Part 2: "Son of Robert Downey Jr Says"

Iron Man from Tales of Suspense #45 Marvel Comics

The reason I reject all of these determinations is because they are fatalistic. The labels and the clichés can really get us boxed in when we most need to find as many ways of considering a situation as we can. At times, we need to step out of our self-images, favorite identities, and illness diagnoses as quickly as we change the costumes that go with them. It's one thing to know what your lot in life is-- what needs to be tended to and considered and respected. It's quite another to wear a label like a superhero or supervillian suit. What we do with our lives usually is found in the spaces between all of the things that we must supervise. Those spaces usually aren't focused on self at all, but is just a time we pass through, connected to other complex creatures and environs.

Photo of child unable to reconcile the reality with the role. Source: Dose.com

If any posed question about a person is answered with a label such as "He's an addict, she's a diabetic, they are Southern, he's Irish, she's a Pisces, he's a Mets fan, she's a woman, he's a man,"as if that explains it all, then we are heading into the realm of superstition, where we sense that we can understand and control people by the signs and myths that spring up around those labels. If you have ever found yourself in a statistical category, then you know how unsettling and soul-stripping that can feel. One feature of your life has just determined the rest, unfairly. And just as unfairly, a complete stranger can use their statistical category to gain unearned trust. An anonymous group that identifies themselves by an illness is still anonymous, and unknown. There is no way to skip over the work of discovering the reality about a person over time simply by trusting their mere presence in a room. Saints and sinners often show up at the same spots by the same routes.

Determinism of any kind can prop up people who shouldn't be, but more often it holds us back as individuals and as societies. The feminist movement was an entire political transformation that transcended biological determinism. When women were called up for machinist duties during World War 2, did society unanimously believe in their capability based on past behavior? Or rather did society have a sudden widespread need? What would have been  considered impossible or at least unseemly in the antebellum south for women became commonplace and celebrated only fifty years later. Scarlett O'Hara's youthful "fiddle-dee-dee" was replaced by Rosie the Riveter's "We Can Do It!" They're both fictional characters who symbolize changing perceptions. As fictional characters, these female types were imagined by someone and produced as a stirring visual template for examples of both oppression or possibility, as needed.

Scarlett O'Hara getting her story straightened. From Gone With the Wind, MGM Studios

When we reduce a person's life to slogans and tag lines, it leaves little room for change and good old-fashioned surprise. How can someone fully recover if they are always in danger of losing the status of being a recovered someone? That seems like striving for perfect attendance, perhaps necessary but not sufficient for healing and growth. If everything is starting to seem scripted with snappy one-liners, then our thoughts and actions will get foreclosed before we even know that we are part of someone else's scenario. It is important to know how we came to believe what we can and should do, so that we are aware of how we will be told what we can't and shouldn't do.

Scarlett's successor and "Iron Woman", Rosie the Riveter, before being asked to go back home and re-don the petticoat of the 1950s

When I tell a story, I often am aware of my audience. I play up different aspects depending on what I think will compel them to keep listening and what will impress them to want to hear more of my stories. Or depending on my mood or what point I want to make as I am telling a story, I fill in, shade, highlight, accent, smudge, leave out, erase, crumple. There are no stories that are not spun. They start out as impressions and statements that are in a lump and then the person who decides to mold it, starts up the wheel. This isn't political, it's human. A spin is just a hip way of saying, "someone shaped a story for a purpose." Propaganda is usually easy to spot for most people. It's like hearing something reduced down until its easy to cheer or boo. We often know when we're participating in some sort of melodrama. It feels good at the time, but like a drug, it's not ultimately helpful or satisfying.

Sometimes we participate in propaganda-based stories we tell about ourselves. On some days we clap, and on others we hiss. Our story is simply one description of our life artifacts-- including details that we decided were valuable to our sense-making as we form the story. When faced with confusing facts, and more than one perspective, it is easy to cling to reasons and a feeling of knowing the Truth. We spend lots of time and energy on narratives, be they politically motivated, economically motivated, or personally motivated. We analyze how stories stress who deserves forgiveness, power, resources or attention. We argue about who is telling us which parts of the story and to whom. If all this sounds like a modern problem, it isn't; King Solomon said, "of the making of many books there is no end."

