why I am writing here, to what end do I post something like this to a website?   Maybe it’s because it forces me to focus and write as well as I am able.   Damnfino.

What do I have to write?  Nothing at the moment, eyes unfocused, legs restless.  But I am thinking of a tiny soul winging its way upwards against the immenseness of a million universes, a billion, and wondering about our lives down here.  The only answer might be music, and that tightens my throat, thinking about decades of music unplayed.

When my friend’s father was dying of cancer that ravaged his once strong body, my friend gave this supremely practical man a book called “Sing Your Song” or something like that.    The thesis of the book was that one needs to sing one’s song, and that not singing it leads to bitterness and cancer.   My friend agonized after giving his father the book, which he felt his father might interpret as blaming him for his cancer.  Then a call came from his father.

“Mike, I read that book you gave me,” he said, as my friend braced himself.  “He’s right.  I’m going to sing my song.”   A few days later they were on a fishing boat in Florida with their father’s old friend, his father sick as hell, and happy.

There are silver linings everywhere, for those with the life talent to extract them.   For the rest of us, shapeless misery that dogs us as we grieve.

Bereft

Hard to imagine, in a fog of sorrow that sucks hope out of sight, that a day will come when everything will appear again in its place.    

A too fast turn at a tricky juncture on a slippery road led to a steering column through the chest and instant death to a man younger than I am now.  This was decades ago.  A poet named Tony Velona wrote to the widow:  everything is in its place.  The poem:

All is well.
All is as it should be.
the universe is always in perfect order.
 
All is:
The merest molecule,
the mightiest mountain,
subject to change.
 
We rejoice.
we weep.
Okay,
we care.
 
We will endure.
We will flourish.
 
We are made strong
We belong– 
each
to the other.

The Whole Person

In death, for the first time, generally, we can see a person’s life for what it truly was.   The journey complete, the entire life emerges more clearly than it can ever be seen while it is in progress.

Melz, it becomes clear after his death, was the remarkable individual that none of his friends had ever seen angry, or bitter, or speaking badly of anyone.   I only knew one other person, Howie Katz, who this could be said for.

Melz was uniquely talented, and unassuming, something of an introvert, and possessed a rare grace.   He played the piano as easily as we the living breathe, like a fish swims or a bird flies.  He coaxed beautiful music out of the keys with Fred Flintstone fingers.  

That much we all knew when he was alive, but the ethereal gracefulness of that thick fingered, heavy limbed man is what remains with me now.

A Question of Framing

Look at it this way: either she saved my life or almost fucking killed me.  Or both.  All a question of framing.

A friend had emailed me, just before we left snow covered NY heading for snow covered Boston for Melz’s funeral, urging us to be careful on the road.   I thought little of the warning at the time, seeing traffic on the Grand Central Parkway traveling at its normal speed and the service road dry, responded glibly that I’d ask the driver to keep it to 80 mph.
But, lo, only a few hours later, after a stop for lunch in a Connecticut diner, I had reason to ponder the prudence of his concerned comment  after S, at 80 mph and accelerating, hit a sheet of nicely camoflagued ice in the lane next to the HOV lane and did a donut next to said HOV lane on interstate 84, which is 5 lanes wide at that point, miraculously missing the white car in front of us as we swerved back into traffic, about a foot away as we went into the spin, we stopped for a nanosecond facing the oncoming traffic before S veered to miss one oncoming car, we swiveled again, maybe 180 degrees, somehow no horns blaring as this bullfight at 80 mph went on, no time for that, and then managed to lunge across the last two lanes of fast moving traffic to the shoulder.  Closest to death I’ve ever been.   Thank God none of the oncoming drivers were texting or studying their GPS screens at the time.  
 
S later told how her father, insane ex-Marine Murray, used to take S and her sister to frozen parking lots to practice over and over what to do when you accelerate and hit ice, how to get out of a skid, how to stay cool when you need to have every bit of focus on your survival.  He did this at least 10 times, til he was satisfied both girls could do it.  “We owe our lives to Murray,” I concluded.  There is no other explanation for how we survived.
 
