Time and a bandanna

** NOTE: For the past six or seven years, this blog has been mostly about the "current events" that engage my attention, and so it generally presents public issues. But nowadays I am freer to share some important private issues and changes that have been going on in my thinking the past couple of years. To that end, I present this initial entry:

On August 10 I presented four original songs, singing and playing guitar and keyboards at the “Songwriter’s Café,” an event held a couple times a month at Red House in Walnut Creek. It was a slow night as these things go, according to Peter Avery, the Red House coordinator. They usually have six acts, but only five signed up. And of that a couple didn’t even show up. Ryan, the RH host took the first set and paired me with Walty for the second set of four songs each. Walty is a great guitarist and singer who instantly contributed an excellent guitar solo when I happened to muse while singing that this would be a good spot for a nice guitar solo. He asked, “What key?” I told him “C” and he launched right in. It was so good I had him repeat it. This is the wonderful kind of magic that happens during live music that gives me such special joy. Now that this “debut” is over, and I didn’t get de-butted, I hope to become a regular at the Café, which will help me get through my catalog of songs written in the 70s, and may encourage me to write some new ones.

This experience only roughly approximates the public appearances I made over the course of over 30 years as a Christian Scientist, both as a “Reader” in the churches and as a lecturer. The content is decidedly different! So is the audience. In my previous appearances, as well as in over 150 written articles, I’ve only represented that religion, even while trying to rehabilitate its culture with a touch of contemporaneity. This time I'm representing only myself – albeit a self of the 70s. Back then I had considered myself a songwriter and generated a few dozen songs, which were quietly shelved once I became a practitioner and representative of the Christian Science point of view. There’s nothing specifically against artistic expression in that system, but the more public you become – as a practitioner, teacher, writer, lecturer, etc – the more constrained you can feel about displaying emotion, doubt, ambivalence, or anything too "personal." You’re supposed to represent the absolute and fixed verities, which admit of none of that “human” roughness.

I was 36 when I first thought of myself as a Christian Scientist. Since 2005 – and now that I think about it, probably before – I have evolved away from that set of beliefs and have found myself mentally (but certainly not physically!) back to where I might have been if that 30-year detour hadn't happened. I'm creatively alive again, if not entirely free of the kinds of problems that at the time probably induced me to take up a religion that eschewed the kind of world view that would be characterized as “sensual.” For example, the opening line of the first song I performed at Red House went:

Here I sit smoking my last cigarette, it’s been a long, low night and it ain’t over yet.

I don’t smoke anymore, not cigarettes anyway, but I’ve had plenty of long, low nights in the past 30 years. The difference this time is that I'm not ashamed to admit it in public, since I don’t consider myself an example of the kind of idealized human being that is supposed to result from believing in the absolute perfection of the true “spiritual man." Once in a while, when confronted by something scary, I do detect a mental twitch that in the past would have been called “prayer,” a desire to turn to some Agent above and beyond the present challenging situation that could lift me out of trouble. It’s the “skyhook” mentality that Dennett so clearly demolishes in “Breaking the Spell.” I now believe in what he calls, in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, “cranes,” as opposed to skyhooks – in other words, progress built step by little step, adding to work that has already been done. The way evolution does it.

It’s what led me to my present state – a label for which still eludes me. I am not an “atheist” in the narrow sense of someone who eschews the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god. I eschew all divine agents. So "non-theist" might better characterize me. But that states it negatively. Maybe better would be “naturalistic humanist.” But that sounds overblown. And the term "Bright" seems a bit contrived, although I would align with their description of a person with:

• a naturalistic worldview
• free of supernatural and mystical elements
• ethics and actions based on a naturalistic world view

What I want to make clear is that I am not on some kind of “spiritual quest,” not finding my way back to god by some other “path.” I think of myself as unwrapping possibilities. Yes, self-discovery, but not in the sense of ascending toward an already set identity – especially not one set by a “Creator.” It’s more like just fooling around. For example, I used to love to watch Avner Eisnberg, a clown/mime, standing on a stage with no other prop than a bandanna around his neck. He would just stand there and look around until he eventually found the bandanna and started fooling with it, twisting it into various shapes, stretching, waving, pulling, throwing it and so forth until he was thoroughly occupied with it and had made the most of it. Just fooling around, playing with the possibilities in the here and now – that’s more like what I'm doing these days. My work now represents no one else but me, advances no cause but to unfold the joys of existence. Even then it’s work, and sometimes difficult work – like preparing to get up on stage and singing. It takes a lot of time, and I go through a lot of emotions and tension. But in the end, it’s over and it is what it is and that’s enough.

