I revisit the early days

Monday afternoon I opened my ancient songwriting drawer for the first time in a very long time and discovered that I have kept just about everything, going back to my earliest days of trying to unite words and music with my own two hands.

I once was able to play “Stairway to Heaven” on solo classical guitar and did so in public two or three times — I am mostly a chord-strumming kind of player and so the only thing fancy about my version was that I could, indeed, pick the familiar opening chords to introduce the song — it has literally been more than 50 years since I attempted it, so I had long forgotten the sequence, but I found the sheet where I wrote it all down way back when, and so I (very slowly) gave it a whirl.

And here were some of my early songwriting “triumphs” — defined as my friends actually saying something nice, not just polite, about my compositions. Songs with names like “Emerald” and “Because of You” and my first “hit,” titled “Bacon in the Jello.” Yes, one day while in line at the Ripon College cafeteria, a friend said, “Ewww, I think there’s bacon in this jello,” and I became inspired.

As I paged through these forgotten treasures, I saw that I was a little more adventurous in those days, tossing less-familiar chords into the mix to stretch myself as I learned. Most of my recent compositions rely on old familiar chords as I settled into the “three chords and the truth” school of songwriting.

I preserved those early songs with a primitive system of multitracking involving first cassette recorders and later reel-to-reel tape. Nowadays digital apps perform the same task much more efficiently, as I found when I played with multitracking and produced an album of songs I’ve dubbed Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn, coming to streaming and downloading platforms this spring (stay tuned).

The success (if I may say so myself) of that project got me wondering if any of my long-ago songs stand the test of time well enough to be re-recorded using the modern tech. I think, like everything, some of them do stand up and some, not so much.

It was fun to plunk around like old times. We shall see if it leads anywhere or if this was just a way to while away a winter’s afternoon.

Another analog observation

I used to carry a notepad, pen and iPhone in my shirt pocket until I traded my iPhone 7 in for a slightly larger iPhone 14, which is not THAT much larger but larger enough to crowd out the notepad.

At Sunday morning brunch, I grabbed a napkin to make a note and Mary asked, “Why don’t you use the Notes app on your iPhone?”

“I forget that app is there. I never look back at my notes,” I replied, and to demonstrate I opened the Notes app for the first time in a very long time.

I read:

World without cats
Death on the Shore Michael P

Y3

I had no idea what those notes meant. Piecing them together with the help of DuckDuckGo, I must assume that at some point someone must have recommended the books World Without Cats by Bonham Richards and Death Along the Shore (sic) by Michael Pritzkow, but I have no memory of it.

And Y3? What could that have been? Adidas has a line of clothes and shoes called Y-3, but I would not have written a note to myself about a brand of clothes. That’s just not me.

In contrast, over the years I took hundreds if not thousands of notes to myself on my paper pad that I stuck in a pile under a paperweight, and in most cases I could still tell you what I was thinking when I wrote them.

I think there’s something about the tactile act of writing with pen on paper that helps etch the memory into the brain. Why this does not work when touching a finger to a screen to type the same note, I can’t say.

Our lives are magic

BACK TO THE ARCHIVES: When I look for something I wrote awhile ago to make up for the fact that I don’t have anything new to serve up, I usually go back to what I was thinking five or 10 or 15 years ago — so today I randomly went back seven years to see what I was writing about then. This is from Feb. 15, 2019.

I study Ray Bradbury because I wish to convey joy and wonder the way he does with his words … or Paul Harvey.

I’ll always remember Paul Harvey describing the amazing car of the future, rhapsodizing about its many features and technological wonders for three or four minutes, and then revealing he had just described his new 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.

Ray Bradbury and Paul Harvey were so good at using words to create that excitement in your chest as you breathe more rapidly because what you’re seeing is so wondrous … to call the reader or listener’s attention to the miraculous right before your eyes …

On the other side of this pane of glass, the wind howls. And the air is so cold that my flesh would freeze in minutes.

Yet here I am, barefoot, wrapped in a big comfortable easy chair, a bright light over my shoulder and springlike temperatures as I calmly write in a journal.

This is not the grateful warmth of a fire built in a cave or crude shelter. It’s a cushioned bubble of comfort that my ancestors would consider luxury.

Like Bradbury and Harvey, I want to pick up the ordinary, hold it up and proclaim, “Look! See! Isn’t this fine?”

So much we take for granted would have looked like magic not so long ago, and but for the hard work of mind and muscle to make it so, it would all still be possible only by magic. But the idea was conceived and the work was done, and today we reap the benefits of a better life where comfort and warmth through bitter winter is possible after all.

