What's A Hero?

 On a run the other morning I thought about Jackie Robinson.

I don't know a ton about Jackie Robinson; a little more than the casual baseball fan I would guess. The Ken Burns 'Baseball' documentary enlightened me a bit and the movie 42 followed what I learned from the documentary. These coupled with the book I read to my sons (who are in full baseball obsession mode at the moment) Jackie and Me by Dan Gutman solidified my view that Jackie Robinson was a hero.

Despite the question the Coen brothers ask in The Big Lebowski, What's A Hero?

Well, in my estimation Jackie Robinson is a hero because of what he did...for so many others...at great cost to himself.

Now what got me on my run the other morning was how I compared Jackie Robinson, who's life was so clearly cut short because of the stress from breaking the color barrier in baseball, to my parents.

Now my parents were not heroes, to many, but their lives were most definitely cut short from the stress of raising six children in abject poverty. One of the things that slaps me in the face most days is how fortunate my children are: food to eat, clothes to wear, resources like health insurance and dental coverage. Most of this is provided by my wife just so we're clear, but the children are fortunate and, gulp, privileged. 

Despite my own generational poverty trauma I carry and I impose upon them indirectly.

So my parents had no resources and still managed to get us out of childhood alive. Maybe not mentally/emotionally top-tier, but breathing and operating on a level with the average citizen. Again, they did this with no resources. No safety net (no health insurance, no dental coverage), no net to catch parents falling with six children in tow. Did I mention we were all crammed into a 2 bedroom house. 2 bedrooms. Our current home has 4 full baths. 

Imagine the mental toll. I honestly can't. I hate taking my car for an oil change because I fear news that x is broken and its going to cost y, even though I have a little money saved.

What the fuck is it like to avoid going to the doctor for an entire life because you just can't afford it? What is it like to get up and go to work even though you are sick as a dog? Cory Booker, in an interview with Jon Stewart, talked about how a speeding ticket can ruin people working in a gig industry. My father was self-employed and if he didn't work, he didn't eat - no personal days, no vacation days, no sick days, no my kid has this or that day. Work, or else. 

That's pressure.

That's stressful.

It shortens lives.

So my parents died early. 

Did they die heroes?

I don't know. 

What's a hero?

The Sound On The Page

I finished Ben Yagoda’s The Sound On The Page today…

and I feel discouraged.

The book is about writing style. It is a good book, don’t get me wrong; I like his writing a lot but, there are some, oh let us call them, intimations, from the book that are, oh let us say, depressing.

In a book about style, there are obvious connections to musical style which is, yes, obvious. Obvious, in case you missed it.

Consider the old saw that there are eight notes in the musical scale, how you use them is…

style.

i.e., everything.

Now ask yourself how many people you’ve known over the course of your life that have picked up an instrument and compare it with the number of musicians whose style you could name, blindfolded so to speak?

(I could probably tell you the Stevie Ray Vaughan song from just a few bars of a solo).

That’s one thing. The other intimation from the book is that style is the person.

I’m in trouble. I’m not a great person in any sense of the word.

So I’m walking today thinking about the book and the upshots and it hits me:

I started playing the guitar at fifteen and never really made any money from it though I was able to at least get gigs in a small college town and some neighboring big cities in Ohio like Columbus and Cincinnati, some twenty years later. For those of you keeping score at home, that was twenty years. 20.

So if I gained no style musically, in twenty years, how can I hope to gain any style writing?

Sure, Yagoda gives advice like active reading and active writing and active editing but shitballs, I’m 46, I don’t think there is enough time.

Dont' Forget To Look For It

When you grow up your heart dies.

If you don’t believe me, ask Ally Sheedy:

 

If you don’t believe me, as KennethLonergan:

 http://www.npr.org/2016/11/30/503865472/manchester-by-the-sea-director-probes-the-drama and-humor-of-grief

GROSS: And then, of course, you wrote "This Is Our Youth," which is about people in their late teens and early 20s. But when you're writing the roles of teenagers, do you draw on your memories of your own teenage years or on teenagers who you know now?

LONERGAN: I think more the memories of my own teenage years because the teenagers I know now don't really talk to me.

(LAUGHTER)

LONERGAN: My daughter talks to me. She's 14. And some of her friends talk to me. But I mostly watch them talking to each other. They're not - some of her friends are extremely pleasant and nice to us and talk to us all the time, and some of them just say hello, you know, if you make them say hello. So I'm just very interested in teenagers, and I always have been. I remember those years very vividly.

