If Love Remains

Ink 19, by Carrie Nuttall, from the book Rhythm and Light, 2005

The 1984 Rush song Afterimage is a song about loss. The lyrics were written in memory of a personal friend of the band who had passed away, and Neil Peart wrote about feeling the presence of absence, the confusion that follows having strong sense memories of a person, of voices, of footprints on a wet summer lawn, and how they can be such physical, concrete memories and still be gone forever: the awful absence of presence.

An afterimage is a bit of a physiological oddity. It's a visual image or other sense memory that exists after the stimulus that caused it is gone. It's looking directly at an object in the sunlight and then closing your eyes, but still seeing the object in the frame of dark that closes in your field of vision. It's conjuring your father's voice or the sound of his whistle for you to come in from outside, even forty years after your childhood, and ten years after his death. In Afterimage the lyrics say I feel the way you were, and an afterimage is the experience of feeling it as a sensation.

For the past several days I have read tributes to Neil Peart and the social media posts of friends and fellow Rush fans. I've listened to Rush albums and I've watched several videos of favorite drum solos from concerts, including the one from the Clockwork Angels tour I saw in person with my son Tucker. The tributes from Rush fans I've never met refer to songs and sounds and sights that are so physically familiar to me: I saw Neil Peart at his drum set many times in my life, and once sat so close to the stage that I felt the thud of the kick drum in my body. I've heard the beautiful cymbal work at the beginning of The Spirit of Radio, seen the blur of sticks and steel, and the bob of the drummer's head moving back and forth like a pendulum keeping an intricate clock balanced and on time. All of these memories are so concrete and hold for me both presence and absence; like a cymbal crash, they reverberate.

As the initial shock of his death was replaced by confusion, the presence of absence and the absence of presence, I was glad that the strongest feeling that came my way was of gratitude for work that I found so inspiring, both as a musician and as a writer. I know cannot do much to lessen the grief of those who were close to man I did not know at all. So my feeling of gratitude is a privilege; I did not lose a man who I knew and loved personally, as much as I lost a man whose work I know and love. 

Earlier this week I tweeted in response to particularly good tribute to Neil Peart from Billboard.com that these tributes are touching, but I'm feeling like advice Neil Peart shared from one of his heroes, drummer Buddy Rich, is actually the way to mark the passing of Neil Peart and honor the impact of his work on my life. As Neil told the story in his book Traveling Music, Buddy Rich threw a concert to honor one of his heroes and fiercest and most competitive contemporaries, Gene Krupa, who was quite ill at the time, and Buddy, who was described as a bit of a curmudgeon, said about the event that he thought it was a better idea to give flowers to the living, rather than to give it to a person after he has died.

This is good advice: focus on the living and on living to the best of your ability, every day you have the chance to do so. But what to do about loss and grief, which is a price we have to pay for the great good fortune of being alive.

Peart's legacy and lessons and lyrics that were so kinetic with life also do provide wisdom about how to measure what we've lost:

And if the music stops
There's only the sound of the rain
All the hope and glory
All the sacrifice in vain
And if love remains
Though everything is lost
We will pay the price
But we will not count the cost
                            (from Bravado, 1991)

Neil Peart is gone, but he left more than the sound of the rain. He left his work, the music and writing that I love. There is a quote I remember reading from a little book of Zen sayings: Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what the wise sought. I will seek the wisdom, with integrity and closer to the heart. Flowers to the living, including myself. And if love remains, it will be worth the cost.

Just Past Fifty

I remember what my father told me:

There is an age when you are most yourself.

He was just past fifty then,

Was it something about the trees that made him speak?

(from Something About the Trees, by Linda Pastan)

I read this poem for the first time when it came out in 1988. I was nineteen and taking a class called Contemporary American Poetry as a freshman at Kalamazoo College, and the poet had come to our campus to read from her new book, The Imperfect Paradise. I loved the book and still do, but what did I know at nineteen to be able to approach a poem about aging and the loss of a parent: I had done neither. Instead, I asked her questions about another poem of hers I admired and could comprehend, the one about lust.

Over the years I have thought a great deal about the line “there is an age when you are most yourself.” Today, I am officially just past fifty, it’s my fifty-first birthday, and I am thinking I might be there. I know it wasn’t when I was in the abstraction of my twenties and thought I knew everything. And it wasn’t in my thirties when I had to spend years choosing between clinging onto the pastiche that had been my life or the letting go that must happen to get to what’s real. My forties I spent in bleachers and parking lots, waiting for kids to get done with whatever they were doing, though that was enjoyable: while I couldn’t be most myself, I could see so much of myself in the four kids who were coming into their identities and thriving because of me, or in spite of me, and their four beautiful souls have been worth watching.

