The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 7: The Mormon Missionaries and Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog"

My step dad was a pretty mild-mannered man, a good guy, very much like Atticus Finch; perhaps he didn't have as much courage, but overall, he was a man of manners and integrity.  Everyone in town respected him. He was a teacher and his students loved him.

As a child, it was pretty hard to get him riled.  He was thrifty, so spending money could do it.  Mom and Dad argued about money sometimes.  But, he was pretty tolerant of us kids.  Lloyd played music all the time and at extraordinary levels.  Kim slept in until noon on the living room sofa after coming home late.  Angelo and I fought frequently.

When you did get him angry though, he usually flashed a look rather than words.  He wore dark-rimmed glasses, again not unlike Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and he would tilt his head down slightly and glare over them with steely eyes.  That was usually all it took to squelch any inclination of rebellion.  Mom, on the other hand, would rant and rave, and leave open lots of vulnerable spots for counter attack.  Besides, she always presented illogical reasons for her authority, such as "Because I'm your mother!" or "Because I said so!"  Always a stickler for logical fallacies, I was compelled to correct her mode of thinking and would infuriate her by saying things like, "Being older doesn't make your right" or "What type of argument is 'Because I said so'?"

Once she got sick and tired of picking up after me--which I now totally get--and threw all my clothes in yard.   I happened to notice she too left things around, so I threw her shoes out in the yard.  Needless to say, that did not go over.

But all Dad had to do was stare over his glasses and my rebellion was over--both because the look truly did make you squirm and because he was almost always fair and so you knew he was right, which is something I cared a lot about.  I had no respect for authority as a kid, but I did have respect for morality.  If anything, I was obsessed with it.  All my life I've been obsessed with the notion things should be just and right.  As Dad usually seemed just and right, I had very little conflict with him.

There was one time though that I got him rather riled.  He had invited the missionaries over for dinner.  For whatever reason, he decided we should have dinner music.

"Steve, go put on a record."

"What record?"

"I don't care.  Whatever one is on there."

"I don't think you want me to do that."

He flashed me that look over his glasses.  Very reluctantly, I complied for I knew what album was on the phonograph.    I flicked the switch, the automatic arm began its process of delivering the needle to the first groove.  By the time the riff started, I was back in my seat around the kitchen table--there to see the shock and horror spread across his face as Robert Plant started belching out...

Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thingGonna make you burn, gonna make you sting.Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that wayWatch your honey drip, cant keep away.


Perhaps, even in these days when singers casually sing about lady humps (whatever that describes, I'm pretty sure it's not describing the slouched shoulders of an old woman), perhaps "Black Dog" is still shocking, because when I went to select a live video of it, I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Quite frankly, I found Robert Plant dancing around on stage with a lady's shirt on and unbuttoned, simply strange and repulsive, nothing like U2 singing with the Harlem Gospel Choir.

Although I like Led Zeppelin, I'm glad U2 came into this world--a band that stands for more than bedding girls.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 6: "Saturday Night Live" by the Bay City Rollers and "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" by Elvin Bishop

There was the blue room, a lean-to add-on, no insulation.  It was cold, very cold.  We used the closet to keep the apples crisp all winter long.  But at last I had my own room.  No more sharing the partial, unfinished basement with my foster brother and the furnace.  No more sharing the utility room with my foster brother, the hot water heater and the deep freeze.  No more sharing the unfinished garage.

And to top it off, I got my own stereo for Christmas.  Sort of.  It was a small, blue kid's stereo Mom ordered from Sears & Roebuck.  It had two separate speakers unlike most kids' record players.  I remember, we'd ordered one for $35, but Sears goofed and sent the more expensive $45 model to the store--the one I had wanted but was told we couldn't afford.  As it came in right before the big day, they just told Mom to keep it instead of sending it back.  Even so, the speakers were probably only 6" wide and 12" tall.  Records were wider than the cabinet, so I had to lift the dark plastic cover to play one.

I had some 45s, but no albums, so my sister gave me a couple of hers when she got married:  the Ronco collections Far Out and Hit After Hit.  Having no personal space before, I hated going to bed.  Sleeping equipment for kids seemed low priority to Mom.  We always had new couches, but Angelo (my step-brother) and I always slept on trunks or cots.  With Lloyd and Kim out of the house, I had a bedroom with a real bed, and more importantly, a stereo.  And thanks to Kim, I had a couple of records.

As soon as 8:00 rolled around, I was off to bed even though my bedtime was 9:00.  In my dark room, stereo on, eyes shut, I entered my own world.  I became a star.  I became the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers and sang "Saturday Night" before thousands of screaming fans.  I became Elvin Bishop and brought Kelly, the girl I was crazy about, up on stage and sang "Fooled Around and Fell In Love."

Through my teens and twenties, I had a hard time functioning in society, partially because those cold nights in a dark room with the music blasting when I was a child.  Truth is, I loved the life I was living in my head far more than the life I was living in the world.

