Revising the Revisions

It was an experiment. It was morbid curiosity. It was that perverse, bizarre need to know. And now I do.

I have posted plenty about my feelings regarding mainstream social media so I won't rehash, but after nearly 2 years away from Facebook, I reopened the pages just to post two photos. No fanfare, no preamble, just the images.

What's surprising is that I wasn't surprised. Within a couple of minutes there were well over a hundred 'likes' with dozens of comments congratulating me on coming to my senses and welcoming me 'home.'

Yes, surreal.

The best part for me was that several of those posting were the same ones who had made sure to get my contact info before I closed down the pages initially, so they could stay in touch. The same ones I reached out to first. The same ones who never contacted me during the time away.

I don't want this to read as hypocritically as it likely is. I am terrible about communications. Part of that comes from having a job doing it, but on social media there is just no way I can keep pace with it. None.

And I don't want to present the image that I haven't enjoyed or benefitted from social media. I have. A lot. All I'm stating is that I'm not the same person I was when I subscribed to those sites and began interacting in those communities.

At present the pages are staying open but there is not a whole lot of interaction. In the last couple of years I have reclaimed so much of my life. I am thrilled to live where I do and to have the time to invest in my creative whims. Perhaps I'll even try returning to music performance or publishing something. But more than anything I'll be redefining my boundaries. Probably a lot. If anything, the last two years have shown me that there is quiet to be had and distraction to be avoided, that I am the one who can make the choices.

I don't mean all this to come across as me judging. I have no issue with anyone choosing to use and enjoy social media or the latest, greatest technology. If these things work for you, great! For me neither is worth the investment of time, energy or much else. I am happy to become a satellite to the world, peripheral to the mainstream. The more peripheral the better, actually.

Where I once craved attention and validation, I now seek something much different. Attention is the last thing I want. Validation is something I can serve up. All I want is authenticity. Likely this will pull me further from a society that becomes less palatable and more baffling daily. And this is no slam against society, it's just my way of saying I don't understand where things are going and I want to cultivate what I can understand and what feels good. For me this is best done away from people.

Regardless of what I want, maybe I am judgmental and a hypocrite. I do know that I'm damaged and that much of what I embraced no longer has a place in my life. At the same time most of the values I have clung to resonate more strongly. I believe in love, honesty and the connectedness of all life. That does not mean I will force my love, my truth or my presence upon anyone. The people in my life know where I am and how to reach me. And now those that don't and want to can find me online.

If I am lucky -- and I mean very lucky -- I will become more articulate and communicate better. Or maybe I'll stop to organize my thoughts before sitting down to write. But I will tell you that the urge to simply leave all this behind and retreat to anonymity and invisibility is overpowering sometimes.

A Debt, One of Many

Faith is a curious thing. People generally associate the word with religious belief but it's got much broader applications. We can't live without it. We need it in ourselves, in our loved ones, in our professional relations and in whatever belief systems we choose. And there comes a time when it's questioned. As an artist, it's faith in myself I most often question. Do I actually have any talent? Am I purely self-serving by doing what I do? How do I know it's not just self-aggrandizement?

Sometimes this is a significantly more powerful doubt. Several times I have nearly quit what I do and there was a solid year when I gave up making or listening to any kind of music with the exception of incidental music in movies. Conversely, those times I could not play due to things like injury, there was no thought in me but getting back to it.

Almost 20 years ago I hit a point in my life that was, if I'm kind, ugly. My engagement had ended in a way that puts movies and novels to shame, I was drifting geographically and metaphysically, so of course my self-doubt was crushing. For more than a dozen years builders had been shooting down my ideas as ridiculous and even though I'd stumbled into a good paying day job at the warehouse of a music store where I was teaching, my only real thought was quitting. Everything.