The same can be said of stories. You are a living, breathing person, and not a story arc. Stories are important, valuable, beautiful, frightening and instructive. But they aren't complete and they aren't Whole, as in the root word of "holy". Sacred sometimes, yes, but there is no whole Life canon. Canons are selected by a committee. We can exist apart from and outside of story, its structures and flights of fancy.  Our lives are not a myth, a fable, or a tale. Our selves aren't holy in the sense that they are untouchable, although we might wish that they were. Dave Chapelle, another highly paid actor said, "Once you're famous, you can never get unfamous. You can get infamous, but not unfamous."

While that seems right upon hearing it, Robert Downey Jr. has proven this to be false, as he was once the most infamous actor in Hollywood. It is fortunate for us that people are fickle at worst and forgiving at best. It is possible, and often advisable, to revisit our opinions of people and their motives.

A scant five years ago the only time you saw Robert Downey Jr. getting big play in your newspaper came when he was on a perp walk. Yet when it came time for Marvel Studios to cast the lead for a huge franchise film, Iron Man, it bet on Mr. Downey. He is not only back in the game but at the top of it. Is this a great country or what?"

-- NYTimes.com, Apr 20,  2008 "Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super." by David Carr

We can and should learn from stories and learn from others. But don't inherit your story passed down from the last time you told it. You inherited a lot to contend with: your place in history, in society, your family, or any displacement from those as well. Don't mix up your existence with what is said about you by anyone, especially not yourself, and whatever you do, don't trade in your life for a eulogy. Everything can change in a New York minute. And if you are the highest paid actor in the world, a success story, maybe question why that same story-seller has you being photographed as though you were either a lowly waiter or a rich tycoon on the doomed Titanic. It's impossible to tell which one Robert Downey Jr is playing here, and that's the point of his statement. You never can tell about a person from their story, and that's a good thing.

For complete article in Vanity Fair, October 2014, see here

Robert Downey Jr says "I swear to God. I am not my story."

This is what Robert Downey Jr says in Vanity Fair's interview with him in their October issue. "I swear to God." However, the stylish cover insists: "How a Troubled Past Led to the Greatest Third Act in Hollywood History" (scroll to the end of part 2).  That sounds like a kind of redemption tale neatly fashioned by Hollywood itself, rather than a journalistic piece about someone who works in Hollywood. Did the writers of this subtitle (beneath the blaring "Highest Paid Actor in the World!") not hear what he was saying to them? Did he not say it as plainly as possible? Is he not practically pleading with them to refrain from crafting something similar to a movie pitch out of his life experiences? "I am not my story."

Vol. 1, Issue 128 by Marvel Comics

The problematic word here is "led". It might as well be used here as an equal sign. One thing does not always lead to another specific and easily understood thing. Our highest aims and lowest misses rarely tally up to what we have planned. I doubt that he, himself, could explain all the twists and turns of his career. And why would anyone try? It is vanity, indeed, in the sense of futile. (See previous post on the Knights of the Holy Grail.)

In this article, he is speaking in the context of his and his son's struggle with addiction. But the emphatic statement hits upon a broader truth that we are not our stories. You might think that I would disagree, being a writer, but I applaud him for saying this. We aren't our reputations. We aren't what we are generally known for and that's all. We have private selves that don't trot along nicely for everyone to comprehend. If anything led Downey, I doubt that it was his past. Rather, I think he, as a complex person, broke through his reputation as untrustworthy-- and therefore not bankable-- in ways that are unclear and don't follow a careful trajectory.

We humans can get addicted to storytelling. Most of us like stories to be unfolding all around us. We can get lost in them, and someone else's story can become a wonderful way to escape the burden of daily existence. Whenever a situation starts to feel difficult or painful or bewildering, finding some meaning in it can help with perseverance in coping or accepting the whole thing. Going through a bad time without purpose is one of the worst existential states. It hollows us out, spiritually. A sense of purpose can be the Holy Grail that we might waste a lot of time chasing. Sometimes we can only see purpose in hindsight, but we don't always have a sensation of fulfillment while we're going through it. Not everything exists for a specific purpose or meaning. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, "What's the meaning of a flower? When the grass is cut, does it stop growing and say, 'Oh what's the use?'"

