Love and Dementia

This is one of those things I am going to write about regardless of being sure that someone, somewhere, must have said it before; sure that a hole in my education makes me an unwitting philosophical parrot. But, hey -- they say Newton and another guy simultaneously discovered the principles of gravity and motion; that Darwin and another cat came up with the theory of evolution in, like, the same year. One just published first. I'm probably about a thousand years behind with this...

Whatever the case, I was wondering what it is about a person that makes us love him or her. What is that thing -- or what is the combination of things -- that causes us to love? (I mean this in both the romantic and familial sense...)

The Tasteless Joke of Fate

Once, a young student stifled my instinctual and unshakable belief in the afterlife -- when I had mentioned my inability to grasp the idea of oblivion -- by pointing out the feeling of being under anesthesia; the complete absence of the perception of the passage of time that one experiences before and after an operation. It was an eye-opener, even if I wound up still believing, in the end, after some real intellectual trials.

Now, I'm given very solid reasons to question the idea of the state of existence, itself.

Dementia. Many of our elder parents and grandparents fall victim. They lose themselves. They can't think; they can't express themselves. People we know to have been brilliant, creative and sharp-witted, often take their last bows on life's stage not to applause while juggling knives and playing concertos, but in a state not knowing how to accomplish such simple tasks as buttering their own bread. Sometimes, their personalities change, altogether. A mother we know to have been patient and kind might accuse a son or daughter of vile transgressions; she might throw a sandwich across the room -- a sandwich that was lovingly made. A father who was a guide on every difficult front becomes one who needs guidance, himself -- maybe even to get from the bathroom to a chair.

Being a Real Man

I need to figure out what it means to be a man so I can teach my boys. I'm neither stupid nor conceited enough to think that their success as men will exclusively be a result of what I teach them; each of my sons is his own individual. But, if I don't have the definition straight in my own head, how can I teach them anything?

I know it isn't fashionable these days, but I respect toughness. I also respect courage, intelligence and honesty. (I know -- these things are corny, too. Alas, in some ways, I have just been scraped off of the cob.)

There are a lot of guys out there with forceful attitudes and loud voices who couldn't stand up for their families if a fight became necessary. There are a lot of thugs out there who pick fights to compensate for their own little-bitty...hearts. There are a lot of guys out there who think making money makes them men and there are plenty of others who make very little and act as if those who make a lot of coin are categorically "soft." I'm reminded of an exchange in Spielberg's Jaws:

Quint:You got city hands, Mr. Hooper. You've been countin' money all your life.

Hooper: Hey, I don't need this. I don't need this working-class-hero crap.

And under no circumstances does being a man depend on the volume of one's sexual conquests. (You'd think this era was as passe' as butterfly collars and velour, but over my years as a musician, I have seen it is not so for some of my fellow males.)

Kwai Chang Caine, from the 70s show, Kung Fu:
The best example
of a man ever on presented on television.
He's the one TV character
I would gladly see my sons imitate.

And "gay" or "straight" does not enter into it, in terms of conduct in the world, by the way. (It may seem strange to some blockheads out there that I think gay men are neither excluded from the responsibilities of toughness, courage, intelligence and honesty nor precluded from being considered men simply because of their sexual orientation. No one gets a break from my exceedingly arrogant evaluations. Everyone has an equal chance to be a spineless loser, in my eyes...)