To live is to fly.

Painting by Michael Sowa

Won't say I love you babe

Won't say I need you babe

But I'm going to get you babe

and I will not do you wrong

Living's mostly wasting time

and I waste my share of mine

but it never feels too good

so let's not take too long

You're as soft as glass and I'm a gentle man

we got the sky to talk about

and the world to lie upon

Days up and down they come

like rain on a conga drum

forget most, remember some

but don't turn none away

Everything is not enough

nothing is too much to bear

where you been is good and gone

all you keep's the getting there

To live is to fly low and high

so shake the dust off of your wings

and the sleep out of your eyes

It's goodbye to all my friends

It's time to go again

Think of all the poetry

and the pickin' down the line

I'll miss the system here

the bottom's low and the treble's clear

but it don't pay to think too much

on the things you leave behind

I may be gone but I won't be long

I'll be bringing back the melody

and the rhythm that I find

We all got holes to fill

and them holes are all that's real

some fall on you like a storm

sometimes you dig your own

But choice is yours to make

time is yours to take

some dive into the sea

some toil upon the stone

To live is to fly low and high

so shake the dust off of your wings

the sleep out of your eyes

Lyrics by The Cowboy Junkies

Moose

As the weather turns cooler, I always think of Autumn in Montana, and the critters found there. Photo taken by Steve Wall.

Anger

"Seneca on Anger" by Alain de Botton

Over the last several years, I have felt in myself and in many of my close friends a growing store of anger, regret, resentment, and disillusionment. Perhaps this is merely what They call "middle age", or "the onset of reality", but it's grim stuff, and it has many of my contemporaries well within its grasp. And not just a few.  A satisfying explanation for why these emotions are so pervasive among the smart, peaceful and prosperous currently eludes me (even after watching the video), but there it is.

This transition is associated with a growing sadness about the world, an acceptance of the inevitability of cruelty and disappointment, a questioning about the natural order and purpose, and a loss of both optimism and hope. It is clearly linked to a weakening of spiritual faith - any belief that God "cares".

Last week, I was (sorta) joking with a friend that recently I have embraced pessimism as a time-saving device, and today I come across the video above suggesting that it could be more: a successful coping mechanism. To reduce anger, Seneca suggests that we manage (adjust downwardly) our expectations about life. While this makes sense at some level, it is an approach decidedly lacking in all those natural, joyful inclinations that make life worth living, and borders on hopelessness itself. Though perhaps it proves that cynics are optimists run down by reality.

My grandmother used to tell me that happiness (and optimism) is a choice, and this was a choice that she had to make every day.  In contrast, Seneca starts from the Buddhist position that to be happy is to suffer less, and to suffer less we must suffer in advance, to prevent disillusionment when the inevitable occurs.  Frankly, I suspect that my grandmother was far happier than Seneca must have been.

Still, it's an intelligent, interesting video. It is part of a series by Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel, and The Consolations of Philosophy, from which these videos are derived.

UPDATE: The timing of William Kristol's uplifting piece in Monday's New York Times about Tony Snow and the nature of optimism couldn't be better. Thanks to Captain / Doctor / Professor / Momma Betsy Holmes for the heads-up.

Post Secret II

Above are two submissions to the Post Secret Project, and they remind me that a) relationships between people do not end, they merely change, and b) emotions are rarely genuine and pure. Methinks Paul Simon doth protest too much when he sings, "I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain", though clearly there are many who appreciate the man who said,

"I wish I had never met you. Because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there."

Hurt

One of the final recordings - and the last video made - by the late Johnny Cash was of the song "Hurt", written by Nine Inch Nails / Trent Reznor. The story of how Cash came to cover the song, and Reznor's emotional reaction to it, is found here.

I hurt myself today,
to see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain,
the only thing that's real.
The needle tears a hole,
the old familiar sting.
Try to kill it all away,
but I remember everything.
What have I become?
My sweetest friend.
Everyone I know,
goes away in the end.
And you could have it all,
my empire of dirt.

I will let you down,
I will make you hurt.

I wear this crown of thorns,
upon my liar's chair.
Full of broken thoughts,
I cannot repair.
Beneath the stains of time,
the feelings disappear.
You are someone else.
I am still right here.

What have I become?
My sweetest friend.
Everyone I know,
goes away in the end.
And you could have it all,
my empire of dirt.

I will let you down.
I will make you hurt.

If I could start again,
a million miles away.
I would keep myself.
I would find a way.

Love

"Love in the afternoon" (1992), by Andrew Wyeth

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. - Anais Nin

Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. - C.S. Lewis

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the perturbations of love is Hell. - C.S. Lewis

No people find each other more absurd than lovers. - C.S. Lewis

Love and Truth: Their warfare seems eternal. - E.M. Forster

A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17

Wish you were here

"Hotel Room" (1931), Edward Hopper

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

by David Gilmour and Roger Waters

About the song

Immortal Beloved

At the end of Ludwig van Beethoven's life in March of 1827, letters were found in his desk addressed to, "Immortal Beloved". The well-written 1994 film by that same name (trailer above) explores several theories regarding this woman's identity and why the two were never united.

It would seem that Beethoven had one true love, a "soulmate", and that a twist of fate kept them apart. The movie asserts that it was this source of passion, frustration and longing that fueled his anger and bitterness over the course of his life, resulting in some of the most transcendent music ever written.

I am fascinated by man's willingness (and capacity) to hold on to people, convictions and feelings indefinitely, even in the face of a contrary reality and long after hope is gone. The mystery to me is not that some people do hold on, but that some people do not. After all, what happened to Beethoven is not rare. Many, if not most people live their lives without that person or thing they care about the most. Apparently, there is a fine line between devotion and futility, just as there is a fine line between genius and insanity.

Here is one of Beethoven's letters to Immortal Beloved:

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I nedd a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a clam consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

Hallelujah

One of the songs that has touched me the most over the last several years is the Leonard Cohen song, "Hallelujah". I became aware of John Cale's version (what I still consider the best) while curled up on the couch watching the show "Scrubs", and it brought me to tears. Above is the song as it appears in that episode, "My old lady". Cale's 1991 studio recording is surprisingly hard to get a hold of (mine came off of the 1996 Basquiat Soundtrack), but you can see a live performance below.

Over the years, and more often recently, this song has been recorded by a large number of people. Click here for a truly wonderful version by Jeff Buckley from the 1994 album Grace, vaguely reminiscent of the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Sessions.

Regret

"Melancholy" (1891), by Edvard Munch

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Pablo Neruda

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and sensless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart. Jonathan Carroll

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. Sydney Smith

If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world. Mercedes Lackey

Accept life, and you must accept regret. Henri Frederic Amiel

To regret deeply is to live afresh. Henry David Thoreau

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. Woody Allen

Vampire

While often identified as "Vampire",
this painting by Edvard Munch is properly titled
"Love and Pain" (1893-1894).

Does she love and comfort as she takes his life? Does he hope to die in her arms? Mr. Munch certainly believes that there is pain in love.

Sonnet XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Madonna

"Madonna" (1894-1895), by Edvard Munch

Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

by Frank O'Hara