Life as Jazz

I spent a couple of days in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. I went by myself because Cary had a load of school work to do and also wanted to spend one last sunny day with her family at her parents' pool. But I have been missing Chicago for months now. So I booked a room at the Union League Club and made plans to meet up with two of my best friends who live in the area.

On Saturday, tucked in between a great lunch at RL near the Water Tower and an even better dinner at The Publican on West Fulton, we scheduled a little rest time. Alone in my room I made the mistake of doing something I rarely do - I flipped through the channels of the TV. CNN had a news story about one of the "tea parties" where angry conservatives, incensed at the direction our country is heading under the stewardship of our President and Democrat-majority Congress, got together and spewed vile statements in a horribly misguided effort to show their own patriotism and love for this country. One angry man decried Obama's "Afro-Leninism." Another made it pretty damn clear that he was sick to see our great country head towards "communism and fascism" (thereby covering all the heinous bases) because, after all, that's why we fought all these wars we've fought.

I turned the TV off as quickly as I could so as to avoid either losing my expensive RL lunch or incurring the cost of replacing the panel TV that I was frighteningly close to busting to smithereens. Exposure to this poison made it hard for me to enjoy what the City had to offer. On Sunday morning, after saying goodbye to my friends, I wandered the City in a funk. I was annoyed by cabs honking their horns - an action as natural to a Chicago cabbie as breathing. I shook my head at pedestrians who gummed up Michigan Ave traffic by ignoring the "Walk-Don't Walk" lights and cutting off left turning vehicles who had the right of way. I rolled my eyes at the inability of the Starbuck customers in line in front of me to spit out their orders when it was their turn. I saw an energetic musical adaptation of "High Fidelity" on Sunday afternoon, which helped some, but became melancholy when I compared the lively, youthful cast to my aging, sore-footed self.

And then something wonderful happened. I walked from the theater in Old Town to a cozy (and under-appreciated) little restaurant on Michigan Ave, just north of the river. The name of the place is Bandera. It sits on the second floor and overlooks a stretch of the bustling Miracle Mile. It is dark inside except for candles on the tables and light around the grilling station, located at one end of the restaurant. The food has a slight Latin flair, but is basically just good, fire-grilled meat, fish and vegetables, with some simple salads and "to die for" cornbread thrown in for good measure.

As soon as the hostess seated me at my booth, I felt the tension start to ease. I was delighted to see that Qupe Syrah was sold by the glass and that, in fact, it was a bargain at $8 a glass. The special was a California sea bass - another favorite. I put in my order, took my first sip of wine, and noticed for the first time the syncopated rhythms of a little jazz trio playing behind me. Over the next half hour everything shifted. I watched the wait-staff, dressed in black slacks, tops, and long aprons, glide around the restaurant taking orders and delivering drinks and food. I saw the mostly Latin cooking crew, each wearing a black chef's fez, grill and saute and plate and hand over finished products, culinary dancers spinning in time to both the music of the trio and the rhythm of the flames. I saw customers laughing and talking and loving each other, oblivious to the middle age man sitting alone, sipping his red wine, eating his sea bass, and silently sending blessings their way.

I had found the pulse of the City, and it had found me. Finally. Despite the dissonance of hate mongers and fear peddlers on CNN, the City helped me find my way back to the groove. And walking back to my room, not quite 8:00 at night, I was content to bypass the last couple hours of the Jazz Festival going on in Grant Park. For me at that moment the City itself was a festival and life was jazz and my heart was the instrument I played to add my riffs to the glory of it all.

What Goes Around...