The heroic story of Man against Nature, Saturday Evening Post, August 6 1910

I imagine that going through a drug withdrawal and rehab situation might feel draining and purposeless on top of its physical and social miseries. There's no "reason" for it, and it affects everyone surrounding the person who suffers from addiction, like any bodily illness. Chemical substances are a conspicuous source for addiction, but Story is just as much as substance as any other in its ability to work on our brain's reward center.

There are times when writing fiction can feel like a drug. I sometimes muse about my characters, what I am going to make them do, what I am going to force them to go through, and how I'm going to save them or not. It feels powerful and satisfying and soothing all at once. Like a hit of godhood. I can be as capricious or benevolent as I want, and nobody gets hurt. At least I like to think so. When I am working on writing an alternate reality, I'm not in the actual one around me; the reality in which things happen even if I'm not paying attention. This disconnected state could seem fairly lifeless to anyone in the room with me, especially if I began to collect dust. So far, no one has complained, and generally, people have been positive. Writing fiction is considered a healthy outlet in the times that I live in, and that is lucky for me.

Our society did not always feel this way about stories. Storytelling is something that has gotten to us by bootleg and like many pleasantries is now not only acceptable, but encouraged and celebrated. The novel used to be considered a waste of paper and a trashy, unproductive past-time. We think about oral traditions with reverence now, but that's usually because they have some sort of archaeological or historical value determined by all sorts of scholars.

As individuals, we all judge what stories we feel to be relevant or engaging all day long, because they come at us all day long. They are our news programs, movies, books, medical journals, almanac entries, judicial reviews, quarterly reports, property assessments, blogs, your partner's day, pro tips, explanations, excuses and lies. Some stories sell better than others.

Precursor to "The Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous

I admire the many people who have created a space for people with addiction problems. But I am never a fan of substituting one addiction with another. I don't know enough about addiction to weigh in about the effectiveness of treatments. But I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling that the Story We Tell About Ourselves can become the substitution. (Or hearing Stories Other People Tell About Themselves, especially on social media.) However, Story is something I am familiar with, and so I can weigh in on that much, at least.

If there is anything we post-moderns have learned, it's that Story is perplexing and changeable and subject to multitudes of interpretations. When Robert Downey, Jr says that he has inherited his addiction, and so has his son, he is speaking to a reality that exists on a cellular level that can't be ignored. That reality requires treatment, which will probably be made up of many different approaches. But addiction is only one part of his life, as is his bodily inheritance.

"What are we going to do about inherited imperfection? The answer is that we don’t change the way we are, we change the way we live."-- Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London

Don Quixote Reading (his own "Big Books", Chivalric Tales) by Adolph Schroedter

Downey goes further than saying he is not his imperfect inheritance. He asserts that he, himself, is not a perfect story with addiction as a prominent feature. If he is a person who is not determined by his cellular reality, then neither is he determined by a "celebrity rehab" story. While I appreciate the wisdom of respecting the nature of a powerful beast-- in this case, addiction-- I can't help but anticipate the follow-up story that so often arises from the human desire to see people fall after a grand triumph. Because of that, I reject not only a biological determinism, but a narrative determinism as well. His future is not necessarily a product of his past.

"The Drunkard's Progress" an illustrative and scripted narrative lithograph produced by Nathan Currier in support of the Temperance Movement, 1846

In life, we are not following structures of a plot complete with themes, tropes, motifs and stage cues. If we were, then we would all be tilting at our own windmills, fearing that they might be giants. Sometimes a story holds too much power over us, and needs to be not only unraveled, but also un-reveled. Celebration is good, but it's never an ending point. There is far more to us than could ever be dreamed up by any philosophy, either romantic or fatalistic. People exist outside of a marketplace mentality of stats and futures that reflect the trending and consumption of the individual, which is what these interview stories are. It's important that we don't become consumed by our stories, neither by the ones we tell or the ones that are told about us.

A different kind of Iron Man altogether, Don Quixote and the Windmills, 
Illustrated by Walter Crane

Continued in Part 2

Grinnin' in Your Face

The famous guitarist and songwriter, Jack White, cites this as his favorite song. So, I looked it up, and felt so lucky to have been made aware of this blues master called Son House. I think I now have to rank it among my favorite lyrical poems, as well as a song.