Since then, I've become better at functioning in the world, but the truth is, I'm still not a big fan of reality, at least not the version promoted by society.

I'd still rather escape into a song, a poem, or a painting than deal with health insurance or taxes.  Material goods don't mean much to me, but time in my own mind does.

Balance, of course, is healthy.  I'm no more healthy than the next guy.  Instead of getting lost seeking things, I get lost seeking dreams, which can leave you just as empty.  It is still avoiding the concrete moments of day to day life.

Being doesn't come easy.

If Any of You Lack Wisdom, Let Him Ask of God, that Giveth to All men Liberally, and Upbraideth Not: A Divine Promise to Know Your Role in Life

In preparing for a priesthood lesson tonight, I was struck by the following quote by Elder Neil Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:

We are a very large worldwide family of believers, disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have taken His name upon us, and each week as we partake of the sacrament, we pledge that we will remember Him and keep His commandments. We are far from perfect, but we are not casual in our faith. We believe in Him. We worship Him. We follow Him. We deeply love Him. His cause is the greatest cause in all the world.

 

The sentence that struck me most was, "We are far from perfect, but we are not casual in our faith." That seems to be what the world wants most from us, all of us, not just Mormons, not just Christians, but all believers, any faith, any creed--the world wants Seinfeld casualness at the deepest level.  In an effort to tolerate conflicting faiths, conflicting cultures, conflicting creeds, the world asks that we believe at the shallowest level.  It is one thing to celebrate our culture, but quite another thing to have enough faith in the teachings of our Lord and prophets to subdue our personal will and follow something greater than ourselves.

 

There is an assumption that guides almost all thought in the twenty-first century, which is as follows:  truth is an illusion and therefore anyone who claims to know it is a huckster.  In other words, all holy men are but conmen one way or another.  They might teach some good principles, but the higher power they tap into is but a product of the imagination.

 

This thinking is not unwarranted.  At least in my lifetime the news has been splattered with self-declared spokesmen for God who are taken down for great hypocrisy and crimes.  The world's priesthoods often seem to protect the authority of guilty men over the innocence of young children.

It is no wonder doubt soars and faith beats against a glass ceiling with battered wings.  The sky seems empty, the soul caged by reality: life is like a Seinfeld episode--there's friendship, there's conflict, there's laughter, but in the end, it's all about dining out, riding in taxis, going movies, and not much else.  In short, life is a show about nothing.

Even science teaches us nothing is as it seems.  Apparently, I never actually sit on my chair.  A force repels me before I actually touch the wood.  And the wood isn't really there either.  Made up of billions of atoms, which are mostly space, it isn't solid.  Solid too is only a perception.

What a life?  We are told that truth is relative, that the only reality is the here and now, the material world, but even that, according to science, is an illusion.  We are actors upon a stage of mirrors.  Everywhere we look, the audience is just I, repeated over and over again, for eternity, but when I reach out to touch myself, I'm not there--I'm just an illusion along with everything else.

So grab a napkin and a cocktail, have some cheese, and entangle yourself in some witty conversation about nothing so that you never have to stand alone in a field on a sharp cold night and wonder what do all those stars have to do with I, me?  So, you never have to answer those big questions:

Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?

I am not perfect, but neither am I casual in my faith.  I know enough to the answers of those questions that I can promise you that you are not living an episode from Seinfeld.  The scientists are right.  The Buddhists are right.  The Christians are right.  The Muslims are right.  The Native Americans are right.   This world is an illusion.

It's alright that it feels fake.  That doesn't take away its meaning.  That is its meaning.   It is a stage, and sure we are actors with our mortal parts to carry out in this earthy drama, but we are meant to walk off this stage having learned a few lessons and then we are to join our creator, in whose image we are made, as we continue on our journey towards perfection.

Our bodies may literally be the stuff of stardust, which is pretty amazing in itself, but our souls are the stuff of God.

And not only can we know these things, but we are built to know these things.  It's in our DNA.  There is a reason man has been praying since the dawn of time.  It's who we are:  obedient sons and daughters of God.  It's just sometimes we get so caught up in the drama happening on this stage, we forget there is a director, a script, a purpose.

If you are feeling lost in your role and need assistance from the director, you are promised in the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, that you will receive a reply:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

It may require work; it may not come all at once; it may require leaving some of the world behind; but if you ask in sincerity, you will receive an answer.  It's your birthright.  God did not send us off without a way to phone home.

There are ways of knowing more solid than this world of illusions.  But we have agency too.  We can choose not to see beyond the end of the stage.

When members stood up and testified that they knew God lives, that Jesus Christ is His son, and that He personally answers prayers, I use to think, There is no way you can know that. Believe, sure--but know, impossible. 

I now can add voice to that testimony.  Faith is not only belief in things unseen.  Faith is knowledge of things unseen.  You can't know until you know.  There is no reason to hide doubt.  But doubt is not the human predicament as I once thought.  We can know what our purpose here on earth is.  Maybe not all of it, but enough of it to keep us moving forward.  It starts with the humility to ask.