On the way back I saw on southbound 84 that not only was it a miracle and testament to Murray’s effective training and S’s reflexes and instincts that we survived, and extreme good luck, the hand of Ha Shem, and Melz’s hand, but that S, in a hurry for no earthly reason, (we could arrive any time between 5 and 8 and she’d picked 5 to obsessively aim for– we arrived at 5:06), had been an insane idiot the moment before and, accelerating to illegally enter the HOV lane across an unmaintained lane (unmaintained because of double white lines and herringbones, under the thin coating of snow over a sheet of ice five miles long) at roughly 85 mph, had almost killed all of us.  
 
No wonder she was so shaken today and kept hugging me.  They left right after the burial, I drove back with other friends after the shiva call on Melz’s family.  It guess it must have dawned on her more and more overnight that it was not a case of “you saved my life. It’s a miracle!” as I had constantly been framing it, nearly as much as “you almost killed me on the way to a funeral, you fucking asshole!” which is probably a much more accurate assessment of what actually happened.  
It is all a question of framing, I suppose, and how much mercy we employ while putting things into frames.

From the Mouths of Pishers

I got the news of Melz’s death just after noon on Thursday January 2.   At 3:02 I was sitting on the floor in a circle of boys, ages 8-10.  As I calmed them and opened the laptop to show them three, yea, three new pieces of animation, I mentioned that if I seem sad or not myself today it’s because I got the news three hours ago that an old friend had died.
 
“I’m sorry,” said Amza, 8.
 
“How old was he?” asked someone else.
 
“He’d just turned 58,” I said and a chorus of children said “that’s young!”
 
From the mouths of pishers…

Tucking Melz In

At the cemetery, which was called a burial park, and looked like a snow-covered golf course, we walked across the graves and their snow-covered plaques marking where the dead were buried — no headstones here — toward the rectangular cut out of earth where our friend’s pine coffin would be buried.   The day, which had been sunny and almost Springlike during the perfect funeral service, had turned grey and the temperature dropped at least 15 degrees.  Collars went up, hats were pulled down, gloves came out.

After shoveling some dirt to finish covering the pine top of Melz’s pine coffin, I spotted  a very successful friend of the deceased.  The young Melz had dreamed of being Fellini, and was in a way, he had a video company and directed and edited short films for business that I’m sure were artful.  He was a very talented  and tasteful guy.   Melz’s friend and colleague who waved to me as I turned from the grave must be talented too, he sold his first great idea for several million dollars, I learned recently.

He and his wife smiled as I made my way over to them.   We spoke briefly about the miraculous perfect game pitched by our mutual friend the rabbi as he sent off his best friend from childhood.   81 pitches, all strikes, 27 Ks.  Nobody has ever painted a masterpiece in fewer strokes, every color and gradation perfect, unforgettable and untouchable in its architecture and balance.

“If he dies before us, who’s going to do our funerals?” he asked, puckish and urgent. 

“Shit,” I said, “you’re right, we’d be fucked.”   Then in an inspiration as sudden as one of Melz’s ridiculous absurdities thrown into the conversation, I said, “wait, I’ve got it, and you’re just the man for the job.  We get Sokoll on tape doing our eulogies. We get final cut, so we can tweak him until it’s perfect… it’ll be great.  I’ll send you my eulogy right away so you can get to work.”

Later, when we presented our concerns, our friend the rabbi promised us he’d do his best to outlive us so he could do our funerals live.

“Let’s go tuck Melz in,” said his wife gently after a round of smiles.  

We walked over to the grave and continued shoveling, burying the pine box that contained the used up shell of the body that once housed our friend.  There was odd comfort in this tucking of Melz in, and I took some more of it, a second round of shoveling, trying to fill the rest of the hole.

Creativity: Impossible, Essential (draft 1)

Image

When God created the heavens and the earth, rivers and mountains, the oceans, the animals, at the end of each day of Creation he rested and said “that’s good!”  Then God got up the next day, brought some more never before seen things into being, looked at those things and said “nice!.”  And, on the seventh day God rested, very satisfied with His week’s work.