As he sings, I can see faces that smile to him as they lie. I hear the voices that talk about him and make up their minds about him, apart from him. I feel the hurt of each discovery that people have tried to dominate him in a queasily teasing manner, to skirt trouble with him, perhaps to get something from him dishonestly or cheaply, to smooth over a wrinkle, or to deflect a pointed question.

It makes B.B King's "The Thrill is Gone" feel almost overdone and melodious by comparison. I have never heard a plaint of anger and hurt quite this raw, but controlled all the while with an acceptance of how people are to each other, and proffered wisdom: forgive and don't let it get to you.

This song, played without his guitar, and not even kept in time by his somewhat erratic clapping, might not be considered the best example of blues musicianship. But it really is one of the best lines of poetry I have ever heard, and sung with an incredible of blend of pathos and restraint. It feels to me like the root of blues, not in terms of chronology, but in essence. It also carries a stillness with it, a calming "hush now", instead of an incitement to bitterness.

All of this is like an extremely rich consommé of emotions distilled into eight words. Thank you, Jack White, you trickster. We'll come back around to talking about you here, soon.

Picking and grinning himself, Jack White recently performed "Mother Nature's Son" at the White House honoring Sir Paul McCartney, singing in a Beatleseque voice, playing on his old, hard-to-keep-in tune guitar, and all this following comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Only you would set for yourself that challenge. Only you.

Mark Twain's Famous Rant: The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper

Mark Twain really hated the writing of James Fenimore Cooper, who was famous for the creation of his character, Natty Bumppo of the Leatherstocking Series. The actor Daniel Day Lewis played Nathaniel "Hawkeye" Bumppo in the film "Last of the Mohicans" where he saves the day for a prettily distressed damsel captured by some rough-looking, sociopathic Indians. As Twain says of a Cooper Indian, "there was seldom a sane one among them."

Cooper Indians also lurk obviously between portrait-framing trees while Natty & Friend nonchalantly chill beside their sinking canoe

We first meet Monsieur Le Bumppo as a remarkably capable woodsman in The Pathfinder and next The Deerslayer. As a kid, my sister had these books on her shelf, and I would really hate to ruin harmless stories for anyone. Also, I'm not sure that Twain carried a personal dislike of Cooper, as a person. Maybe he was just galled by Cooper's fame and even critical acclaim, as some begrudge the popularity of Charles Dickens, J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer.

Portrait of J.F. Cooper in a naval uniform by John Wesley Jarvis

I have wanted to read this book of "offenses" even before I knew it existed, from the moment the first clunk of dialog hit my ear by way of the movie trailer. It shows a scene of Daniel Day Lewis in fringed leather revealing tanned chest muscles, crooning through long windblown and rain-soaked locks, "Stay alive, no matter what occurs. I will find you." I winced at "occurs." Why say a crusty "occurs" which belongs in phrases about natural elements, accident reports, or sudden thoughts; instead of the commonplace and fateful "happens"? And why say such a word to a beloved as she is about to be stolen away at night in a storm? Of course, the important part of Natty Bumppo's-- er, Hawkeye's communication is not that he will keep searching until she is found, simply because he loves her. Rather, he will inevitably find her because he is Natty Bumppo and nothing can stay hidden from him. This must have been a relief to the young male readership of a "Romantic" novel because, you know, mushy stuff. But Daniel Day Lewis saves the film's day by elevating the unrealistic dialog and action scenes by sheer physicality and strength of his own will as an actor. I imagine that even Mark Twain would commend his ability to accomplish that.

The American tale heard 'round the world

Critics who were also fans of Fenimore Cooper's books found each of them to be a "pure work of art" proclaiming Señor El Bumppo to be "one of the very greatest characters in fiction", which he could hardly fail to be if he did indeed possess "the craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest… familiar to Cooper from his youth up" as a Professor Brander Matthews described him. If this weren't enough for Twain to swallow, he had to hear a fellow prominent writer proclaim that Fenimore Cooper was "the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction yet produced by America."

N.C. Wyeth illustrated a blonde Bumppo displaying the "delicate art of the forest".

As a contemporary of them all, Mark Twain was having none of it. When I first came across the title,  The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper, I promised myself that I would read it someday. Who else could get away with such carefully outlined snark, and so publicly? On a short flight recently, I thought that it would be the perfect time to finally open it up because of its short length. I soon had the feeling of trying not to laugh in church. Twain's humor often creeps up like a crafty serpent, until I'm not exactly sure why I'm laughing, but I'm sure that something uncharitable and naughty, yet inarguably true has been said. The man just got away with stuff. I really did try not to let my shoulders shake as I silently read. I could imagine how potentially offensive it could be to sit beside someone flying solo, laughing over a private joke.