I am not an immensely observant person. Ask any of the women in my life and they will tell you so in no uncertain terms. But over the last few years even I, Mr. Oblivious, have had to notice Boulder, Colorado. I started drinking tea years ago by drinking Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder and Emperor's Choice, then later moved on to its decaf Chai tea. Celestial Seasonings is based in Boulder. For years I have listened to learning programs from a wonderful company called Sounds True - also in Boulder (actually Louisville which is close by). I've become a student of Integral Theory and Integral Life, developed by Ken Wilber largely in, you've got it, Boulder. In one of the magazines we get I saw an article about the 100 best places to live in America, and Boulder was in the top five (along with Ann Arbor, if I remember correctly). And Boulder, perhaps the "greenest" city in the country, was one of the first to establish a program for local home owners to make energy improvements to their homes financed through city bonds and assessments back against the benefited properties. Many cities and states have followed suit.

I've only been to Boulder once, more than ten years ago, ducking up there for a couple of hours after finishing a conference in Denver. But even then I remember thinking, "Wow, what a fun place. Sort of like Ann Arbor, but in the mountains." While there I found a wonderful bookstore/coffee shop on Pearl Street right next door to a high-end kitchen store (neither one part of a chain). Doesn't get much better than that, although I remember thinking that a very fine stereo shop next to the kitchen store would have made a Brad trifecta.

But it wasn't my brief visit that has made this city stick in my mind, and not even the myriad ways that Boulder is calling out to Cary and me on an almost daily basis. No, I remain fascinated with Boulder to this day first and foremost because of a visit my parents made to Colorado almost 50 years ago. When I was a little boy - six or seven at the most - my parents did a marathon drive to Denver and back so that my Dad could interview for a job as a structural steel draftsman. Mom and Dad never went anywhere, even with my sister and me, so this trip was a big deal. They came back from this trip not so sold on Denver, but just glowing about Boulder. And though they would have loved to have moved there, it turned out to be too expensive for these not yet 30-year olds to handle.

Through the years my Mom and Dad both brought Boulder up in wistful conversations. It was that magical place that they had once glimpsed, a sort of Midwesterner's version of Mecca, a place of pilgrimage and hope, a place where the living would have been easy if only... Yeah, if only.

I'm much older than my parents were when they dreamed of living in Boulder. The dream was undoubtedly much sweeter for them than the reality of living there would have been. For one thing, I later learned that one reason for the trip - and the dream - was that Mom and Dad were having marital problems and thought that a real change in scenery would help. It wouldn't have. Wherever you go, there you are. That's the expression. And it's largely true. For another thing, the politics of the place were all wrong. My Mom got more and more conservative as she got older, aggressively so. She thought Rush Limbaugh was a little soft at times. The idea of her living in this mountain hotbed of liberal progressive thought makes me smile a little and shiver a lot.

But it is exactly the politics, the network of progressive thinkers, the quirky restaurants and university town feel, that makes this city so attractive to Cary and me. Oh yeah, and the fact that it's sunny 300 days a year. And so I feel a strong pull to go visit, to look around, to kick the tires of the place. And that's what we're about to do (along with some hiking in Breckenridge and sight-seeing in Denver). And we're making a road trip of it, albeit not with the quick turnaround my parents did. Only by driving there can we get a true sense of "place."

I'm not looking for a dream or a panacea, I'm really not. But I am looking for a reality that sustains me better than the one I am living now. Is Boulder it? Who knows. But I do know it has been calling to me for almost 50 years, and I feel like it's finally time to listen.

One Order of Connection - Hold the Approval

Last Sunday I gave the sermon at my church - the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing. This is something I do a few times a year. I enjoy it. I enjoy finding inspiration from something I've read or heard, conceiving a general theme, and letting it percolate in my head and heart for a while. Actually committing something to paper is a bit more of a struggle, but I enjoy that, too.

What thrills me most, though, is finally standing up on a Sunday morning and sharing with others something true about my journey. Last week I spent a lot of time exploring notions of "God" and "God's will." I wasn't sure how it would go. In a UU church bringing up the "G-word" can sometimes be like eating a Double Whopper at a Weight Watcher's meeting - even those who secretly long for it are pretty sure they shouldn't. So I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction of our congregation to my message.