All things are brought about by acts of creation; children, music, perfectly seasoned food, humor, ideas, the worst and best case scenarios for every plan imaginable, imagination itself.   Creation is the source of everything we see, hear, taste, value.  

Here in the marketplace of ideas we are free to trade in any creative speculation we can entertain, though it is surprisingly not often done  Events and the mass media dictate and regulate the trade in ideas, and skillful propagandaists frame and shape those events to fit a dualistic narrative, dreamed up by creative minds specialized in influencing public opinion.   Speculation and debate framing are creative exercises like any other leap of imagination.  We view the events of our times in frames filtered through the dusty prisms of history, your view of the past a reflection of your underlying beliefs about the nature of our world.  

It is worth a look at what happened to societies who underwent comparable periods of inequality in wealth, economic collapse and insecurity, increased levels of poverty, crowding, pollution, violence.  There are not many times in human history more dramatically and violently set off as our own, especially when you throw in rising sea levels, increased drought, and tsunamis, and famines, and flooding, and tornadoes.

As a student of history, can you think of a case where radically increased government secrecy and unaccountability were not precursors to totalitarian states?  Government secrecy and unaccountability are things, in the clear light of  hindsight, to be resisted by all citizens who would have a true democracy.

Framing the conversation is where the propagandist, or brander, makes his living.   The packaging and selling of products determines the view most people have of those products.  If we invade a country to save the citizens from a Hitler-like dictator, are we not doing the right thing?  If the commercial and political marketplace are identical then the better funded, skillfully branded,  more extensively marketed candidate always wins.

It seems cynical to view democracy as merely a matter of who has the winning marketing strategy– branding, advertising, monetizing the product, matching it with its demographic and marketing it to them with skillful real-time market research, Johnny On The Spot public relations, subtle advertising– but these are all tools used to win campaigns.   The most convincing campaign is almost always based on stunning simplicity.

Once the issue is simplified, freedom versus tyranny, say, and the idea commodified, sold in its symbolic,  emotion inspiring aspect,  memorable and moving propaganda can be born.  If it bleeds it leads, what makes the heart pump faster is what will appeal to the electoral consumer.  Propaganda, like advertising, appeals primarily to emotion.   Ideas are only used to excite the emotions, so the rationale for those ideas is not always important.

                                                                                                 II  

On the other hand, every one who ever lets go to create sometimes knows how great creativity feels.

An act of creativity loosens the chafing chains that bind you to your cares.   Creativity is essential, but not practiced in the general society, beyond a certain prescribed range:  cooking, choice of musical recording, joking, it comes down now to mostly a matter of style.   Creativity of any kind can seem impossible, through long repression, for some people.   As John Cleese points out, it’s easier to talk about being creative than to be creative  But being in a creative state is very pleasurable and working with others to create a thing together is life affirming.

To be creative you must enter the creative mode: relaxed, confident, not worried, not in a hurry, and not distracted by the million mundane details that grind the world to distraction.  In the workshop I expect the kid with ADHD to sit behind the computer editing for 90 minutes without getting distracted.  I expect the level of creativity that comes naturally to a group of kids that age at play.  In order never to discourage it I try to always be relaxed, and open, and not in a hurry or distracted.

That is a tall order, to remain always relaxed.  To keep yourself open and mild, not always easy to do.  To be aware of the time frame, and in control of the clock, but never in a hurry or distracted.  Always to say, when a second kid tries to break into the conversation to be heard “I’d like to hear this, but as you can see X is talking to me.  As soon as she’s done, you’re next, hold that thought.”  All of these things are crucial to maintaining a creative environment where everyone stays relaxed, where nobody feels threatened.  Keeping these qualities at all times takes regular practice to get good at.  Worth it, though, and a creative act, to practice making these small changes on yourself.

 

A Drink to Old Friends on Christmas Eve

I went up on a wobbly chair just now to get a bottle off the top shelf in my paint bare cupboard over my cracked kitchen sink.  I have four bottles up there, single malt scotches all, three now, actually.  Each one delicious, each slightly different from all the others.  In those differences the beauty of single malt scotch, an acquired taste, certainly, but a polished little universe for the tasting and savoring of those smoky nuances.   