No, I think I’m getting to most myself now, or close anyhow. I’d be okay with that. At just past fifty I have learned how to settle into love with another person, and I can feel how she is settled into me. I have learned how to let my kids be who they are (okay, maybe not entirely with Tristan, but he’s thirteen and needs the swift kick in the arse all thirteen-year olds need from time to time), but with Peyton, Emma, and Tucker, I can watch them as they struggle with knowing everything and be glad when they ask for a handout: a buck, a book, or a bit of advice. I have learned that I am not going to accomplish all the goals on that list I made in 1990 of 108 things I wanted to do in my life (Travel the world: been there. Publish a poem: done that. Get married: twice (oops!, but thank God!). See Michael Jordan play basketball in person: damn it.) I have been blessed in more ways and more days than I can count, and at just past fifty, I try not to count the blessings nor take them for granted. Just be blessed and let the blessings be. I’m one heartbeat away from calamity, after all. 

At just past fifty, I have lost a parent, and I miss him pretty much every day, but I still have Mom to warm my life with the unconditional love I have never not known.

At just past fifty I worry that our world is burning. Today, Australia has been on fire for ten days. Today, Iran launched cruise missiles at American troops stationed in Iraq. Today, a naked emperor is in the White House and half of America admires his clothes. But at just past fifty, I have learned how to push and pull the levers that make things move, at least a little, so I do what I can in the space and time I have to do it. I want a better world for those who will be just past fifty themselves someday. My work as a Holocaust educator has never felt more urgent. At just past fifty, work I care about is a fountain of youth.

Having a birthday in January means that we’ve just gone through the gateway of the year, and having a birthday on January 7 means that for a week I’ve been asked to make resolutions, and then to make wishes. The beautiful thing about being just past fifty is I don’t feel resolved to change, perhaps to prioritize, and I have too much to wish for much more. The other day I asked Loriann not to get me anything for my birthday, but instead to take me to dinner. So this evening she did, and I had tacos, and that’s the most myself thing I could have for any dinner, birthday or no.

When I was nineteen I asked Linda Pastan about the poem she wrote about lust, that brief fire. At just past fifty, I am far more interested in the trees, and the memory of my father, and a phone call from my mother that just came in, and my siblings, and my children, and my friends.

If I had known better, I would have asked her what comes after being most yourself, about the golden color that takes over the trees when the evenings lengthen in first days of fall, and the way they know how to let go when it’s time, and the cold that follows.

But at just past fifty, I have new adventures ahead. Linda Pastan published a book of poems last year, at age 87. In it she writes of dogs mostly, but also has to laugh at “the nonsense/of her old simplicities.”  At just past fifty, whether or not I think I’m anywhere, my old muse says I still have a lot to learn, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be laughing at myself for a while yet to come.

High Fidelity

For the second time in my life, I bought the record album Hi Infidelity by REO Speedwagon. The first time was 1981 and it had just come out. I was twelve years old and all of my friends were listening to it, so I bought it, too. We could all sing the songs Take It On The Run and Keep On Loving You by heart whenever the songs came on the radio, or the 45 flipped onto the jukebox at the Twin Lakes Beach Resort, or on the turntable at home or the wood-paneled bedroom of a friend.

The second time was yesterday and I was flipping through a stack of records at a used record store in Kalamazoo with my two oldest kids, and I saw it and I remembered being 12 years old and owning that album and memories came rushing back of summer on the beach in Dowagiac and slush puppies and fireworks over the lake and a cute girl named Suzie who took over my brain for reasons I didn’t understand and couldn’t control when I saw her standing there in her REO Speedwagon tee-shirt. So I bought it.

This was of course the genius behind one of the most touching gifts I’d ever been given this Christmas season by a friend who has been around since I listened to albums the first time in my life. I was down in Columbus, Ohio to see Doyle and to visit with his dad in his elderly care home, and while there I needed to do a little Christmas shopping. Doyle took me to a record store owned by a good buddy of his, and when I walked in, the shop owner put a newly released album by one of my favorite artists right in my hands.

“What do you know about this album,” Doyle asked me. I told him it was good, that I had bought it on CD when it first came out. I had read that it was being released for the first time as an album as a special edition release limited to 5000 copies. A real collector’s item.