I realized last Sunday that much of what I like to do for fun (act, speak, write, cook) involves doing or producing something that will be shared by others. Naturally, I want others to enjoy what I do or produce - that's a big part of why I do it. But I wonder sometimes if there is a little, lonely part of me that just wants approval. "Great job, Brad!" "Wow, this tastes great." "How did you learn all those lines?" "Where do you come up with these ideas?" Because I am a person, and not a machine or a mathematical formula, I'm sure that the need for approval is there at some level. Maybe someday I can live without being buoyed by the positive approval of others or crushed by their disapproval, if only I work hard enough to shed "attachments" that I've fine tuned for more than 50 years. Or maybe that is for another lifetime.

In the meanwhile, I realized this. What actually floats my boat is to be connected to others, really connected. I'm talking about "I can feel the energy flow between us" kind of connected. When I act in front of an audience or speak to a group, and it is going well, there is a connection and an energy exchange that is palpable and wonderful. The same is true during the "communion" shared by friends or family and me sitting around a table and enjoying food I have prepared. Far from being the psychological roadblock that a need for approval is, the creation and enjoyment of this connection with others feels totally aligned with my mission, my essence, my reason for being. No wonder I feel alive when I spend time on certain activities and dead when I spend time on others. On a soul level this "living-dying" dichotomy is true.

The key, I think, is to give up the need to receive validation of one mask or another from others and cultivate a way of living that garners recognition of true self from others. As hard as it is for plain old middle-America Brad to do this, how much harder it must be for celebrities to do it. How easy it must be for them to succumb to all the addictive idolatry thrown their way. Often stuck on a sound stage or recording studio or captured by paparazzi every minute of the day, how hard it must be for them to find moments of true connection with others. When I think of the death of Michael Jackson yesterday, for causes yet to be determined as I write this post, I am struck by the tremendous burdens of celebrity that he bore and grateful for the daily opportunities I am given to be real and connected.

I'm doing my "God's will" (Double Whopper) sermon at another UU church tomorrow. As I approach the podium I plan to place my order with God (or whatever spiritual short order cook the universe has to offer) as follows: "One order of connection, please, and hold the approval. Oh, and super-size that."

Here Comes the Judge

Unenlightened as I am, it is presumptuous of me to say why I am unenlightened.  But here's the thing: I judge others all the time.  It is a reflex, like breathing or blinking or salivating at the thought of sipping a full, round, meaty Zinfandel.  (I just squirted a little when I wrote that.) Whether my judgment impulse is a symptom or a cause of my lack of enlightenment makes little difference.  There it sits, like an angry zit on the otherwise smooth surface of my equanimity.  So I, in turn,  judge myself to be flawed and do my best to bear the shame of sitting in judgment of other flawed souls.  And on and on it goes.

I tend to judge people harshly based on three primary criteria:

• Do they fail to act ethically and with integrity?
• Do they fail to act with compassion and consideration for others?
• Do they fail to make wise choices regarding their own health and well-being and/or the health and well-being of those dependent on them?

When I cast around to find excuses for my inner judge I sometimes discover slight comfort in the notion that I'm only wanting people to act in a way that is best for themselves, for others,  and for the world.  Surely if we were to close our eyes and dream of utopia, we would see a lush, green world, with clear, unpolluted blue skies and seas, peopled with enlightened, healthy inhabitants who treat each other with respect and care, who keep their words, who share their wealth, who eat and drink and live in moderation (except for their consumption of full, round, meaty Zinfandels which have been found to be the elixir of life when consumed in large quantities) and who get at least least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at least five times a week.  Oh, and there would be no more "realty TV" - in part because such programming has no place in utopia, but in large measure because such abusive mislabeling and tortured linguistics will no longer be tolerated.