Then one day I noticed a book in the store about instrument builders. I'd been playing intensely for a long time and had sort of lost touch with what was out there and who was doing anything new or interesting. I was on the roster of one of the biggest names in the industry but my discontentment was an unpleasant thing. Leafing through the book, I found something that really jumped out at me. A real maverick design that appealed to my aesthetic, and something in the spirit of what I read in the description of the company and the builder really -- pardon the pun -- struck a chord. I decided, as the melodramatic do, that this would be it: I'd contact this luthier and if he responded the way all the others had over the years, then I was just done. I scribbled down the company's website and that night sent a message to them with all the ideas I'd sent to so many builders.

The next morning when I opened my email I was stunned by what I read. The builder had written me himself and was not only open to my ideas, he was enthusiastic and encouraging! I couldn't believe it! I called the shop and we must have talked for 20 or 30 minutes. We went over the design point by point, worked out a price and just like that my faith was restored.

The builder was Bill Conklin of Conklin guitars (www.conklinguitars.com) and over the last two decades he has built me 4 instruments. Today I take delivery of my fifth. I even owned one of the import models to play in rough bar gigs. I would call our relationship both a friendship and a collaboration. He has patiently listened to and considered every harebrained idea I've sent his way and he was the first to invite me to perform for him at NAMM. When I lost everything in Hurricane Katrina (and Rita), he was the first to call and tell me, "Don't worry. We'll get a bass into your hands again."

Writing those words after hearing them nearly a dozen years ago now, I'm tearing up.

The first bass he made me was the culmination of several ideas that had been playing in my head for a long time: extended range, a particular combination of woods, a different approach to wiring pickups and a specific aesthetic. I was so nervous when I first opened the case, looked at it and eagerly picked it up. All coming from a builder whose instruments I'd never played.

It surpassed all my hopes. It became my primary gigging and recording bass for years.

When I formed the duet Depth with 9-string bassist Greg Campbell, Mike Apperson of the Conklin shop joked, "You know no one's going to take you seriously unless you start playing a 10 string!" While we cracked up, the seed had been planted and it wasn't long before Bill and I were talking again. With the gracious gift of my then-wife, this beauty came to life and found its way on stage, onto tour, into the studio and joined me for several appearances on the radio...

Sadly, both were taken along with most everything else in my life by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But then Bill contacted me with the aforementioned call and this lovely came into existence...

This instrument was central in helping me rebuild my life and rediscover my identity. It remains one of the most cherished things in my world. But of course me being me, the more I played it the more I craved 10 strings. I called the Conklin shop and sheepishly began the conversation, "I know I promised I wouldn't do this to you again, but-"

"We had a feeling you might want one so we made a 10 string neck for you. Want to talk specs?"

After the laughing stopped, the dialogue began. In short order Bill and Mike made what has become the main bass I've played for just about 10 years...

This purple and yellow monster has treated me so well and is rarely far from my side.

But for the last several years I've been plagued with both more crazy ideas and hostility within the bass community. Whether those attacks represent the majority voice among bass players is irrelevant. It's been tough. So once again I made one of those decisions: I'd bug Bill with everything rolling around in my brain pan and see where he stands. The thought was that if he was willing to build me this latest design, I'd have no excuse not to play as the instrument in question was not designed in any way for ensemble playing but exclusively to be used in solo performance and recording. Not surprisingly, he was excited about the project (and possibly just indulging my wackiness) and work started on the new instrument.

And today is the day. FedEx informs me it's out for delivery but in the meantime all I can do is look at the photos Bill sent before it shipped...

Yes, this means I'll post more shots once it's here and I get a moment to snap some.

But if it wasn't for people like Bill and Mike at Conklin, Mark Wright of AccuGroove Speakers, Eddie Speedy of S.I.T. Strings and Carey Nordstrand of Nordstrand Pickups, I would have given up and walked away from all this years ago. Art is about possibility as much as it is about creativity and communication. While I may never know if I'm a decent artist or even someone who has a right to call myself an artist, I am grateful to have the encouragement and support to peer into this universe of possibility. I hope I can pay them all back in some small way. I will keep trying.