Stronger than your average bear

So, here are my favorite Offenses of poor James Fenimore Cooper (who really should have thought through how a one hundred and forty foot barge can round a thirty foot bend in the stream, if he was going to take the trouble to give us the measurements):

"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction-- some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer, Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. 

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require the the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail has also been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk should sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled seven dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale."

"In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These rules require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage."

Young Mark Twain, sharing a resemblance with Woody Harrelson, who likes to play him

I'll leave you with my favorite example of an offense. By uttering the following lilting phrases regarding his   absent damsel: "She's in the forest-- hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain-- in the dew on the open grass-- the clouds that float about in the blue heavens-- the birds that sing in the woods-- the sweet springs where I slake my thirst-- and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's providence!", Natty Bumppo reveals that he must have wandered over from another famous romantic tale, Cyrano de Bergerac, where he can play both roles of poetic Cyrano and the inarticulate friend as he pleases, by also uttering, "It consarns me as all things that touches a fr'ind consarns a fr'ind."

Interesting, and I… um… what?

The Falling Man

Under construction. To be posted.

Secular Hymns, Made for and Chosen by You

Usually we think of hymns as being strictly attached to a formal house of worship. Yet there are hymns still being written that don't require the patronage of the church. They're somewhat agnostic or indifferent to any deity, and secular in that regard. They're not affiliated with a particular religion or philosophy, but can freely explore them. They are the type of songs that touch on the sanctity of spirit as written by Walt Whitman when he says, "I Sing the Body Electric". 

The songs can be inspiring, calming, or invigorating. They cross genres in appeal, or aren't easily classified to begin with. While it's good to know the classics, it's even better to know your own classics-- the songs you go to for their capacity to connect you with the current of humanity.

In High School, a friend of mine had a large collection of Beatles record albums that had been passed down to her by an older and very cool brother bound for college. She was devoted to the Beatles, and once, we skipped band practice to go and see Paul McCartney playing in Tucson. Escaping unseen in her mini-truck to the venue, we laughed like bank robbers after a spree. I can still see her perfect white teeth in her shining face, giddily sharing this inherited love of all things Beatles with me, her new friend. 

But later, during the brief time I knew her, she became involved in a religious sect that forbade secular music. Standing at my locker on a Monday morning, she eagerly told me about a ritual in which she had participated with the other members by burning all of their secular music, renouncing it. I tensed up as I exchanged my books and listened to her admonishing me to do the same. I'll never forget the intensity in her dark eyes as she said to me, "There are three kinds of music," and pointed her thumb and two fingers as she listed them. "Music written for God, for man, and for the devil." 

Apparently these last two categories overlapped to the point that secular music was regarded with the same suspicion and repugnance toward what was deemed Satanic. I didn't argue or answer her at all because the only image in my mind was of all those Beatles albums, bestowed on her as a gift, melting in condemnation. Perhaps I felt like she was renouncing all of humanity, myself included. In my indignant and self-righteous annoyance, I shut my locker and rejected her categories and her judgments.
                                                                                        

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Godmother of Rock n' Roll" known for blending gospel hymns with secular rhythms, inspiring Elvis Presely, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Johnny Cash. Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, 2004. Watch her kick it with her electric guitar solo here. This is what I call a Guitar Hero.

                                                                         

But not completely. When my children grew older, the realm of music became a highly charged subject again. I didn't want them to be stifled, yet not negatively influenced or exploited for their allowance dollars. There is some music that does sound purposefully demonic and it bothers me, but usually the performers are going for a theatrical effect to draw in fans. 

As adults, we can see through some of their antics, which gives us a sort of backstage pass where we observe the relative ordinariness of these entertainers who are putting on a show and selling it hard. It's strange to watch these cosmetically frightening people fold back into their everyday lives as husbands and fathers with lawns to mow and health insurance forms to fill out. 