Of this I testify, in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.




 

 

 

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 5: The Year I Discovered Continental Drift and Wrote a #1 Hit

Sixth-grade was a remarkable year for me. I discovered continental drift and wrote a #1 hit.  Really.  Well, sort of.  The first was in fact a true discovery.  I was "silent reading" during the dummy-reading class.   The five or six of us would place chairs in a circle with Mr. Robins and read from whatever painfully old text it was, something like Old Yeller, and we'd take turns stumbling aloud over incredibly difficult passages like the following:

We called him Old Yeller.  The name had a sort of double meaning.  One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow color, a color that we called "yeller" in those days.  The other meant when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark.

I hated it.  I was always terrified I'd mispronounce some difficult word, like "meant" as Me-Aunt and everyone would laugh.  "Ha, ha, ha--you sound so British. Me aunt! Me aunt!  Me aunt!"  The only silver lining was that Kelly wasn't there to witness it.  She was outside with Mr. Larson and the accomplished readers having recess.  Good thing.  That would have killed me.  She already made fun of the fact that I had Peanuts Treasury checked out from the Bookmobile for six weeks.  All she had to say was, "I can't believe you're still reading that" and I immediately wanted to take what had previously been my greatest reading treasure and burn it.

Anyway, after the torture of communal oral sacrifice of what was probably someone's proud literary accomplishment, we were allowed to remove our desks from the sacred circle and find peace in isolation and the jumble of words in our very own Bookmobile books.  I always made sure to check out National Geographic books like Volcano or Earthquake because there were lots of pictures, and you could learn everything you needed to know without ever reading a word.  But, mostly I just stared at the walls during silent reading.

On this particular day, I stared at a colored mimeographed map of the world and all of the sudden it hit me: Holy shit, all the continents fit together!  I felt like Moses.  This was life-changing.  No, this was world-changing.  I'd be famous!  Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!  She'd have to be impressed.  As far as I knew, no other sixth-grade boy had discovered all the continents use to be gathered as one.  In fact, no other human being had discovered that.

I rushed home to tell my brother.  I couldn't just tell anyone.  They might beat me to it.  But he'd listen.  He'd know how to proceed.

Yeah, right.  What he did know was how to kill dreams:  "Oh yeah, that, that's called continental drift; it's been known about forever."

But not all was lost.  There was a warm, sloppy spring day with lots of mud and tender green grass.  The sun was hot, the snow was melting.  Richard, Jason and I were all out at the swings doing spiders  with Kelley and I don't remember who, and a spider is where on separate swings you hook your legs together in some convoluted way that I don't recall, and swing in unison, as one, and somehow it had all gone horribly wrong, and Richard and Kelly were spidering gleefully while Jason and I, their servants, ran back and fourth between the swing set and the water fountain in the building, which was no small journey, and using small Dixie cups left over from the lunch ladies serving us warm cider in the morning, we had to bring them fresh water, which they quickly downed laughing hysterically, before sending us on our way again.

Then, to make things worse--or better, I couldn't quite decide which--my old girlfriend, Lynn, started slapping the cups of water out of our hands half way through our journey back to please Kelly, my woman, my goddess.  And dang, the devilish smile on Lynn's face was so damn cute, I didn't know what meant more: to get the cups of water back to Kelly so she'd know how much I truly did love her, or to watch the gleam in those dark brown eyes of my new antagonist.

By the time school was out, I was on cloud nine.  I was in love.  With who, I wasn't sure, but that didn't matter.  What was clear was that girls were amazing.

I spun home in circles, writing a song as I went:

Baby, I am a want you
Baby, I am a need you,
Baby, I am gonna buy your love

I think I was thinking in the upper-middle class, shower-you-in-presents sort of way with the last line here, rather than the prostitute-down-on-some-dark-corner sort of way, but I was definitely too high, no matter how bright I was, to be doing any relevant sociological analysis that either way it amounts to sort of the same thing.

But here's the kicker, as amazing as those lines were, after the whole symphonic transition (sort of like in "A Day in a Life") there was this amazing couplet to a tune I absolutely knew would someday take hold:

And I can't help falling in love with you,
No, I can't help falling in love with you.

I knew I had a hit.  Absolutely.  There is no way the world would ever let such a remarkable song go by unnoticed.  I just had to figure out how to write it down.

I kept my secret until ninth grade when I first consciously heard Elvis on the radio and realized that amazing couplet wasn't mine after all.

 

October: A Garden Poem

The cool air,

the slight breeze,

the soft sun

& long drawn out

shadows on the last 

gold stubble

of summer's wild 

rye. Almost silence

sits outside the window,

the soft patter of dog feet,

the very occasion bird chirp,

crickets all but snuffed 

out by the coming 

cold.  A distant chain 

saw cuts wood 

for winter.

It's good to be done

with heat.

It's good to be done

with watering.

Hell, it's even good

to be done 

with the garden other 

than dumping piles

of leaves.

It is settling time.

Darkness and cold

cover the need to do,

allow time