Lies I Was Told... and Believed.

This is not a happy post. Or at least it's not starting as one. It could metamorphose as some of these do, but I'm not starting from a point of positivity or encouragement. Sorry. But this is your chance to look elsewhere if that's what you seek.

Over the last week I've heard from some of the people I hold most dear. Women, to be specific. These are individuals I love but am not involved with. If you've read any of the older entries here or know me in real life it will not come as a surprise that this is the case or that I'm about to ramble on the subject.

I love women. I always have. Many if not most of the bigger decisions in my life have come about in one way or another because of women. That's really only started changing (some) in the last ten or twelve years. Is that good? Does it mean anything? I have no idea.

As a boy I was taught to respect women and in fact was raised to be chivalrous. But I grew up when the world, when society, was changing. I mean, it always is but this was a time of interesting change. As these were my formative years a lot would not become clear until much later in life, but I was brought up to put women on pedestals when women were smashing them.

Now I know and accept that men and women are different. On a purely biological level we have fundamental disparity. But we're taken through childhood largely separately and even when we're integrated at school there is an 'us and them' mentality. Maybe this has changed some since I was little. I hope so. Girls and women together are not the same as boys and men together. I don't think either is particularly good, but I think there are things that we don't understand about one another in very broad strokes.

I think the male as canine/female as feline analogy works pretty well on some levels. Men are linear. We're task oriented. We're kind of about one thing at a time. Our focus is generally upon what's before us. When we're hungry, we eat. When we're tired, we sleep. Pretty uncluttered. Women are a bit more convoluted. The number of things at play in the feminine psyche at any given moment would scare the hell out of men. It does scare the hell out of men. On a purely chemical level, what a woman deals with day in and day out is unreal. Some men are able to grasp this intellectually, but the reality of it is completely beyond us. Men want to simplify, to create a direct path. Women usually find this boring.

Once again, I'll point out that this all comes from my experience. My observations and yours may differ wildly. I'm not trying to draw conclusions or to make any kind of statement under the pretense that I'm expert at anything. I'm not.

Like a lot of men my age, women were to be treasured and protected. Their sensitivity, empathy and self-sacrificing nature was precious. Women represented the finer things where we men were more crude and unformed. It is because of women that so much of our art exists.

However...

Women want to be treasured and protected occasionally. That sensitivity, empathy and self-sacrifice are usually conditional or situational. Representing the finer things can mean looking down on what's crude and unformed.

But women will always be magic. Unknowable. Deeply flawed but without them men like me would never know what it is to be in love. And we are flawed and limited in so many ways, too.

I don't know. I used to joke that I knew what women want: everything, but they don't know in what order. These days I don't joke much. I don't invite women into my life. A romantic who was raised to open doors and walk between a woman and traffic doesn't really have a place in the 21st century. I've been lied to, left without explanation and attacked for no reason too many times to open my heart. I still love and I do it deeply but until or unless a woman unlike any I've known in half a century saunters into my life looking for an itinerant musician with no ambition for material wealth or fame, I'm done with romances. Which sucks because there is nothing like being in love. I write that as someone who has never fallen out of love and has only been with women who don't want to be in love.

Again, I don't know. I don't know a lot of things. I don't know why I believed everything I did or why I still want to believe the things women tell me. I don't know why I can't or won't grow up. I don't know why it's easy to spend days caressing a woman but it destroys me to see the same woman happy with someone else. I don't know why I've never been enough for anyone but I suspect that goes back to the idiotic things I've believed for most of my life.

Most women in my life have at one point or another said, "Love isn't enough." But for someone like me it is. Maybe because I've never known stability and I can be happy without a lot. Of course I understand that a woman wants what I can't give. But then why do they seek me out even when I point out this fact? Why do they come back to me years later to tell me that no one loved them like I did?

I don't get it. I just don't. We all want sex, love, acceptance, affection and those things that reassure us we're good or worthwhile. Is it really so hard to simply be straight with one another about what we want and what we don't? Really?

