Just some random stuff I felt like pulling together, none of which merited its own post, but which together... uh... STILL might not merit its own post. Ah, well...
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I loved Kevin Cowherd's article about Renaissance Faire dinner theater in the Baltimore Sun ("Watching Knights of the Dinner Table"). Even Cowherd's weakest columns inevitably have one line in them that makes me laugh out loud as I read. This one had more than one.
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Advice from my friend Shawn, when I whined to him about a general malaise I'd been feeling lately: "We all suffer bouts of depression, indecision, angst. But don't let it interfere with moving your life forward. Let it go. Shake things up if you're down.... I understand what you're going through, and the best medicine is movement. Give your brain something new to think about so that it doesn't have time to fuck with you."
That last line is what Zen masters have been preaching and trying to practice for years. Easier said than done at times, and, oddly enough, easier done than said at other times.
I'd rather hear it from a friend than from a master. Thanks, Shawn.
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Listening at work to the "Starbuck's XM Cafe" station, featuring "adult singer-songwriter" music (aka bland, midtempo, nondescript, nonmelodic confessional modern folk rock, or, as a Rolling Stone writer once described REM, "moan in search of a melody') and a track from Bob Dylan came on.
The problem with the aforementioned genre of music is that the performers who populate it are trying to do what Dylan did (does) while lacking three essential elements:
* Dylan's sense of himself as not only a performer and a songwriter, but as a stage persona, a character independent of Robert Zimmerman, the man who has placed himself in the title role.
* Dylan's talent as a songwriter: meaning not only his obvious gifts as a wordsmith, but his fearlessness as an artist.
* Dylan's devotion to rock and roll, and to making sure his songs never lull, but drive or pulse.
The inability to capture any of these three elements is what dooms most modern day singer-songwriters to mediocrity, and also explains why 99.99999999% of the time, the moniker THE NEW DYLAN is simply misplaced and never to be trusted.
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I've noticed that whenever I have coffee, whether it's my 16-ounce 50-50 french roast-french roast decaf at home, or a long espresso (a double shot stretched out to coffee-cup size) at work, or a Red Eye or Americano at the cafe, or a cup of Dunkin Donuts brew grabbed on the fly... no matter where or when, I've noticed that somehow I always leave an inch of coffee in the bottom of the cup. I don't know why. For a while, I thought "OK, so maybe I should get the next size down," but when I started doing that, I STILL left an inch of coffee in the bottom of the cup.
What does unfinished coffee represent? Hmmmm...
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Best STATUS UPDATE I've yet read from one of my friends on Facebook was my Goddard pal George's post from last week:
George took the True Age Test and found out he died five years ago.
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Best one-liner I've heard recently: my co-worker Ian's description of "speed dating" at a local pub, where participants rotate in seven-minute shifts between tables of other singles.
"Yep, seven minutes. Five minutes of small talk... then the two most unforgettable minutes of our lives."
* * *
Realization: that I have gotten the good things I have in my life right now by trusting God and following faith... by realizing that my actions and thoughts and words have consequences in my life and in the lives of those around me, and that I am largely responsible for my life, the circumstances in it, and the quality of my relationships with people.
I'm thinking of one friendship in particular that, eight years ago, seemed like it would never happen, that was impossible... that I would suffer forever and never unlock the key to this person. Now, eight years later, I count this person among my closest friends. It all came about for a lot of reasons, but from my perspective, it happened because I knew I wanted this person in my life, knew she was important to me, and so I worked HARD spiritually to build a foundation for a friendship (blessed her and her life and her family in my heart, let go of a lot of baggage on my end) and followed "the silent voice within" in all my contact with her.
But I also just made sure that I respected her, and further, I TOOK THE RISK and expressed what I was really feeling for her. Scary, because I told her some things that, if she'd taken them the wrong way, might have shut the door forever. But instead, with the foundation I'd laid and we built together, she got where I was coming from, told me where SHE was coming from, and so we met in the middle. And we've been there ever since. One of my closest friends, and it's hard to believe I ever wanted it any other way, because now I wouldn't want it any other way.
From her and my friendship with her, I learned to be persistent and understanding, to abandon my expectations and just meet people where they were and give what I had, because who knows, if I needed someone's friendship, maybe THEY in turn needed MINE.
I'm keeping this in mind as I struggle with my feelings for a "distant star." I know what I feel and what I want. And having been there before (having someone I held in esteem at a distance become one of my closest friends over the course of time), I also know that it's possible. Like I said, I've been here before... several times, in fact. And each of those times, what I ended up getting turned out to be something much different from what I thought I wanted... but still, something amazing and beautiful and wonderful in its own way that I wouldn't trade for the world.
So I'm approaching this "distant star" with the same reverence and respect that I have approached others in the past. We'll see what happens.
After all, tomorrow, as the aforementioned Mr. Dylan sang, is a long time.
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