Pleasing Processes

From time to time, as many of you know, I come back to "happiness" as an issue. What philosophical chap who's worth his weight in cheese doesn't? So, along those lines, it occurred to me that ends are never good. We humans hate ends of things, death especially. This is why we are thinking all wrong when we seek the attainment of a goal -- any goal -- and equate the "arrival" as a potential state of happiness.

I'm not just handing you a superficial bit about the evils of consumerism. It's more than that.

I think for most sane human beings, this formula is true: HAPPINESS = PLEASING PROCESSES.

It's just another version of "the journey, not the destination" thing, I guess.

Lewis and Clark:, in action. Musta been cool. 

All I know is that, for me, my happiest times come down to three things: family, exploration (intellectual or actual) and art. These are all works in progress, aren't they? Just having babies with my wife didn't make life wonderful -- the process of watching them grow and helping them find their way in the world does. As far as exploration is concerned, find answers is satisfying, but it doesn't bring the lasting happiness that the search did. And, with art, the process is the thing. I was happy to have finished my first full length CD, but that happiness has worn away; now I wish I were still working on it, because nothing compares to the contentment I feel sitting at my piano at midnight in my little studio. (So, I begin working on another...)

After a Day of Screams

Tonight, I don't want to unravel anything.
I don't want to delve into my soul --
Don't want to talk of wonders,
Or critique humanity,
Or fight,
To win -- something.

Tonight, my thirst won't be slaked in streams of ideas.
There is no need to move an audience,
Affect their lives --
Fill their minds,
Or hearts,
With hope -- for tomorrow.

Tonight I crave only peace,
My children in my lap,
Ravel's Miroirs in my ears,
His sonic textures: sanity --
The only real sanity I know.

Forgive me for trading you --
Tonight --
For peace.
After a day of screams,
I need just to breathe and to hear my breath...

Monet: Sunset at the Cliff in Etretat

The Cultural Compliment Conundrum

I can't believe I have to suffer under the weight of "political correctness." I don't subscribe to the idea that there are "proper" ways to say things, in regard to race, culture, sex, etc. I do, however, believe, as I have said many times, in self-policing; in thoughtfulness and manners. And I try to do my best. I know, however, that things are going askew when I want to say something that I see as a compliment, and I feel self-conscious about how to say it -- fearing someone will not see it as "politically correct."

This happened today. I was driving home from food shopping and I drove past an old Indian man, in a neighborhood with a thriving immigrant Indian population, and he was walking a walk I had seen there many times: He was in traditional Indian dress, hands behind his back, steps measured and slow. I wanted to say something about this, so I posted this to Facebook:

Elderly Indian men seem to walk with such an easy, un-arrogant type of dignity.

"So what?" you say. "There is nothing offensive in that. What were you worried about, Chris?" Well, that was the third draft of my statement. It's not like the first or second draft called for ethnic cleansing, or anything...it's just that I feared it might sound too much like an over-generalization. I didn't want to sound like I was painting a caricature of an old Indian man. I wanted to draw a portrait of a certain kind of dignity that I feel is particular to older Indian men.

Am I paranoid? If so, it might be for good reason. I remember, once, at a the end of a Christmas party, we were talking about the old TV specials when we were kids, and a friend reminded us of one, in particular, in which all of the kids who went to Santa were dressed in the traditional costumes of their countries. "How politically incorrect that would be now," my friend concluded.

The Ballad of the Eagerly Terrified Poets

I'm teaching a creative writing class this year for the first time in several years. I have a great bunch of kids -- nice, eager and engaged. Still, I've been reminded of several things about teenagers and creative writing, but in a more vivid way than before.

Little children create without hesitation, but once we hammer them with a heapin' helpin' of schoolin' -- into their teenaged years -- they become terrified of it. I'd even go so far as to say they are embarrassed by it. Most of them anyway.

This is what I meant awhile ago when I referenced an American over-emphasis on science and math. As I said before, these subjects are important, on many practical (and necessary) levels, but they tend to bully away the humanities; science and math tend to become the rock stars and the humanities and arts are just the road crew: the show couldn't go on without them, but they never get the groupies or the spotlight.

My teenaged students are terrified of "doing it wrong" when I ask them to write a poem, even when I let them do their own thing; maybe especially so. If I give them a free-verse poem with no constraints and guidelines, they will write one and ask if it is "okay." All I can do is to respond by saying, "Of course it's okay." I make it a point of saying that before I look at the poem.

The Critique

We all know life is weird. We all tend to figure that out on our own, after a while. There are only so many weirdnesses that can occur before we realize that it's not just a random series of events, but an indication that  somewhere up in the offices of heaven, there must be an Administrator of Weirdness, who sits at a computer and checks to see if each of us has gotten his daily dose of weirdness. If not, maybe his hits us with a crazy dream at night, just to make up for it. But there will be weirdness -- make no mistake.

The other night, when my band had finished playing, I was in the process of breaking down my drum kit (a process that always makes me wonder why I didn't choose the piccolo) and I heard a conversation off to my right. Two youngish guys were sitting there, ignoring the bartender's yelps about it being time to leave, and one guy was saying, "... classic rock, some modern rock and dance stuff. Yeah, they were actually pretty good."

Buddy Rich, who grew up to
be more not-crap than just about
every drummer, ever. . 

He was obviously talking about our band. And it just made me laugh a little about the absurdity of human endeavor.

"They were actually pretty good."

So that's it. Some random guy in a bar has spoken his opinion: we were actually (this was a surprise, apparently -- maybe because when we took the stage we looked like we would be horrible) pretty good. Not great; not excellent; not really good -- just pretty good. One man's observation.