Want to know the real rub here? I still love romance. I write about it, relish it in books and movies and a part of me that I just can't seem to kill still dreams of it. When women say those things they do, my fucking heart still skips. So maybe I'm just crazy. Maybe we all are.

Okay. That's enough.

Eternally Unplanned?

There have been a boatload of things in my mind lately so as I sit at the computer, they have all evaporated. What that means for you is another off the cuff, in the moment completely random blather lacking any of the elegance or eloquence of a piece brought to you by a real dyed in the wool writer who places craft on a par with art. No, I'm not one of those. My aesthetic is more the improvising musician's, where there's fuel for the fingers but possibly nothing fed downward from the brain into them. Don't worry: I'm not offended if you take this opportunity to direct your attention elsewhere.

You should absolutely read me, though, if you appreciate the singular thinking that comes from the mind of an artist, a neurotic, a romantic a curmudgeon and/or an iconoclast. I'm no genius, crusader, bastion of political correctness or mouthpiece for the 21st century. I'm a self-imposed outcast who may or may not be a hermit, depending upon your definition or who you ask. I prefer to be positive but am negative more than I'd like, have been extremely healthy and just as self-destructive, was labeled both serial monogamist and womanizer, and while I think of myself as transparent, I am continually misunderstood.

So what the hell am I on about today? How about communication and blame. Yeah. Yeah, that'll work fine.

I've been in a lot of couples and know a lot of people in them. It's what so much of us crave, as much for the end of solitude as for the enjoying of someone else, for the chance to be heard and touched, to laugh and do all those things people do together. This does not in any way qualify me as an expert, just as human. Again, that last part depends upon your definition and who you ask.

There really does seem to be a split in the kinds of couples out there. Some couples talk. They work to get closer and to support one another. They work through problems and find solutions together. They know that fights can actually lead to greater intimacy and understanding. They live in a dynamic state. They are also the minority.

Most couples get together based on chemistry, possibly on shared goals and the thought that they can make it because they really like one another. Over time the chemistry fades, they discover they don't have that much in common and communicating nothing they really want to do. Routine and rut become their norm. They look outward at other couples, imagining they're somehow better. They look at other people. They fantasize. They cheat. Lies become commonplace, not only to each other but to themselves. They are the majority.

Why?

Because we're human. We're lazy. We want to believe that there's a point where the work stops and we get to coast. Comfort and convenience are so much nicer than reality. Most of us have no idea what healthy is. We understand healthy appetite, but healthy choices are alien to most of us. We live according to our desires.

That isn't always bad. The desire to prove oneself has led to great athletes and artists. The desire to be right has led to great inventions and given rise to corporations, to whole industries. Desire is hardwired into us. We desire one another, families, children... it goes on and on.

The problem is that desire unchecked is dangerous. To want for the sake of wanting leads to the end of relationships, weight gain, career destruction, cultural ostracism and worse. People kill and die for desire. Lives are ruined for it. Disappointment grows in it. It kills empathy.

Rather we let all these things happen. We hate consequence and most of us aren't particularly far-sighted. We confuse gratification with satisfaction and we get them both mixed up with contentment. Gratification is rarely enough. Satisfaction is passing. Contentment is a fucking unicorn.

But I'm lucky. I've had to start from scratch a couple of times and been able to create more than one life for myself over the years. In turn I've lived my dreams and wallowed in horrible depression, practically destroyed myself through self-loathing and reached places of health and happiness that had been beyond my ability to imagine. There was a point where the unicorn of contentment was mine. And I let desire drive it away.

Really.

Even though I choose solitude at this point I think being part of a couple is a wonderful thing. I would be lying if I told you I didn't crave it on some level. Being desired, having a friend, sharing inside jokes, simply having a human presence are all wonderfully human things. The flip side of that is letting things devolve to the point where the one person central in a life becomes the recipient of the worst vitriol, unwarranted resentment and blame for so many things. This too, unfortunately, is human.