I don't like to listen to Screamo or Acid Rock, but I'm not willing to dismiss all of it entirely as evil. Once I read the lyrics to a Screamo song, and it was really just a young man crying from a broken heart. If he had crooned in front of Glen Miller's band, it wouldn't have sounded unstable. The lyrics about his view of society weren't all that different from protest folk songs of the 'Sixties, and no more threatening. I can understand the catharsis of anger that the Screamer might get from screeching and roaring until his veins are popping. What the audience gets from it, I know not.

Following below is a playlist of songs that feel sacred to me--even if they would seem like noise to someone else--because they tap into many varieties of experience, which can be religious or spiritual in effect if not in tone. They weren't written as suitable themes for an indexed hymnal. But when I hear them, I recognize states of being across humanity, both exalted and lowly, that call to me to listen. 

The point of my list is not to encourage anyone to like these particular songs, but to encourage the creation of your own list. In the meantime, feel free to come back to this page with some headphones for a private listening booth.

photo image from powerofpop.com

Seeking 4 Non Blondes "What's Up?"

Pilgrimage Simon & Garfunkel "America"

Wandering in the Wilderness Otis Redding "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay"

Disillusionment The Police "Synchronicity II"

Faith Five For Fighting "The Riddle"

Surrender Seal "Crazy"

Rebirth Erasure "Siren Song"

Renunciation Elton John "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"

Innocence Supertramp "The Logical Song"

Courage Billy Joel "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)"

Discipleship Pink Floyd "Learning to Fly"

Longing Tracy Chapman "Fast Car"

Devotion Incubus "If Not Now, When?"

Prayer Depeche Mode "Enjoy the Silence"

Joy  Enya "How Can I Keep From Singing?"

Sorrow Bruce Springsteen "Streets of Philadelphia"

Bereavement Mary Chapin Carpenter "Only a Dream"

Confession Freddie Mercury "In My Defense"

Forgiveness The Beatles "Hey, Jude" 

Liberation Miley Cyrus "Midnight Sky"

Hope Annie Lennox "Little Bird"

Betrayal Marvin Gaye "I Heard it Through the Grape Vine"

Exhortation Toni Childs "House of Hope"

Redemption U2 "One"

Gratitude Alanis Morrisette "Thank U"

Testimony Brandi Carlisle "The Story"

Elation James Brown "I Feel Good"

Zeal Elvis Presley "Rip It Up"

Sacrifice KT Tunstall "Black Horse & Cherry Tree"

Detachment John Lennon "Watching the Wheels"

Perseverance Kate Bush "This Woman's Work"

Loyalty  The Pretenders "I'll Stand By You"

Brotherhood The Black Keys "Unknown Brother" 

Adoration Peter Gabriel "In Your Eyes"

Acceptance Pearl Jam "Just Breathe"

Exceptional Excerpts: Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul

Here comes Fall and its first signs: signs on the roadside.

Politics is always in a state of flux, or a swing, or a reaction, or a revolution. I was recently reading about symptoms of the body from a psychological standpoint, and because our government and country is comprised of the "Body Politic", it wasn't difficult to see a comparison of the two. 

Thomas Moore's treatment of bodily symptoms, as a psychotherapist and former Catholic monk, is grounded in his view of the human soul, and what it requires to be healthy and vital. I imagine you can see for yourself what could be a conversation about Liberalism and Conservatism by an Independent (Moore, the therapist) talking with an "Undecided Voter" (a middle-aged man, the patient) from the following passage:

"A man in his fifties came to me once and told me with considerable embarrassment that he had fallen in love.

'I feel stupid,' he said, 'like an adolescent.'

I hear this often, that love arouses the adolescent. Anyone familiar with the history of art and literature knows that from the Greeks on down, love has been portrayed as an untamable teenager.

'Oh, you have something against this adolescent?'

'Am I ever going to grow up?' he asked in frustration.

'Maybe not,' I said. 'Maybe there are things in you that will never grow up, maybe they shouldn't grow up. Doesn't this sudden influx of adolescence make you feel young, energetic and full of life?'

'Yes,' he said, 'and also silly, immature, confused and crazy.'

'But that's adolescence,' I responded. 'It sounds to me like the Old Man in you is berating the Youth. Why make a grown-up the supreme value? Or, maybe I should ask, who in you is claiming that maturity is so important? It's that Old Man, isn't it?'

