The Joy of Being In Medias Res

Each night, my sons and my wife and I all say, before bedtime, what we are thankful for. To Karen and me, this is important for reasons that include more than just the theological angle; it's important in fostering an understanding, in our boys, of the things that are going right in their lives. I know, for one, there are times in my life when I take stock and realize how absurdly grateful I should be for the way things have gone thus far, even in the face of trials and the occasional sufferings... (We all have them.)

I don't ever want to be all slap-happy and google-eyed about it, though. And I admit it grinds my gears a little when I hear people say they are "blessed" -- sounds like they got a free gift that I didn't. (Admittedly, this is a flaw in personal perspective...)

While we are on the subject, though...

Wait... "We"? Sort of lame to start a subject and then use that phrase: "While we are on the subject..." I mean, I put us there. It's not like I just got lucky and something came up, at a party, that I was happy to talk about...

(Hold on -- this is going to be a rough ride, this blog post...)

In Medias Canoe.

Be that as it may, while I am dominating, dictating and wallowing in my self-abosrbed subject, it occurs to me how good it is to be in medias res. (Oh, give me a break -- it is one of the only Latin phrases I know. I even linked to its definition so I could look like a scholar. Granted, I used it literally and not in the literary sense...but that's not important right now...)

The God of Creativity

Alright -- enough of this happy music nonsense. Let's go deep, here.

After having read a cool post about Lundy Island, in which the writer alludes to the Celtic belief that the island was one of the "Isles of the Dead", I journeyed, in my own head, back to the years in which I was fascinated by ancient myth and legend and a familiar question popped up:

How did these people, with no empirical proof, no apologetics, no theological logic -- not even a written account of, say, a god having visited Earth, as in the New Testament -- remain committed to their beliefs? How did they perform rituals and commune with their gods with any degree of certainty? -- not even a gigantic, overarching church telling them that there are deep historical roots, as with, say Catholicism?

I mean, it's cool to say: "The sun sustains us. It gives us light. It seems to affect the growth of wheat. Therefore, it is a god. We will call it Lugh and we will worship it." That, I get.

But, then, one day, a priest of Lugh is out in a coracle and he sees a mysterious little island and says: "Ah, that's where we go when we die!" What makes him think this is true? (The very first guy to think it, I mean -- because, after that, all bets are off. People tend to believe what someone tells them.)

Wrong mythology, but you get the point. 

There are two possibilities: 1) He doesn't think it is true but thinks it would be fun to fool everyone and start his own religion or, 2) he thinks the idea is a divine revelation.

A Ridiculous Level of Patience?

I wish I could apply the same level of balance to my life as I can to my music. I spent the past week prepping some tracks for recording. The first task is to get the drum tracks down by using a sketch track to follow; after that, I can go back and add the other instruments one at a time: bass, piano, keys, guitar, etc. Well, what I did, originally, didn't work; not well enough. No need to get into why -- it all needs to be redone.

And I'm okay with that. Perfectly content. Not the slightest bit of anger.

I've erased those numerous hours of work, already -- one push of the button. I'm okay with it because I can see it for what it is: a learning experience. What I did wasn't going to fit the bill. What I did was going to give me a substandard result.

The time was not wasted; it was used to figure out, for sure, what would not work. That's valuable. Back, as they say, to the old drawing board.

Maybe it is a result of a lifetime of watching this indefatigable old chap bounce back (often literally) time after time (this really is a must-watch):

"Nuke" LaLoosh and Me: The Myth of the Creative Process

Crash and Nuke

I love baseball. I also love baseball movies -- the greatest of all time being, of course, Field of Dreams. But one of my other favorites is the comedy Bull Durham. In he film, there is a young pitcher, "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), who is talented but...unfocused. (Okay -- he's an idiot.) Kevin Costner's "Crash" Davis and Susan Sarandon's Annie Savoy have the task of grooming Nuke for the majors. Crash takes the baseball experience approach, but Annie goes a more philosophical route.

When Nuke loses his control on the mound, Annie has him wear women's underwear ("Rose goes in the front, big guy.") and she tells him to breathe through his eyelids. In essence, what she gets him to do is to stop thinking about pitching and just "let it happen." This works for Nuke.

Kurt, the bassist in my band, used to look back at me when he made a mistake on stage and he would point to his head, implying that mistake came when he started thinking.

The Silver Flow of Forever

I write this blog because I feel compelled to create and communicate. Creativity has always been a drive in me. I can't stop doing it any more that I could stop drinking or eating. Something lives in the wiring of  my brain that makes this so.

Still, tonight I don't fell much like writing Monday's post. Maybe it was the humid, overcast, Romantic-looking day. Maybe it was snuggling cozily under the blankets and reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to my youngest son that did it. It could be the hour I spent practicing "Recuerdos del Alahambra" on my guitar. Or maybe it was preparing for tomorrow's lesson on The Epic of Gilgamesh in one class and on Robert Bloch's "That Hell-bound Train" in another. I suppose it also could have been the few hours I spent reading the delightfully atmospheric, top-notch writing of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones . . . Hell, it might have even been cutting the grass that did it.


Maybe sometimes the creative soul spends a day at the spa -- bathing in warm waters of relaxation -- and then feels it doesn't need to do anything grand, at least for awhile. Maybe, sometimes, training hard for the marathon we someday plan to run can give way to an unhurried walk in the woods -- a walk during which we feel no guilt for stopping, sitting on a rock and watching a stream's silver forever caress the smooth stones.

Goodnight, friends, whenever and wherever your nighttime comes . . .