“It’s yours,” he said.

“That’s not necessary,” I smiled in reply. “That’s a really thoughtful gesture, but I don’t even have a record player to play it on,” I told him.

“Yes you do.”

I then learned that Doyle had planned with his record-store buddy to set me up with a new turntable, amplifier, and speakers: the works. “It’s time for you to listen to records again, buddy. We’ve been friends a long time, and this will be good for you. Time for you to get back to your roots.”

When I was twelve we listened to albums. Cassettes would follow soon after the Sony Walkman became popular and boom boxes were engineered to fit between elbow and ear, CD players were a distant dream, and a digital music device that carried thousands of songs and fit in your pocket was Buck Rodgers in the 21^st Century stuff.

But in 1980, the album still reigned supreme. My dad owned hundreds. My older brother owned a hundred, anyhow. I owned a couple of dozen. But man I loved them and listened to them every day. The thing about listening to an album was that it was about listening to a musical composition, set to wax in a certain order by the artist, with an A side and a B side (or the flip side!), and you had to be physically involved: taking the album out of its sleeve, dusting it, putting the needle on the record, and then not making sudden or heavy moves that would cause a skip. Once the record was on, you could wonder at the album cover art (along with the paintings of wizards on the side of vans and graffiti on subway cars, the best popular art of of the 1970’s, in my opinion), or you could read the liner notes with song lyrics and musician listings and sometimes special messages from the band itself. There was so much more involved than just pushing a button on a phone and playing songs on shuffle.

When I was eight or so my Aunt Linda moved into our house with my four-year old cousin Jennifer for a period of time until she got back on her feet. She had just gone through a divorce and didn’t have much to fall back on, so she moved in with us for the support. She brought with her all her worldly belongings, and that included the album Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. She played it all the time on my dad’s massive stereo system, and sang along to it at the top of her lungs. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a freedom she found in that album at that time in her life, an escape, a joy, an expression of self. To this day I can’t hear that album without thinking of Aunt Linda and the joy it brought her during a tough time in her life. It remains one of my favorite albums, and it should be listened to from front to back, beginning to end, and should never be played on a digital device on shuffle or as part of a collection of greatest hits. It is a work of art, a Mona Lisa of music, a Shakespeare of 70’s desire and lost love.

My brother owned the Kiss albums in the house (though a I had a few of my own). In the 1970’s Kiss was THE band. They were on the turntable in both of our bedrooms, on our paneled walls as posters and magazine cut-outs, on our lunchboxes, tee-shirts, and imaginations. I learned to play air guitar in his bedroom listening to Detroit Rock City on the album Destroyer. I learned to sing songs like Love Gun and Rocket Ride (baby wants it fast/baby wants a blast/she wants a rocket ride/she wants a rocket ride) without having any idea about thinly-veiled sexual double-entrendre. It was a fun time to be buying albums, what with your favorite band blowing things up and smashing guitars and breathing fire and spitting blood. My brother and I had some epic fistfights in the 1970s when we were growing up, but we never fought about Kiss. They were the best. Yesterday I bought a Kiss album, too. The first in more than thirty-five years.

Eventually I needed to get my own favorite band, and since Skip owned Kiss, I turned to Rush. The first Rush album I bought was 2112, but the second one, Moving Pictures, changed my life. I would sit and listen to it for hours and hours and hours. I thought about the lyrics. They were amazing. I learned to play air drums this time. I learned to love the sound of Geddy Lee's impossibly high voice. One time my dad came into my room and asked me what I was listening to so incessantly. I put the album on and put the album cover in his hands. We listened to the songs as he read the lyrics. "Whoa," he said. "That's deep." (High praise!) My dad was an amateur photographer, and he asked me if I knew what a fisheye lens was, and then explained how it worked, and how it worked as a metaphor in the song Limelight. My dad, marine and state cop, was listening to my music and explaining metaphor to me and telling me my music was deep and philosophical and interesting and meaningful. I don't know when I became an official nerd and English major, but it was probably in that moment. 

So I brought my new record player home and set it up when I got back from Columbus. I played my new Geddy Lee album from Doyle and the new Charlie Brown Christmas album I bought for the holidays (so good!). I then went up into the attic where my wife had stashed a bunch of her albums from the 1970’s and 80’s. I brought down The Carpenters Greatest Hits, dusted it off, and put the needle on the record, without telling her what I was doing. In the kitchen she stopped in her tracks, then smiled and walked into my arms for a dance. It was so sweet and romantic (take that, Suzie!). She also remembered what it was like to hear the needle sink into the groove a favorite song.