And I - it's always interesting to listen to them talking to each other on the street or walking past a school or anything like that. I just find it to be a very dramatic time of life, for lack of a better word. And I remember what it felt like to be a teenager. And I also remember observing my friends and schoolmates at the time in a - kind of a funny way because I was one of them, but I was also watching and noticing this sort of extreme behavior combined with this, I don't know, really beautiful extra passion for everything that teenagers seem to have. And I find the combination to be endlessly fascinating.

GROSS: So you said you remember what it felt like to be a teenager. What did it feel like to you? What are some of those - yeah.

LONERGAN: Not great.

GROSS: (Laughter).

LONERGAN: I think - well, (laughter) but that's actually not true. I remember really - I remember this - you know, this intense and very - this intense fascination for things that was really at the ready. At the same time, I didn't feel too good socially. I had some close - I had a small group of close friends that got smaller and smaller as I got older. And I think that part wasn't so great. I didn't have a girlfriend in high school. That was a constant problem. And I didn't know what you were supposed to do, you know, in a situation with the opposite camp. And there was all sorts of difficulties in that regard. But there's something about the fecundity of a mind that age that I really think is - that I remember very well and wish I could carry a bit more of that with me as I get older.

fe·cun·di·ty

feˈkəndədē,fiˈkəndədē/

noun

noun: fecundity

1. the ability to produce an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertility.

So you see, I am not the only one who believes there is a death of sorts beyond adolescence.

Do you not get wistful not for specific things from those years to happen again but rather, for the feeling and the intensity that occurred along with those events? It didn’t matter the specific music that you liked during those years –your tastes have undoubtedly changed- but the death is that you cannot recapture the passion and intensity of your love for x or y’s music from when you were a teenager. No one goes on and on about the music they listen to when they are 30 or 40. Music is of course only one example of this phenomenon. Take love or athletic competition or art or what have you, those years, when your brain is fully cooking you, is when you will be the most passionate in your life.

But…

My Joe Pesci there are moments of bliss, even after our teenage heart dies.

If you don’t believe me, just watch this video:

Just look at the smiles on the faces. These are grown people, sure they are stars and famous and all that but don't be fooled, they have problems just like you and me. I said it, just like you and me. But here they are, and the tape doesn't lie, just beaming like children at a birthday party with a bounce house. Simply because a song is playing and people are dancing and performing. 

Some captures:

 That is Denzel Washington from Training Day. Remember "King Kong ain't got shit on me!" Yeah, that's him, smiling like he can't help it.

Oh and these two:

And my favorite, Mr Bardem:

Could he be any happier? Yes, this is the "You've been putting up with it your whole life."Javier Bardem.

So look, your heart, a part of your heart, dies. And your sight goes and your hearing goes and food doesn't taste as good and all of it is true.

But bliss can be found so easily, just don't forget to look for it.

Yazoo Piggly Wiggly

In addition to being an atheist, I am also an amoralist or as some say, a moral nihilist. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I follow laws, I treat people and animals well (as well as can be expected for an omnivore), I drive defensively and follow traffic laws (which is more than I can say for many, many other drivers in the northeastern U.S.). Sure, I had a few scrapes as a kid and even a few in my mid-twenties but I have never been arrested and have only received a few speeding tickets. So I am a lot like you when it comes to behavior in most regards. But if you are not a moral nihilist (or a moral relativist) you believe that there is an objective moral measure of actions/behaviors. In short, some deeds are wrong and some are right. 99% of the time this doesn’t matter one iota because we have (here in the US anyway) a legal system that, to an extent, manages morality for us. The difference for me is that there is no ultimate or objective source of morality – no god to say this is right, period and this is wrong, period. Do this, don’t do that, per god. The Coen brothers had some amoral fun with this in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? On the lam after escaping prison Delmar and Pete get baptized and Delmar is touting his absolution when Everett points out the grey area between god and the law:

DELMAR

Well that's it boys, I been redeemed!

The preacher warshed away all my

sins and transgressions. It's the

straight-and-narrow from here on out

and heaven everlasting's my reward!

EVERETT

Delmar what the hell are you talking

about? - We got bigger fish to fry-

DELMAR

Preacher said my sins are warshed

away, including that Piggly Wiggly I

knocked over in Yazoo!

EVERETT

I thought you said you were innocent

a those charges.

DELMAR

Well I was lyin' - and I'm proud to

say that that sin's been warshed

away too!  Neither God nor man's got

nothin' on me now! Come on in, boys,

the water's fine!

(later…)

PETE

The preacher said it absolved us.

EVERETT

For him, not for the law! I'm

surprised at you, Pete. Hell, I gave

you credit for more brains than

Delmar.

DELMAR

But there were witnesses, saw us

redeemed!