So here is the real question that I need to ask myself:  when I judge others, what does it say about myself?  I don't always like the answer.  When I judge the lack of consideration of the person who parks across the line and crowds me, who talks in a loud voice behind me in the movie theater, who speeds up to run lights that are clearly red so as not to be inconvenienced by a short wait, and so on, I have to examine that darker part of myself that wants to live only for myself.  When I judge corporate muckrakers who are greedy and unethical, who prosper at the expense of others, and who make decisions without regard to the ecology or the public weal, I have to look at that part of myself that doesn't trust the abundance of the universe and wishes I could only take and not give.  When I see others smoke and drink and eat junk food and empty calories to excess, I have to look at my own past or current relationships with tobacco, alcohol and food and my tendency, from time to time, to have abused each.  In almost every instance, when I judge someone else I do it because it's easier to judge them than to acknowledge my own shadows and demons, to "honor" their presence in me without acting them out.

On three occasions in my life I have had "peak experiences" and have been in "transcendent states."  Interestingly, my experiences did not occur in nature (as they do for many people) but when I was by myself in a place with a lot of other people present.  Once it happened when I observed people dancing on the dance floor of a St. Louis hotel bar during happy hour.  The second time it happened was in Hart Plaza in Detroit when, after a business meeting, I wandered over to the early hours of the "Hoedown in Motown" and watched people from all walks of life dancing to country music.  The third time came in Chicago, walking along the bustling streets, after watching a movie (Woody Allen's, "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" - hardly a likely springboard for transcendence.)  During each experience, I went into a state where time stopped, where I felt an energy flowing through me that was a near part of all those around me and those elsewhere, where everyone I saw was beautiful just as he and she was, where I felt calm, peaceful, and happy, and where my inner judge - that miserable bastard - shut up.  In Chicago I walked up and down the streets for about 15 minutes in utter bliss, floating along, loving everyone I saw and smiling at the shock I saw in their faces when they looked in my eyes and saw something they could not understand.

The problem with having a peak experience is, of course, returning to the valley.  What a letdown.  And yet, what is there to do but to keep on living and learning?  So while I continue to judge as a reflex, I know in that deeper part of myself that judgment of others is not a reflex that I need to stay alive, but rather one that keeps me from being fully alive.  (At least that's my judgment and I'm sticking to it.)

Finally Facing It

After getting email invitations from a couple of acquaintances - I really couldn't call them "friends" - I joined Facebook. I may have been the last middle-class, middle-aged white guy in America to do so. At least that's the way it seems. Almost everyone belongs and almost everyone knows more tricks and Facebook techniques than I do.

When I added my brother-in-law, Pete, as a friend, his welcoming post back to me said, "Welcome to your new addiction." Since that time I've found that I check the site three or four times a day. I'm secretly thrilled to play the part of social voyeur. My "friends" trot out a variety of information about their lives, both mundane and profound. I ached for one young woman whose marriage ended, for one young man who relayed his sadness coming home alone after a night out, and for another friend who wrote a touching remembrance of his nephew who died a couple of years ago. I chuckled at the angst of another middle-aged pal who took the quiz "What Random Object Are You?" only to discover that he was a fishbowl. I've smiled at pictures of friends with children, friends in exotic places, friends engaged in their passions. Some of what gets posted is remarkably personal, as if the friend were writing only for himself or herself and not his or her tens or hundreds of "friends." At first this self revelation seemed strange, but then I thought about what I do in this blog. It's different, if at all, only in form and degree.

I now believe that, on balance, the Facebook scene works to pull people together and not, as first I feared it might, to put distance between them by substituting digital "sound-byte" content for meaningful contact. Facebook gives us frequent little reminders of our connection to people (friends, relatives and acquaintances) who orbit in our lives. It may even encourage us to reach out in person to those whom we would enjoy getting together with but whom we unconsciously neglect in the press of every day demands.