But none of it is carved in stone. I know that change is possible. The process of making it may not be pleasant, but almost anything can be changed. That's why it's circumstance. And most partnerships can be saved. But it's degrees of desire. If one partner wants the new more than the proven, he or she is going to walk away from the relationship which exists.

Again, human.

We admire people who have 'those' relationships, but the difference between them and the rest of us is that both partners are committed to making it work. They do the work. Both of them. It's about togetherness. Even when it's ugly. Even when you want to throttle one another or run away screaming. No one will infuriate you like the one you love. No one else will make you feel as good. We choose our partners but we forget to honor that choice. We don't have to. There's no need to. But we do.

Love may be the greatest thing going, but love ain't easy. There was a movie I watched long ago where it was called the ultimate leap of faith. I don't know if I'd go that far but on a purely emotional level, I can't think of a bigger risk. We lose faith in ourselves constantly, but to really love you have to have faith in that someone else and in the relationship you've built. Most people see everything as disposable but that doesn't hold true with people. Not the ones we value. The instant you think of a relationship as disposable, you've planted the seed of its destruction. It may never germinate but it can.

Perhaps this is all a part of my insanity. I believe a lot of what I was taught, even though I learn more and more of it was lies. But I have felt INCREDIBLE love. I have breathed it in, wrapped it around myself and slept in it. Love protected me from horrors. I do believe it's all you need. And I cannot possibly be alone in that. I can't be. The trick is finding someone else who believes it, then being able to work. It's possible. Not easy, lord knows, but possible. Look around you. There are people living in love. They aren't better people. They're committed: to each other, to the work and to love.

But as Ian Anderson put it, nothing is easy. Though time gets you worrying, my friend, it's okay.

Pretty solid jumping off point.

Life, or Something Like It

I don't know what the written equivalent of yammering is but this is your chance to get out before you wander into it. There's no actual crafted flow or cadence to what you're skimming now and it's not likely to get better before you reach the end. This is just one of those times I'm sitting here, things won't stop going through my head and I take it out on the computer, the internet and you. Apologies.

This screen has caught me prattling about everything from my own anachronistic, misdirected nature to disappearance and death on more than one occasion. And what is this ramble? What meander are you about to be dragged along? I think the strangeness of not being chosen. I don't mean that in any 'save the planet' kind of way but more like when the playground population is being divided up to play something. How many of us were the last one picked?

But to get a little more specific, I'm the one that no one chooses forever. I've heard the words and felt the emotions. I've even exchanged the promises. I've looked in someone's eyes and seen a reflection of my own love for a woman. More than once in fact.

At the end of the day, however, here I am. Alone.

Am I depressed? Disappointed?

Nope. Not really. A little sad, maybe. Tired, certainly. Confused in the way all subjective creatures are who encounter something counter to their way of thinking and of seeing things. This is as countless people have said and written the way it goes.

But I don't get it.

Now before you start making assumptions, let me repeat a few things that I've stated in previous posts. I am no angel. I'm not even a particularly nice guy. Nothing about me is a neat package waiting to be unwrapped to reveal magic. What you see is more or less what you get. And I know that we all change. I fully accept that forever is more a poetic term than something we can apply to our daily lives. I can't say I know or understand women, but I've been far closer to them than I have to men and know that 'in the moment' is much closer to describing the women I've known than forever is.

But I'm not without merits. There's a reasonable brain in here. I'm a pretty solid friend. Sensuality and romance are big for me. My massage kung fu is strong. I snuggle. The decades have given me some serious domestic chops. I'm an artist. Communication, honesty and intimacy are all cornerstones for me.

Of course the flip side of all that is I'm moody, prone to intensity, sleep is largely optional in my world, opinions fly from these lips far faster than they should, I can be too curious, I'm not someone parents ever want to know about, stability and consistency are all but completely alien to me and I'm not much motivated by material things. I'm not political. It's too easy for me to see all sides of a situation or a problem and still not be able to offer any kind of resolution. My fashion sense is questionable. This is not a young man... in any sense.