EVERETT

That's not the issue, Delmar. Even

if it did put you square with the

Lord, the State of Mississippi is

more hardnosed.

So like I say 99% of the time, my amorality won’t be an issue, won’t cross with your moral objectivity. But when you think about it, when you really think about it, Delmar has got a point. So heaven is by far the most important goal is it not? What can possibly trump heaven? How can Mississippi, as Everett states, be more hard-nosed than the requirements for eternal bliss? One can be square with the lord but not a state? When did state or federal governments enter the pantheon of moral fiber such as to usurp god’s place in judging humans? Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse? Don’t laws flow from morality and not the other way round? See, I told you they had fun with it.

So for me, human laws are the ones that really matter and as anyone who’s lived on this planet for more than four years knows, humans are endlessly fallible. Henceforth, our laws are fallible. Our ability to follow laws, be ethical, do the dishes, or to prevent the Broncos from driving 98 yards in 1987: all fallible. But if we’re all fallible and realize said fallibility, then we are all on the same page: not some appealing to god and others not. And there is a lot, a huge amount actually, to being on the same page. Good rulers know and have known the importance of standardization.  Deciding what a pound is or an acre is puts everyone on the same page, whether you are farming an acre, buying an acre, or selling an acre. Our so called objective morality is nothing but a stab at standardization – a stab at getting everyone on the same page. It’s the process, the steps to get there that actually end up throwing a wrench in the system. Instead of appealing to just the importance of standardization and trusting in this (and a leviathan or state to enforce said standardization) some folks said no no no, we need some more muscle if we really want this to stick. Let’s not only tie it to this life (laws) but let’s also tie it to everlasting life and instead of this-life or earthly enforcement, let’s enforce via eternal salvation or eternal damnation. That should get these people to straighten up and fly right. Hmm, we’re going to have to codify some things from the almighty. Hmm what to codify, how to communicate messages from an unearthly being to earthly beings? Hmm…
 History is nothing if not proof that this little effort failed at a grotesque level and actually did more harm than good. So again as Nietzsche said “human, all too human” but at least we’re all in this amoral world together and can make it better or at least more manageable on a day to day basis just by accepting our very fallible standardization – perfection isn’t the goal, consistency and not getting murdered for thinking the wrong thing is.

In The Static

He had about 4 hours and 30 minutes. He, like Jack London, was going to use his time. What else did a man have…but time? Christians have it backwards he thought: salvation isn’t the afterlife, salvation is life. He imagined god looking out over eons and eons of unborn pondering whom to birth and throw into the world –to save…from never experiencing. This birth, he thought, this is salvation.  He was getting off track: 4 hours and 30 minutes. He thought about saying it in seconds, 16200 for more force but then thought better of it. If time is so precious, how it is relayed or conveyed, be it months hours or seconds should be beyond the point. Wouldn’t other people recognize that their time was finite and then act accordingly? Who seriously makes plans for the afterlife? One can’t even set goals in the afterlife because they would be attained the moment you thought of them because isn’t that what heaven is, immediate wish fulfillment? Hankering for hot and sour soup? Done. Hole in one? Gotcha. Famous movie actor? Yep. Absurd he thought. Again, getting off track. 4 hours now and going to use it, and in a profound way. Gonna help humanity, or at least watch some good tv. No, no tv he thought. Gonna die someday and here I am with a good chunk of time to myself and I’m thinking about Game of Thrones re-runs. Christ, I’ve already seen them; at least start a new series…House of Cards? No! No tv! Ok, here we go…profound…deep…maybe back to that Christian bit? Where the hell was his niche? If the Coen brothers can write about Jeff Lebowski fitting in, why couldn’t he, he thought? Fit in…somewhere…in some way. Was it fame he was after? Is it fame that verifies your quality? Sure seems that way. You don’t get on the 6 o’clock news by just picking up your kids from daycare. He’d read Maslow, hell, he’d read Buscaglia but self actualization was becoming more and more a pipe dream that began floating away in his early twenties. His early twenties, he thought: I was after it, working hard, putting in the hours, feeling the satisfaction that comes with hard work…and he wanted that feeling again…that feeling of being pulled…as if unwilling…as if…there was no choice. Seemed strange to think of those times in his life that, ex post facto, while rewarding, were the times when he seemed to lack autonomy. Was it like the poets that Plato referred to and how Clapton described Stevie Ray Vaughan as an open channel, just a vehicle through which the gods communicate? If this was the case, he just needed tuned, like a radio, past all the static, till the needle finds the station, flush. But shit, he thought, what if this is life, for most of us, trying to find the station but never hitting it flush and always being in the static?