"I wanted to speak for the figure who was being judged and attacked. This man had to find enough space in him to allow both the Old Man and the Youth to have a place, to speak to each other and over time, maybe over his entire lifetime, to work out some degree of reconciliation. It takes more than a lifetime to resolve such conflicts. In fact the conflict itself is creative and perhaps should never be healed. By giving each figure its voice, we let the soul speak and show itself as it is, not as we wish it would be. By defending the adolescent, being careful not to take sides against the mature figure, I showed my interest in his soul, and the man had an opportunity to find a way to contain this archetypal conflict of youth and age, maturity and immaturity. In the course of such a debate the soul becomes more complex and spacious."
                                                                                                        -- from Care of the Soul

I think the Undecided Voter is a person for whom the state of conflict is a problem. They can recognize the value of both opposing sides--sides that have rejected each other as ill-conceived, dark and dangerous. The undecided person is trying to see a way forward, but is only presented with two alternatives. His abstention from choosing sides is usually portrayed as the sign of a weak, stupid, and non-committal mind that might allow the other side to win. Many people view the very act of voting as the exercise of a hard-won right, and to not vote is ingratitude at its lowest. For others, it is a forcing of one's hand against their better judgment of careful restraint. For the latter, a vote cast in spite of indecision feels more reckless than righteous.

In his book, Thomas Moore speaks of behaviors that get classified and labeled as "normal", although a "wealth of deviance can hide behind a facade of normalcy". When it comes to testing, group focusing, polling, and evaluating human behavior, perhaps we might view the Undecided as a person who is in a state of protest against practices of using fill-in-the-bubble forms, one-liner questionnaires, robo-calls, and spam in order to gauge the "will of the American People". Moore says "it is fairly easy to recognize soullessness in the standardizing of human experience."

I think, for the Undecided, to not vote doesn't feel like fence-sitting, but a decision to remain in a soulful state that is part of healing an inner or outer rift. They cannot approach the voting booth as a standardized exercise without self-reproach. If someone is chronically undecided, then that may be a problematic knot that they will need to examine and work out-- caring for the soul is not an act that excludes probing the health of the body.

But perhaps it is better to view an Undecided voter as someone who has known themselves at various times to operate as many aspects of the Body Politic--the swift hand, the sure foot, the brave spleen, the steady heart--but at other times find themselves in a place both inside and outside of the body, unable to pass through an outer membrane; one created by anxiety, patience, stubbornness, curiosity, and pride. They are more than hesitant to sum up the "will of the People" within their own private will, by employing a standardized punch card or lever.

If we see someone who is caught up in a season of Indecision, of a Middle Age between Youthful Adolescent and Old Man, Liberalism and Conservatism, we can perhaps see them not through a psychological analysis, but with a recognition that there will always be a present and revolving door of the Undecided, who function as a part of the Body for its own health. That anyone would be forced or pressured into voting is a problem found  within dictatorships, and should not present a problem for democracies. Moore writes, "Often care of the soul means not taking sides when there is a conflict at a deep level. It may be necessary to stretch the heart wide enough to embrace contradiction and paradox."

Personally, I tend to like rituals. They bring me into the aspect of being that is formed by the body and doesn't stay floating in a sea of thought and feeling. And so, for me, voting is not an exercise of my right in a muscular "use it or lose it" emphasis of Youth. I also don't vote out of gratitude or sentiment, as an Old Man who wants to salute the past. I vote as an ongoing observance of my place in a country that was formed by a body politic of democracy with a representative form of government. I don't live in a Kingdom of the Just on earth. I don't live in a democracy of all-knowing souls. I live in a present society in which voting as a privilege was extended to a core value with which to live and die. This value is what I observe when I vote, whether or not I am fully confident of my choices, or whether or not I believe that my vote will have any effect. By voting, I am tapping into the power that is granted to me by that value.

Moore says it best, when speaking to observances made by the body in honor of the non-standardized soul:

"Observance has considerable power. If you observe Christmas, for instance, you will be affected by that special season precisely because of your observance.  The mood and spirit will touch your heart, and over time, regular observance may come to affect you deeply. Or if you are a pall-bearer at a funeral, if you sprinkle dirt or holy water at the grave, your observance places you deep within the experience of burial and death. You may remember that moment vividly for years. You may dream about it for the rest of your life. Simple gestures, taking place on the surface of life, can be of central importance of the soul."