You'll notice that paragraph was lengthier than the one preceding it. I also elided. A lot.

Still, I see people in lasting couples all the time. I hear how it's so sad or even a crime that I'm single. I have so much to offer. How can no one appreciate all that I am?

I think women do. Women enjoy me. As friends and as lovers. But women don't settle with lovers. They have fond memories and sometimes tells stories about lovers. Lovers aren't husbands. Lovers aren't forever. I think no matter how much a woman may love a man, if he can't offer up security, stability and safety he will be relegated to lover. He will be an ex.

Realistically, I'm probably not couple material. Not for a traditional couple. Not for the women generally drawn to me. Maybe this is why musicians write love songs and artists paint their muses. I don't know. I honestly don't.

But I can tell you I believed what I was taught as a boy and lived most of my life according to those precepts. I was well and truly middle aged when it became clear that most of it was horse shit. We're taught what will lead to a comparatively safe Petrie dish as we all mingle like germs. It's why we're taught ethics in the conditional tense and then once those ideas sink in we're taught about the legal consequences of crossing the lines.

And like a moron I still believe in love. I still fucking hope for it. Why? Because it's about the only thing that makes life worth living. Do I enjoy artistic achievement and touching people's lives in a monthly magazine? Of course! God, these things are incredible! People have told me about my influence on who they are and what they do. That's an honor on a level I can't communicate.

But I climb into bed alone. I wake up cold. My phone seldom rings and most are cold calls.

This isn't to say I'm miserable. Not by any stretch. Nor is my life empty. I have better friends than I deserve and more love than I know what to do with. But no one rolls over in bed, kisses me softly and tells me she loves me. No one's hand folds into mine when we start walking together. I can't remember my last hug.

Hindsight is 20/20 and getting older is, if we're lucky, accruing wisdom. I've had great love (read Great Love) and it's been unreal to be the one chosen in the moment when powerful feeling was heaped upon me from someone I felt it for. The problem is that love is forever with an artist. Every loss is crushing. The fact that they are so rarely foreseen or explained is brutal. Solitude may be a balm but it's also an unflinching reminder that 'this is it, dude.'

Do I think there may be love again? Sure. Am I predicating anything upon that? Hell no. And while I would love to inform anyone who's made it this far into the text that next time I'll be wiser, that I won't be the same head first and question later dingus, I'm pretty sure there are some things I can't change. I don't even know that I want to.

It would be nice to meet someone who can actually communicate, though, and who knows her mind or what she wants.

Yes, I know that's asking a lot.

See? There was no design to it and nothing is any more clear than at the outset. But this little excursion has helped to settle my mood and give me the strength to get back out in the world.

I hope there's no one cute working the check out line.

Becoming Invisible

It isn't bad. It certainly isn't what I imagined. Considering how much of my life has been consumed with a fear of being mediocre, being consumed in anonymity is actually almost reassuring. I thought it would be like drowning, but it's just the opposite. I feel free. Invisible but free.

As a kid I was paralyzed by shyness but craved attention. Both my parents worked and we moved often enough that I didn't have many friends. I've never made friends easily. So I was alone a lot and lived more in my imagination than in the real world. This was fine until those chemical changes started and my drives shifted.

The shyness and desire for attention both became stronger, but so did the poignancy of my being alone. Luckily this was about the same time that we settled down for a few years and I came into a group of friends who accepted me and encouraged my imagination. My shyness was removed from the equation and I was getting attention.

But it was adolescence and I was on my way into young adulthood. Sadly I believed things I was taught and so was ill-equipped when it came to love, romance, sex and the general melee of the man-woman paradigm. Love was all I needed but no one explained that it's only the beginning of what a woman needs to stay with a man. If anyone had told me as a boy that stability and ambition count for a lot more than being a great lover or being a poet, I probably would have just focused on my art and not wasted what's amounted to decades in pursuit of what has only been a satellite to my own life.