I heard Steve Shapiro speak once on the subject of “goal-free” living. That’s probably what I am doing these days. I have no goal, lead no movement, pick no fights, and bear only a grudge or two – the pain of which is receding more every day. And yet I feel open to explain to anyone what I am discovering since breaking free of the spell that there is something more than what exists here and now, or what can come into existence by just fooling around with it. This is sufficient. Just give me time and a bandanna, especially time.

Musings on music

**An update for myself in the future and for anyone who cares:

In September 2006 I took part in a poetry workshop at Berkeley led by Richard Silberg, did ten weeks there and then joined another workshop, led by Kim Addonizio at her home in Oakland. They were both good experiences for different reasons, and forced me to hack out some bits of poetry, meet some interesting fellow poets and give myself a hell of an editing assignment. Most of those poems aren’t ready for even late night time, so they will undergo revisions, rewritings and scrapping before I venture to make them “public” – if this, the most microscopic audience in the world, can be considered “public.” What I consider done for now appear on my poetry site, couldbeverse.

Toward the end of my second poetry workshop I got involved with the RPM Challenge project, about which I’ve blogged here before. This opened up the long-closed gate of my interest in music. I wrote my first song in high school and had it performed at the Spring Concert, probably in 1957 or 1958. I remember being shoved out on the stage to play the piano by Sister Mary Whoever because Dur Daggett, the school genius pianist, was a no-show. Funnily, the song was called “Memories,” but I can hardly remember it now.

Songwriting remained pretty much dormant until long after college, poetry being my muse in the intervening years. Bought my first guitar from a guy at work who had a music store. Paid $40 and it was worth almost every penny. But I started to learn some Bob Dylan and Beatles on it. In 1968 my wife bought me a real guitar, the one I still have, and about which I wrote the poem “Attachments.” Soon after, I began writing songs and that continued for several years into the 1970s, producing dozens until I got religion in 1976 or 1977. Suddenly all that artistic stuff looked crass and unholy compared with the lofty goals and mission I had taken on. So songwriting remained more or less dormant for the next thirty years and the songs, typed or scrawled on yellow paper mostly, lived in the back of the lowest draw of the least used file cabinet. I had also recorded most of them on some reel-to-reel tape machines I owned at various times. I have boxes of these and until February of 2007 hadn’t listened to them. But I still had an old Wollensak kicking around and got it working well enough to listen to some of those songs. That led quickly into the RPM Challenge project.

But my interest in songwriting has flared up and I am involved with music again as in the old days. These days I’m concentrating for the most part on recording some of my oldies, using the wonderful technology available to the layman today. Some of them are just tunes, so now and then I take a crack at writing lyrics to them.

ENTER RED HOUSE

I met John Cunningham at Fitness 19 where I had been working with him as a personal trainer. We discovered our mutual interest in music and began jamming on Friday nights at my place. John laid down awesome lead guitar tracks to two songs I was producing for the RPM project.

Then one day he told me about a place in Walnut Creek, just 8 or 9 miles from here, where guys like us could go and jam. It’s called Red House. We visited it one Saturday and a week later joined. It has been a great experience for me. John and I meet there instead at my place and have a couple hours to jam in a beautifully equipped studio. I made a brief video last Friday, which you can see here.

But the big breakthrough for me has come from playing in a group, something I have always wanted to do, but the logistics posed formidable obstacles – and excuses. Now, with Red House providing a gathering place for musicians I find I’m playing a lot more. Apparently most of the members play blues lead guitar, and there seems to be few keyboard players. There are several “Players Clubs” where members can jam on the Red House stage. Next to guitarists there are several drummers and bass players so there’s always a core rhythm section and people take turns paling a couple songs on stage. I have found myself expanding that rhythm section on keyboards. And the neat part is that I get to sit in on all the sessions! So I’m getting more experience playing, and having the fun of interacting with the other players.

Will this lead to a whole new career? No. Being now of a certain age, I can do this sort of thing for the sheer pleasure of it without the slightest trace of guilt. Being “retired” means not only never having to say “hello Boss,” but not having to defer doing what really resonates for the sake of earning a buck. I didn’t feel this way when I was first let go from my job. I felt I had been cut off from the most satisfying work I’ve every had. It took about a year to realize that I had been handed one huge favor and, useless as it is, I am loving my life.

Where I go from here is completely unknown to me. More of the same, something new or all of the above? No plans other than to stay healthy, appreciate what I have and look for new opportunities.