There is, of course, a commercial engine that drives the world of Facebook, an engine that runs faster the more we use its various fun features. To its credit, Facebook gives us fair warning. Click on the link to take the "What Random Object Are You?" quiz and this disclaimer pops up: "Allowing What Random Object Are You? access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work." And what does Facebook do with your profile information? It helps others sell you things by placing targeted ads at the side of your home and profile pages. My profile tells my friends (and Facebook) that I am a fan of Tori Amos; an ad at the right of my profile page tells me how I can click over to a site that features an interview with her. My profile says that I enjoy creative writing and one of my posts reveals that I have just started writing a play. Wow -there in the column of ads is one for a Short Script Competition and another for a book called "The Soul of Creative Writing."

There is nothing wrong with this, of course. Worse things have happened to me than having others sell me products and services that I might want. In the end it's up to me to decide what I want or need, and you can't blame the provider of a "free" service like Facebook from trying to figure it out. Retailer Amazon (www.amazon.com) has been genius through the years at analyzing what we buy and offering us more of what it thinks we want. If I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I've discovered and bought a lot of very good books and music that I might never have known existed without my friends at Amazon taking care of me. I've expressed my thanks with thousands of dollars of purchases.

Facebook isn't yet an addiction for me, but it does give me a pretty good buzz. And so, for now at least, I'll keep looking, with permission, through the windows of my friends and acquaintances while they undress their lives in front of me. Occasionally I'll even undress in front of the window myself, at least down to my psychological boxer shorts. Through it all, I'll let Facebook offer me opportunities for commerce (as long as it is gentle and respects my long-time, committed relationship with Amazon).

Things Ended, Things Begun

Sometime around 4:15 on Sunday, April 5, I looked down from the top of the castle stairs onstage and cried out in a big, booming voice, "Lay on, Macduff,/And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"  I exited upstage left, fighting.  And that was it.  My part in Riverwalk Theatre's production of "Macbeth" was over.  After helping strike the set, I took my sore muscles, bruised bones, and exhausted brain home.  I had just ended something huge and challenging, and I felt complete.  The next day I got my hair cut and most of the dye pulled out of it, and picked up my "normal" life again.

As a special treat to myself for finishing the play, and to Cary for finishing a 10 week winter quarter teaching German to undergrads at a college 90 miles from home, we went to Las Vegas a couple of days later.  It felt good to see the sun, have a few good meals, hang out by the pool, and walk the strip.  But on that Friday morning I got a call from my sister, a call that I had been expecting (and not wanting) for a long time.  Her ex-husband, Tom, father of my striking 18 and 20-year old nieces, had died earlier that morning from the cancer that he had lived with and battled for about seven years.  He died on my youngest niece's 18th birthday, as if it had been his intention to bring her safely to that place in her life where one phase would be ending and another beginning.

And so I got thinking about all kinds of endings and all kinds of beginnings.  Right now I see so many of them weaving through the lives of those that I love.  One daughter about to move from the west coast to the east coast where her husband will be stationed as a doctor in the Navy.  The other applying to grad school at the University of Michigan even as she negotiates the terrain of a new love.  My sister closing the chapter of her life revolving around her ex-husband and her daughters and both figuratively and literally writing the chapter that will follow.  My wife coming to grips with the likely possibility that the universe has plans for her that don't involve teaching German at a college or University, and struggling to hear her next calling amid the noisy chatter of every day life. My nieces saying goodbye to the man who loved them so fiercely and quite literally lived his life for them over the last several years - all this at a time when they need to deal with school, and romance, and career paths, and all the other new beginnings that 18 and 20-year olds everywhere deal with.  Many endings, and many beginnings.

And what about the old Brad-meister?  Amid all the major life changes my loved ones are facing it seems trivial to admit that I am struggling with the end of my play.  But I am.  Or more accurately, I am struggling with picking up my "normal" life after the play.  Why?  I guess because for a couple of months or so I was engaged in a pursuit that so clearly furthered my personal mission, one that helped the dream of the universe come true, one that created something of value and made connections in a world where all too often there is destruction and disconnection.  Don't get me wrong - I am a good lawyer.  I take my work seriously and exert all the creativity and good spirits I can to get financing transactions done for my clients (mostly schools, and cities and universities - important and meaningful stuff).  But yesterday I spent a disproportionate part of my day agonizing over the logistics of turning a big document around and sending it out over cyberspace to about 20 people who are, for the most part, unlikely even to look at it.  Part of the agonizing - testimony to my own debilitating compulsions for making my work internally consistent, I am sure - came as I tried to help my secretary figure out how to make all the quote marks in the document straight (some of them were curly).