Don't get me wrong: the women who've been in the picture have brought color, depth and resonance to my existence. I am grateful and appreciative that they were a part of things for the time that they were, I just wish I'd know that none of them would be sticking around.

It also would have been nice to know that the pain of a woman leaving would always be fresh and brutal.

So now that I've landed in middle age and stepped away from the fracas, removed myself from most social media, I'm left with simplicity. My shyness dissipated long ago and attention is about the last thing I want. A few years ago there were thousands of people following my interweb and career efforts, posting to my pages and reaching out to me constantly. I would get hundreds of notifications daily about things. Women from all over the world thought me interesting enough for all manner of banter and some even broached the possibility of starting something in the real world. My ego was overfed and glutted. I had carved a niche for myself in the musical community and was being invited to perform and to speak in addition to holding down a couple of jobs.

How could I let that go? Why would I??

It was easy. And it was time.

The internet can be lovely. For someone like me who will never make an entrance like Cary Grant, it was a goldmine. One can craft the image he or she wants, develop an entirely different persona than what people see at the day job and there is the luxury of being able to filter communications. Distraction and entertainment are everywhere. Porn is more accessible than data and appearance is more significant than accomplishment. It's a Fellini-Dali dream come to pass.

And it was too much for me. "Be careful what you wish," the wise man cautioned, "for you will surely get it."

I did. And as is the case so often, it wasn't what I thought. All that attention left me more painfully alone than when I was a confused teen. The flirtatious words connected with the enticing photos, real time chatting and the flurry of activity to try and keep up with it all left me cold. I'd shut down the devices and look around me to find no one there with me. Those who moaned and rallied when I announced it was time for me to leave the zoo rarely made any effort to keep up with me. Maybe that last part is what's amazed me the most.

My friends dragged their feet when I embraced social media. By the time they began to find in it what I had, I was over it. I didn't need or want to play games, take surveys or find out what character of (fill in the TV show or movie title) I was. I knew who I was and I know who I am.

I don't have conversations about what's happening on Facebook. The latest wave of hate has no more interest for me than whatever video of a cat or child is making the rounds. People are talking politics and it's getting heated? That's fine.

Maybe someday I'll return to that milieu. I think if I can tone it down and stop the notifications, there might be a time I resume a virtual presence. But until then I will glory in no one writing to tell me what an awful being I am or to demand I give them free things. In real life most women don't initiate contact of any sort so I don't have to reject anyone.

And I'm good with this. No one takes a second look if I'm out walking or standing in line. My phone isn't ringing and the number of texts I get in a month is nominal. It isn't a point of contention that I don't do hands-free calling while I drive. In fact no one is curious when or if I drive. My whereabouts are of no interest to anyone but me. No one seeks out my relationship status. Those things about me which are broadcast to the world are not from me and are all but overlooked.

On some level it would be nice for this blog to find an audience, but I'm simply glad that the documentation exists. That satisfies my vanity and insecurity more than anyone 'liking' something posted online. Let this be an archaeological anomaly, some odd token stumbled upon long after I'm gone.

In the meantime I'm gonna be in the world, wandering unseen between beauty and horror, waiting for sunrises and counting blue moons. It turns out invisibility is everything it's cracked up to be.

The Death of Empathy

I don't know when it happened. No idea if this is a global phenomenon or something unique to the States. I have survived the 'me' decade of the 70's and the cocaine fueled self-centeredness of the 80's, but never have I witnessed anything like what I see daily around me.

I suppose it's one possible outcome of humans being subjective creatures, an illogical inevitability of short-sightedness and conspicuous consumption. Even having changed my life to minimize contact with my fellow bipeds, giving up TV and walking away from mainstream social media, I see it every day. Every fucking day.

I see it in the way people drive, in how they act at coffee shops, in the things I overhear where I work and live, in so many communications I receive. Empathy is gone and compassion is on life support.