If we want a life even better than this, we need to conceive it and do the work. If we wish to maintain this life, we need to do the maintenance work.

While you’re busy working, there’s little-to-no time to squabble over what someone else has earned … or whether someone else has squandered … or other petty quarrels. You just work, and the world gets better for your efforts.

Imagine a better world and get down to making it. That’s all there is to it …

Make no mistake: It’s simple to say and so hard to accomplish.

But still: Do the work.

The view out the window

I have a to-do list in the other room next to the laptop, but I’m not going to fetch it because I want ready to dive into the electronic world just yet. It’s OK to just sit and look out the window and reflect and write before confronting “reality,” isn’t it? We don’t need to tap into the network and be assimilated through all of our waking hours. Resistance is not futile. Viva the revolution.

“Resist!” cries the mob. But what are we resisting? The people who cede their power to the government have been pushing back and forth, trying to force different styles of oppression on the rest of us; one person’s oppression is another person’s “the way it ought to be,” and they’re both generally opposed to actual liberty. Their conversations boil down to “I know you are, but what am I?” Today’s resisters forgave their guy when he was the oppressor in charge.

Is it possible we could live in a world where we love one another, live, and let live? I don’t know, we’ve never tried it. Who will let go of their hate first? Who will accept their quirky neighbors first?

I’ve been trying to adopt a lifestyle of “Love God and love my neighbor.” “Love God” does not mean calling out or fighting people who love God differently from me, who love a different God, or who don’t believe in God at all, because doing so would involve not loving my neighbor. See how simple it is?

But people have a problem with people who see things differently. I wish that could stop, but all I can control is my own reactions. Still, that’s everything. That’s what Gandhi meant when he said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” It starts with me — or, in your case, it starts with you.

Seize the moment

A sweet quote crossed my social media feed the other day. It goes like this:

“Life’s short … You don’t get to live this twice. This is it, the messy, beautiful, imperfect ride we call life. The late-night talks. The reckless laughter. The tiny wins no one claps for. So take the risk. Tell people you love them. Chase the things that set your soul on fire. Dance even if you look ridiculous. Stop waiting for the “right” moment, this is the moment. Make it count.”

There was no name attached to the quote, and I wasn’t able to find out who wrote it using my usual tricks. Did the author send it out into the world anonymously? Probably not.

But, as some people say in these days, the exhortation hit me in the feels. It hit me because there have been more than a handful of times I hesitated at the brink, on the verge, and ended up not doing. Life has turned out just fine, but every so often I think about one of those moments and wonder — “What if —?”

I think a worthy goal would be not to collect as many “what ifs.”

Hoarder in training

After. I’m too embarrassed to share the “Before” picture.

As I was exchanging audiotexts with Mary on Wednesday morning, I said one of my goals for the day was to clear the boxes off the floor in the living room.

“It looks like I’m a hoarder in training,” I said, finding the perfect phrase to describe my housekeeping style over the nearly three years since Red passed away.

Every so often I decide, “That’s it! From now on, a place for everything and everything in its place,” but then entropy kicks in. 

And so the place for those Mannheim Steamroller albums I found at Goodwill last summer turned out to be the box on the floor in front of my stereo system, behind the 1980 John Michael Talbot album that I bought for 19 cents when the old record store closed. When was that, anyway? (Looks it up) Are you kidding me? July 2, 2022?! That’s it! I’m moving boxes today.

Six hours later, I have not removed ALL of the boxes from the living room floor, but I did move the three boxes of LPs into the basement storage room, and more significantly, I cleared an area that can now serve to organize the thousands of hours of entertainment that I own on vinyl, CD, cassette and DVD/BluRay in one big place.

And yes, Mannheim Steamroller is now on the shelf in its rightful place between my Manfred Mann and Marshall Tucker Band albums. For one day, at least, I have successfully established a place for everything.

Numbers game

I have forgotten to check the Powerball numbers from Monday night, so I have not yet confirmed that once again I am not a multi-millionaire. I wonder which would be healthier: to imagine what I would do with all that money, or to imagine what it would take for me to become a multi-millionaire the old-fashioned way, by earning it without the benefit of insane luck?

Well, let’s imagine I picked the magic numbers. I would tithe the money, of course, pay off my debts, and pay cash from now on. In other words, I’d live the way I’m trying to live now, only on a grander scale.

OK, let’s check those numbers.

OMG!

OMG! OMG! OMG!

Yep, I didn’t win. Well, that was fun. On with life.