This record player is a wonderful gift. More than anything it is an invitation to bring the past forward, and to bring the present into the wisdom of things we used to know. It feels good to listen to favorite music. It feels good to dust off an album and hold an album cover while Eddie Van Halen shreds his guitar in high fidelity through your speakers. It feels good to share an album with your kids, your brothers, your wife, your friends. High fidelity: it was what we said about listening to albums with great musical quality. In my fifties, I think it means being true to yourself at the highest level, and recognizing the past still lives in all of us, and it has a hell of a soundtrack.

Seeing Clearly This Year: 20/20 in 2020

As a fan of both metaphor and word play, our new year begins rich with possibility. I mean who needs a resolution when the year itself is an invitation to something better, to see things more clearly than maybe I have in the past, to look more closely, to observe what’s obvious, and to fix my eyes on both what's near and what’s far away (all while not being blinded by the forest or the trees). Yes, I am mixing sight/vision metaphors all over the place, but no apologies: it's going to be that kind of blog post. (Now see here, you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?)

So the invitation on the top of the calendar is for me to see things as they are, keep things in perspective, and look for clarity for myself and to bring clarity to others. 2020 is an invitation for me to a year of 20/20 vision.

In my line of 20/20 vision, I am focused on the following:

• I have learned so much about trauma in the past two years, and then again over the last six months. So much, in fact, that I know my learning is just beginning. I am learning that once one starts to view human behavior through the lens of trauma, behavior that didn’t make sense in the past makes sense now. I need to keep my eye on trauma and how it can inform my work and my relationships. I have learned that so far I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, and 20/20 in 2020 means looking as far below the surface as I can. There is more to see, to learn, and to put into action. 
• Our national politics is frightening, and 20/20 in 2020 means I need to keep watch on what’s happening locally, regionally, nationally, globally. As a Holocaust educator I have had the good fortune to attend Jewish religious ceremonies and visit Jewish cultural institutions in Michigan communities and outside of Michigan. The rise in antisemitism and antisemitic violence fits in historic patterns I recognize as a Holocaust educator perhaps more quickly than others would, and I need to both keep watch and to be ready to act. I can’t be apolitical this year, and I have to look out for opportunities to help others see what they otherwise wouldn’t. 
• In 2019 I wrote a piece for this blog called "Hello Brother". Our national politics is frightening for other reasons beyond the rise in antisemitism. There is an increase in ignorance and prejudice and fear, and they walk hand in hand in hand (in the words of Neil Peart); one antidote to all three is to see the humanity in anyone and everyone we encounter. In that blog post I wrote about an activity I participated in on how we see others. I need to continue to see myself in others, and to see others as brothers and sisters. 
• As writer Donald Murray said writing is like driving at night: you can only see as far as the headlights shine, but you can make the whole trip that way. I need to see as far as my headlights shine. I have writing to do this year, and 20/20 in 2020 means participating in the second sight that writers have when they make time for writing. I have some professional writing to finish up, but I have personal writing that waits for only me to come along and make the drive.
• In the past year I have had the opportunity to create pieces with my two oldest kids. I have been able to get out to write with Emma, and that has been so rewarding. She is a lovely writer, and she now owns her own voice and puts her own stuff out there in the world, including her own blog. She will continue to grow and deepen her craft as she writes, but she's already way past where I was as a 21-year old writer. Tucker and I have collaborated on a few digital stories for Paw Paw Public Schools, and I am really enjoying that work. He's talented as an audio/video editor, and my work in digital story looks so much better with his ability to produce and polish a finished product, like this example on the Paw Paw homepage. Look forward to more of that work in 2020, and for the work to evolve into new opportunities. Talk about tip of the iceberg...!
• 20/20 in 2020 means I am ready to see somebody romantically. I want to see more of my wife. We’ve both been so busy the last few years with work that we haven’t let ourselves see each other outside of the daily grind as much as we should. I really enjoy her company and seeing her on a date is as fun and exciting as it ever was. I need to see more of that woman, for my own good, (and perhaps also for hers). 
• And finally, 20/20 in 2020 means being able to see less of myself. In the mirror. I am off to a good start, but if I watch my health a little more closely, I won’t have to watch my health a little more closely.