This doesn't mean there aren't incidents of loveliness or heroic acts, but these things are becoming more and more rare. I can't remember the last time I heard someone or read about an individual putting him- or herself into someone else's shoes and trying to understand their feelings, choices or actions. No, we live in a time of hair-trigger judgment. Preconception is now as valid as fact. Opinion is king in the land of the self-important. Cruel statements are lauded as brilliance, especially if worded cleverly. And worse, I am now seeing people made fun of for trying to be kind.

As a boy I was cautioned that kindness would lead to people to take advantage of me and ultimately take me for granted. For a long time I never cared because I liked making others happy, seeing them smile and if it was possible, making their lives easier, even for a few moments. But in the last several years I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people who have asked how I'm doing. This is not an exaggeration.

Do I think there's a solution? Not one I can imagine. Making the world less pleasant has got to be one of the strangest trends I've seen. This from a man who remembers pet rocks and Billy Beer.

None of this is to state I'm a particularly pleasant individual. Ask anyone I've dated. I'm moody, intense and prone to all manner of less than lovely things. But I try and keep my mouth shut when I could spew bile. Venting spleen now is something that happens only when I'm alone or with my best and closest friends. I don't meltdown in public and online. I don't attack strangers. When I'm attacked, if I can't rise above it or confront it with reason, I walk away.

Am I a pacifist? For the most part. But I was taught to fight. And I have friends who tell me I should be in the world and fighting every day. From their perspective this makes sense. From mine it's alien. This is partly because I'm alone and damaged, and partly because I have fought so much. I'm no longer a young man and I'm not wealthy, so I want whatever time I have left to be of quality. Once I reveled in triumph, in victory. That was an accomplishment. But for someone to win, someone else must lose. I don't deny that there are times for conflict or that there are things that are wrong. But I'm an artist and a lover. If people don't like what I do that's fine. It makes me sad for them if they feel the need to belittle me or mock me, but that's their choice. I'd rather just make music and write. If I never perform or publish again it makes no difference. It feels good to me, even if no one hears the sounds or reads the words.

And we live in a time where people don't read. I have a Twitter account mostly as a barometer of what's going on in society. It's getting to the point where I can make neither head nor tail of what people post.

But as I've stated, I'm old. I'm from another century. The values instilled in me are antiquated, anachronistic. This realization has not escaped me. But it saddens me that to be a hacker or an anonymous bully is somehow a badge of honor. In fact, I'm no longer sure the word honor has a place in my country.

Every day I see fewer and fewer decent things, decent in the sense of treating one another like fucking human beings. People make fun of the homeless and lose their minds when it takes two minutes to make their obscure espresso drinks. I don't recall the last time I saw two people holding hands. This is a time when people put their children on the roofs of their cars to open the doors and drive off without putting those kids inside the cars. There are more and more things I just can't grasp in human behavior. Does anyone remember the word humane?

It's heavy-handed and outdated, but there's an episode of the original Star Trek entitled "The Empath" and I encourage every biped who claims to have a heart to watch it. If possible watch it with someone significant to you. It's as simplistic as so much is that attempts to tackle something substantive in a short time, but it's worth the watching. Even if just to plant a seed.

There's an expression I was taught long ago: don't mistake kindness for weakness. As a culture we've lost sight of that. People give compliments as the overture to manipulating and exploiting others. Some days I feel I walked onto a playground where all the kids are pulling the wings off flies. Others I literally wait to see any sort of kind gesture between strangers.

What floors me about this is that all the people who are callous or even cruel will bitch about how no one is kind to them. But I think kindness is not something done for the expectation of reciprocation. That isn't what it is. Giving is giving. Giving to get something in return is something else, something darker.

Maybe I'm weak. I don't think so but I'm wrong a lot. But this may be one of those cases where I don't want to change something in myself. I still feel good when I can make others smile or laugh, if I can ease things even for a moment or two. I will keep trying, even in a world where no one asks "How are you?" anymore.

I'll keep asking.