ORIGINS: Logarithms and Napier's Bones

I'll bet you didn't expect a post on this site to start out with that. But coming upon something unexpected is just how I felt when I recently learned about the origin of logarithms. Apparently, many math teachers have neither time nor inclination to pass on the why of logarithms, and I wish this wasn't so. I am one of those people that really like to know the origins of things, because I'm stubborn about what I pay attention to. I have only ever felt a bit grateful for knowing algebra, slightly appreciative of geometry, grumpy toward trigonometry, and downright indifferent to calculus.

The other day I was trying to figure out interest rates and principals, but realized that I had too many variables to solve my problem. I wondered, how has anyone ever solved these problems? and thus I got my answer in a very rudimentary explanation on logarithms. Usually, any phrase such as "nominal interest rate" or "linear approximations" makes me want to curl up with a stomach ache and weep. But I resisted the curl, and held on to my curiosity.

My reasons for math anxiety are probably the same as anyone else's. I do believe that educators are valiantly trying to get math out of cloudy theory and into the hands of students grasping at the concepts. I believe this because of a day I was volunteering in my child's first grade class and the teacher said, "All right, it's time to put away the manipulatives." Startled, I looked around for a group of shell-shocked survivors of some terrible mind experiment, trapped in a diabolically created mathematical Stockholm Syndrome. An instant later, I saw several multi-colored wooden shapes scattered on a table and thought, "Oh, right. Shapes." 

I'm not at all sure that referring to shapes with their pedagogical term, "manipulatives" did much to make all the necessary synaptic connections fire in those little brains. But its multi-syllabic mysteriousness might have at least brought the brightly colored bits out of kindergarten babyishness long enough to be paid attention to by these more sophisticated first graders.

If that term was surprising to me then, I was further unprepared for even more blatant and suspiciously sounding human behavioral terms in Mathematics. There are inverse relationships, conjugate pairs, arguments, degenerates, end behavior, restricted domains, indeterminate expressions and imaginary numbers. It sounds like a dysfunctional family coping the best it can. If only I had been teased long ago with this array of more juicy trouble-makers, I might have stayed with Math a bit longer. Who knew?

Back to the Logarithm, which sounds more solidly earthbound and kind of "groovy". As I saw this term being applied to the calculation of interest rates, which seems like something only a human would need to know, I wondered if logarithms had been discovered as a principle, or invented as a device. A quick google search showed me that my question is a common one; the answer is "both" which is my favorite answer to anything, and many sites that will explain this duality with the story of John Napier, Lord of Merchiston. If not groovy, he was considered "marvy", as his nickname was "Marvelous Merchiston".

John Napier (1550–1617)

A Scottish nobleman, Napier was around other scholars who were contemplating the planets and working out pages upon pages of computations by hand, in order to calculate the planetary orbital pathways. It seems as if Napier had a moment of resolve inspired by pity, and spent the next twenty years working on his idea of a logarithmic table to replace all of that labor. The astronomers must have felt like they had been handed the moon. With nothing else to do aside from being the laird of a castle with twelve children, and working on this table, he also made a set of wooden rods displaying the multiplication table that became known as "Napier's Bones." With a few spare brain cells, he also tossed around the idea of using a decimal point to distinguish fractions after a large number.

In his own words:

"Seeing there is nothing (right well-beloved Students of the Mathematics) that is so troublesome to mathematical practice, nor that doth more molest and hinder calculators, than the multiplications, divisions, square and cubical extractions of great numbers, which besides the tedious expense of time are for the most part subject to many slippery errors, I began therefore to consider in my mind by what certain and ready art I might remove those hindrances."-- Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio, 1614.

Set of Napier's calculating tables circa 1680

Poor Joost Bürgi. Over in Switzerland in 1588, he invented his own table of logarithms (from the Greek "logos" meaning 'word', 'reckoning' or 'ratio' + "arithmos" meaning 'number') six years before Napier completed his, but published six years after Napier's, at the insistence of Johannes Kepler, astronomer extraordinaire. Luckily, however, Joost was recognized for his genius, and became a right hand man to Kepler, in the service of three successive emperors.

Astronomical clock, invented by Bürgi, 1585

A little personal glory didn't hurt either man, and today they both have lunar craters Byrgius and Neper named after them.