The world, with all its current needs and troubles, needs me to focus my talents on some task other than conforming quote marks.  But what is it?  There's the rub.  I'm in the middle place where one phase of my life is ending, or needs to end, and another is beginning, or needs to begin.  It is uncomfortable to be in this place because, when I try to see what is next for me, I am pretty much in the dark.  But maybe that's as it should be.  Michael Meade, storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, writes this in his book, The World Behind the World: Living at the Ends of Time:

Each initiatory passage requires that we become lost to all that we know.  The keys that unlock the doors of wisdom have to be found in the darkness or else fashioned from some loss.  If the keys were in the light everyone would already have found them.

It helps me to know that its more than just all right to be in the dark and to feel loss, it is necessary for growth.  In my heart I hope such a notion could help those whom I love, too, as they navigate the rough waters of their new beginnings.  But I'm guessing it will take a while, and a few more beginnings and endings, before it does.  And so it goes. 

Why Real is Better Than Perfect

Last Thursday, March 26, was the 17th anniversary of my Mom's death. It was also the opening of "Macbeth" at Riverwalk Theatre featuring yours truly as the "fiend of Scotland" himself. All day long, and during the performance itself, the events felt related. So much of what I am, as a man, as a compassionate person, as an enthusiastic performer, and more, I can source to the influence of my parents. But when it comes to my need and desire to be perfect, the influence is mostly my Mom's. Dad was accepting of the middle way, the great compromise, in himself and in others. No such middle way for Mom. In fact, she used to call my Dad a "middle of the road bastard." Most of the time she even said it lovingly.

And so I grew up with the belief that the pursuit of excellence was a moral matter. If one had "God-given" talent or ability, one had a moral duty to live up to the potential of it. To leave something on the table, to fall short of perfection, was wrong. Not murder and mayhem kind of wrong, but wrong just the same. And this was the case even if what was accomplished was pretty darned good in its own right. So Mom viewed an A- in math with a raised eyebrow when she knew I was capable of getting an A. Being elected Vice President of the class wasn't much of an accomplishment, because she "knew" in her heart of hearts that I had more to offer my class than did the boy elected President (even though she was wrong in this assessment).

My Mom loved my sister and me fiercely. Her desire to have us excel stemmed from her belief that if we excelled we would succeed, and that if we succeeded we would insulate ourselves from the many hardships she endured in her life. It reminds me of a mother bird stuffing her hatchlings so that they will be strong enough to leave the nest. But I'm guessing a mother bird has the innate sense to not over-stuff her babies, realizing that to do so would make it impossible for them to fly and cause them, rather, to fall to the ground.

I act because I love to do it. I love the challenge of wrangling words and emotion into a real-time experience for myself and the audience. When I am doing it well I can feel an actual exchange of energy between myself and the audience, each of us enlivening the other. I act on stage in large part to forge that connection - the feeling I get from doing so is pure bliss, better than any drug. And so the other night, on the anniversary of Mom's death, I invoked her spirit to be with me, to give me strength and courage to pull these beautiful words of Shakespeare into something that would touch others. And she was with me.

In my heart I believe that my Mom, or her essence, now knows, as I know, that in using my talent and ability there is a moral imperative, but that imperative is not to be perfect. It is to be real. To be present. To connect. And so while one small part of me was shaking its head at itself the last couple of nights for switching a few words around or failing to pluck exactly the right phrase out of the memory bank at exactly the right time, the bigger part of me was enjoying the moment and the connection. For real. It turns out my Mom got what she wanted after all. At least for the time I am on stage, the hardships of the world cannot touch me.