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.
On Monday I shared my 10-year-old recollection of the first time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s prose poetry in my youth, and how every so often I need a booster shot of Bradbury to jumpstart my creative juices.
Wednesday morning the Ray Bradbury social media page shared a moment I had never seen before, from a 1974 interview with a journalist named James Day. The author talks about the importance of imagination, saying the ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.
“Boys and girls at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13, right on up through, the most important time of their day, or especially at night before going to sleep, is dreaming themselves into becoming something, into being something,” Bradbury says in the clip, “so when you’re a child, you begin to dream yourself into a shape, and then you run into the future and try to become that shape. When I was 10, 11, 12, I began to dream of becoming a writer …”
I love that image of “dreaming yourself into a shape.” When I was 10, 11, 12, I was writing dozens of songs and putting them on Top 40 lists on imaginary radio stations, and I was drawing my own comic books, and writing poems and collecting them into “albums” of 12 poems each, because the average record album had 12 songs, so why not poetry books?
As an adult I found myself fitting into those shapes. I went to work for real radio stations. I kept writing songs, started recording them, and tinkered with sharing them with the world, but it remained basically a hobby. My making comic books evolved into making newspapers, and I spent the second half of my career primarily as an editor.
In my semi-retirement I have published a couple dozen books as both a writer and editor, and thanks to my pastor friend who invited me to add my guitar to the worship team, I have reignited my love for making music. And thanks to modern technology that makes it easier than ever to create recordings that reflect what I hear in my head, and share them with the world, I am more than tinkering.
Ray Bradbury never stopped dreaming himself into new shapes. He dreamed of becoming a writer of science fiction stories, then of becoming a novelist, then a movie screenplay writer, then a TV and movie producer, a playwright, a poet, a mystery writer, and many other shapes.
When he died at 92, he was probably the oldest child in the world. May we all aspire to keep dreaming ourselves into a shape and running into the future to become that shape.
Ray Bradbury remains my single most important human role model.
I’m still reflecting on what my pastor friend said Sunday about having fun studying the Bible — “You might say I HAVE to say that because I’m a pastor, but maybe I’m a pastor because the Bible is fun.”
There’s an oft-quoted saying that if you find a job doing what you love, you won’t work a day in your life. That’s mostly true. I did love making radio and newspapers back in the day, but even then there were days when the work felt like work, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure you do. Even a guy who has fun exploring the Bible is going to wake up some mornings and say, “Oh Lord, why do I have to be a pastor today?!”
And what do you do if what you have fun doing does not pay the bills? I had a lot of fun in the 1980s writing and recording my songs, but it never turned into something that would enhance my bank account — partially (strike that, your honor) mostly because I was unwilling to do the things persistently that singer-songwriters have to do to get their songs out to the world.
These days it’s a lot easier to distribute your music to the world from the comfort of your home, without the weeks on a tour bus or the other dues musicians have had to pay in past years. And so, perhaps, I might become the oldest guy ever to win the “Best New Artist” Grammy award. I would settle for a few dollars tossed into my guitar case while I play on a sunny street corner, or whatever the modern-day equivalent is. With a sweet blonde cheerleader nudging me on, maybe this time I get heard.
At the very least, I’m writing new songs and taking the old songs out from under the bushel basket after 40-odd years. It’s a start.
• Fifty-odd years ago, when I first started playing the guitar and writing songs, my best friend Ed gave me my first bit of constructive criticism “I notice you don’t play anything farther up the neck.” I have only occasionally explored past the third or fourth fret in all these years — that’s part of the reason I called my last album New Dog, Old Tricks.
I set my guitar aside for more than 10 years and have only been playing again for about two, and now I’m timidly starting to tinker in that zone where Ed tried to direct me those decades ago. I’m sure it will make my playing more interesting if I stick to it — and the “if I stick to it” is the story of my life. New habits are hard to make.