There is whisky, like in the black and white movies.  The guy goes into the bar, says to the bartender “give me a double,” and the double the bartender pours is the house whisky, usually a blend of various malts and grains, made with all sorts of other ingredients, sometimes tap water.  House whisky is the least expensive bottle of the hard stuff you can buy.   It gives a nasty hangover too, compared to the more refined Scotches I am talking about.  Whisky is not sipped with pauses for smiling appreciation, you toss that fire water back.  It doesn’t necessarily taste terrible, but you’re not drinking this stuff for the flavor but to get a worse taste out of your mouth.

“Give me another one, bartender,” says the drunk loudly.   

“What are you drinking to?” asks the bartender, hesitating to serve the obviously sloshed man.

“My first blow job,” says the drunk sloppily with a wistful smile.  The bartender pours him another.

“Here you go,” he says,  “this one’s on the house.  This is a special day for you.”  The drunk tosses back the shot, waits a few seconds, shakes his head.  

“That’s it,” he gets up unsteadily, “if six shots don’t get the taste out of my mouth the whole bottle ain’t gonna do it.”  

Guy gets on the A train with his four kids at 14th Street.   They’re wearing suits and dresses, like they’re going to church.  The kids immediately start screaming and throwing themselves all around the train.  They are slamming into other passengers and shrieking in people’s ears. climbing on the seats, swinging from the bars.  The father is just sitting there with his head in his hands pretending he doesn’t know the kids as the kids run riot.  

Finally I turn to the guy, after getting kicked again by one of his screaming kids and I say, “do you mind taking care of your out-of-control kids?” and the guy is still looking down.  

“I owe you an apology,” he says.  “I’m sorry and I feel very ashamed of myself.  I should not subject you and everyone else on this train to this, but I can’t control them.  We’re coming back from their mother’s funeral, she was hit by a car yesterday, and none of us know what to do with ourselves.”

So you got a crude guy walks into a bar joke or a vignette providing an illuminating change of perspective, the unnoticed miracle that happens in life once in a while.   Things that once you learn change the whole picture for you, improve your perspective, help resolve painful mysteries.  My father as an infant being whipped in the face by his mother.   The wild children wildly grieving their young mother’s atrocious death.  

That’s the difference between drinking whisky and enjoying fine single malt scotch, a quick, cheap laugh, or a nuanced laugh and something to ponder (even though the second anecdote above was lifted from a wonderful talk I heard a few years ago).

Scotch has to be grown– grain, malt, all other ingredients– distilled, aged and bottled in Scotland, apparently, whereas whisky is whatever you can ferment anywhere to make a brownish tan intoxicant of approximately 50% alcohol.  

I recall a great Scotch tasting not a decade ago, in London.  The occasion was the fiftieth birthday of a guy I’d known since we were seventeen.  I was not the only guest to arrive with a bottle of  fine Scotch, I think I brought Glenmorangie.  There was Laphroaig, Glenlivet, Johnny Walker Black, a few others.   We set them all out on a long table with enough small glasses for everyone.

“Johnny?” we all said, and nodded and tasted the Johnny Walker Black.  It was smooth, it was rich, it was tasty.  We all agreed it was delicious.   Then we tasted the rest in turn, savoring and evaluating each.  It was hard to pick the best, and that was hardly the point, even though I think there was some consensus at the time, which I don’t remember.   If you like a smoky, peat taste to your Scotch you’d probably prefer Laphroaig.  The Glenmorangie aged in the sherry casks was special, I recall, someone else had bought that one, which is the kind I look for once in a while.

But, thinking about it now, those friends, like the last of the 12 year old Macallans I just poured, are all gone.  When I recycle the empty bottle only the memory of drinking it on special occasions over the course of several years will remain, if that.  

Merry Christmas to all, don’t drink and drive.  Don’t drink alone.  Leave the single malts to the experts.  And peace on earth, boys and girls.