Archive for the 'General Blather' Category

I’m really posting this as a roundabout way to get an audio file to a friend, but it’s a fun little song done with another friend long ago which appeared on our album Sibilance #1 (when Tommy and I had Trip Records). If you really like us, you’ll buy the whole album on Itunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sibilance-1/id400547325

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Now that Spandau Ballet is stuck in your head (if you’re cool, it will be after that title), I’ll point out that this post has nothing to do with that song. As many may know, I’ve returned to school, with a focus on getting a BFA in Arts Education. It’s a sickness, don’t question it—I do enough of that myself. In this return to school I’m being forced to take many low level, “core” courses which I hadn’t taken in past. One of these this term was a Philosophy course. Thankfully, I was able to take an introduction to World Philosophy class, so I wouldn’t be stuck wallowing in the Greeks once again (don’t ask, it was a long weekend which may or may not have directly led to Socrates having to drink hemlock).

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It’s true. I’m going back to school. Well, I’m making an early, tentative, toddler-like stab at it with a few courses. I may crash and burn when confronted with my own horrid study habits and laziness. But I’m going there.
Why? Really, I’m not certain. Maybe it’s my own mid-life crisis. Maybe it’s an urge to finish something. Maybe it’s guilt that Tommy is going back to school for a second career after retirement with a Music Education degree and I am doing nothing. Maybe it’s a need to torture myself for no good reason whatsoever. Most likely it’s that last one. I’m sick and disturbed that way. But there’s a reason … sort of.

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Some may say I’m at the age for a mid-life crisis—nearly 42. Honestly, in light of seeing much older people of late, and their struggles, I hope I’m far past mid-life (as long as my mind is strong, I want to live, but when that goes … I’m gonna crawl out on the ice and wait—but that isn’t what this post is about). And, honestly, I don’t feel “middle-aged.” I’m just … me. Still learning, still growing, still exploring, still “finding myself.”

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I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size. …”

I feel sometimes as though I’ve been surrounded by death, or the threat of death, my entire life. As a child, my mother was very sick (or acted as if she were), and I grew to expect her sudden demise as a given. Being very sickly myself, I spent a great deal of time in hospitals, smothered by the smell of death. I almost died at least once myself, having to be revived in a hospital (after a throw from a horse), the day after my temporary roommate died in the night. I’ve lived to help bury most of my grandparents. I heard of and knew friends who died starting when I was very young, from age and accident, tragedy and acceptance, suicide and war. I’ve attended many funerals and memorials. I learned to mask the pain with mirth. For many years as a youth, I envisioned the deaths of those around me, and what I would do after—just to be prepared. At times, it feels as if my heart has hardened to death. Yes, it affects me, but it doesn’t stop me in my tracks. I generally find it absolutely silly that so many mourn over the deaths of celebrities they never really knew (though I can understand a sense of loss in something that comforts us). I mourn more for the thousands who are slaughtered in war and through the uncaring actions of those who hold power, and seem to show no compassion.

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