Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Checking the Post

In the before times, before we moved to New England, we had a close family friend who was an artist. We were over for dinner one evening, as I recall, and he mentioned that he took the paper. He was referring, of course, the local newspaper, but the way that he phrased that was really interesting to me. No one really takes the paper any more, do they? For those of us who still trust and read newspapers, we read them on a screen, knowing that they’ll be updated by the moment rather than waiting for tomorrow’s edition. Taking the paper is just a different experience.

Our daughter received a letter a few days ago from a close friend who is away. She wasn’t expecting it, and she eagerly tore it open and devoured its contents. She immediately then went to her studio, retrieved pen and paper, and set about composing her reply. When I woke the next morning, the “out box” next to the door had a stamped envelope in it, ready to be put out in the post.

I’m thrilled that our daughter writes letters rather than lapsing into SMS shorthand by default to communicate with her friends. There are some things that have become almost counter-cultural but that are so much more civilized than the norm. Letter writing. Traveling by train (at least in the U.S.). Pressing one’s coffee. There’s something less throw-away about these acts. Something more intentional. We have to slow down for them.

I was reading over the weekend about an author whose works I occasionally read donating his archives and papers to a museum. I wonder how that would work had those papers been digital? Possible, I’m certain, but less…real? I’m also thinking about something else I read recently discussing how a computer essentially begins to self-destruct as soon as it’s built because of the types of components inside of it. How many “papers” could be lost to this? How much history? History the loss of which is a death sentence for a society.

Years ago, my wife bought me a traveler’s notebook. It’s the best gift I could have imagined, and makes the perfect journal. This post began as thoughts sketched out in that journal. I’m not nearly conceited enough to think that my writings in that journal or elsewhere will ever be important enough to be donated anywhere, but should my children want to read them, they’ll be there, unlike many grad school term papers that exist on a CD ROM somewhere and may or may not be readable now. That’s worth something, if only for them, and I think they’ll know to find them.

Because they know how to write letters.

The Ultimate 80’s Cliffhanger

My copy of Photon: Exile, a book I never thought I would be able to read.

There was a point at which I would have been embarrassed by some of the books on my shelf. A lot of these books were forgotten and in storage through various moves until we bought our first house. Then they were being unpacked and put onto shelves, and there were a few moments of “…really?” But I couldn’t force myself to let go of them.

To be fair, I’ve had moments in adulthood, also. After grad school, my wife and I were visiting a local book store. I walked out with both Tolstoy and a Batman novel. I read Batman first.

If we rewind back to the 80’s, when I was growing up during an amazing time and when one of my parents loved science fiction, I ended up with several novelizations of series that interested me on my shelf. Some of them transitioned from my to-read pile directly into storage, having never been read, but many of them hold fond memories. An example is a series of X-Men novels that I collected as diligently as I collected the comics, the difference being that I never seemed to find the time to read the novels.

Once they were on the shelf and visible again, though, some nostalgia took over. A few years ago, I pulled one of the X-Men novels off the shelf and dug into it. These aren’t exactly heavy reads, and they finish quickly. Of course, I managed to read one and the rest have been sitting on my shelf through two moves since then, but…I will get back to them. Really.

One of my interests in the 80’s was Photon. For the uninitiated, this was a game that was essentially the same as Lazer Tag, but with different branding and a much different, less sleek and refined look than Laser Tag. Think Star Wars instead of Star Trek. While I probably could have talked my parents into paying for a set (had I ever been able to find a set near where I grew up), none of my friends had a set, which made it sort of pointless. Add to this the fact that there were no Photon game centers near where I grew up, and Photon was something about which I dreamed of experiencing but never realized.

Side note: When we moved to New England, I discovered a few Laser Tag arenas in the area, and I was able to finally realize my dream of playing in one. Bucket list item achieved.

Something else that differentiated Photon from Lazer Tag, other than the aesthetic, was a short-lived series that imagined a world built around the game set in outer space. That series was, even by 80’s standards, painfully campy and low-budget, but the concepts for the characters were actually interesting, and what the series couldn’t pull off, a series of novels took a good try at achieving.

Penned (under a pseudonym) by Peter David, a writer famous for his run on the Incredible Hulk, these novels were everything that was amazing about the 80’s. There was Photon, of course, but characters that included a ninja princess, a cyborg wizard, and many others, including, of course, a sort of Everyman character, Bhodi Li, with whom every middle school boy reading could relate.

I read the first four novels (and a separate, YA novel that never developed into a series), because talking my parents into buying a $2.99 paperback every few weeks was trivial compared to other wants. The adventures that my imagination was able to have as I was drawn into this world! I distinctly remember reading one of them on a bus as we returned from a class trip.

What’s most compelling about this memory is that book four ended on a cliffhanger. I could barely recall the plots of the others, but vividly remember the cliffhanger, because I was never able to find the fifth novel. Somewhere in my mind, all the way through adulthood, that un-resolved plot thread was stored in the background, because when I was un-packing boxes of books as we moved into our current home and I found my old Photon novels, I immediately remembered that cliffhanger.

Last Christmas, I was debating what to purchase with some gift cards that I had received and my wandering eyes fell on those novels, which sat on a shelf to one side of my office. I suddenly had to find resolution to that plot, so I went searching. After some online sleuthing, I found it…book 5, albeit not in the best condition, but it existed and was for sale nonetheless. Nowhere that I could spend the gift card, but it didn’t matter. One click and a week of waiting for delivery later, it was in my hand.

Lest we take it for granted, dear reader, the Internet can be a wonderful thing.

I spent a few weeks going back and re-reading the rest of the series first, to lead up to the cliffhanger, and then reverently picked the newly acquired book 5 up from my to-read pile (where it had skipped several other books and been placed on the top). I made short work of it, and reached the final chapter with a broad smile at the happy ending that the characters realized.

40 years later, I found out the end of the story. I know what happened. That plot has closure.

Yes, I am a hopeless geek, and there are so many other more important things upon which I could spend my time and energy. But now that I know the end of the story…a story from a better and simpler time…I couldn’t be happier.

A 90’s Music Re-Invention Reflection

A couple of nights ago, I was bored. I don’t have an issue with boredom…great creativity can occur in moments of boredom. What does tend to present interesting outcomes is the combination of boredom and the Internet, but such is our moment in history. In this particular moment of boredom, there surfaced a distinct memory of (and subsequent search for) a television series from the 90’s that I had nearly forgotten existed, Catwalk. While my memory of this series is fuzzy, and my searching didn’t yield any results on any streaming service, I recall that the acting and writing of that series was that special, 90’s kind of melodrama, but there was something about the music.

That memory brought back some other 90s shows, as well (that I have been able to locate on various platforms), and watching some of those series re-oriented me, in a strange way, to what life was like, not necessarily in the 90’s (I was sort of just drifting then, if I’m honest…trying to figure out life), but definitely to the Before Times. I’m attributing this otherwise inexplicable connection to the interpersonal dynamics and lack of pervasive technology. What I mostly miss when I think about this in particular is the fact that I wasn’t in front of a screen all day, that I was doing something that mattered, and having human contact occasionally.

Interestingly, the drama is not why I watched Catwalk originally. That series would have been my freshman year in college, which was a dramatically failed attempt at being a music major. As I said, there was something about the music in that series, a rock/hip-hop/pop fusion that stayed in my memory. I wish there existed a soundtrack somewhere, but I couldn’t find that, either. I remember distinctly a line that one of the characters said back then in one episode or another, something to the effect of how what they were doing with the band was just as valid as any symphony. I really resonated with that, because I was trying to do jazz and rock in a program that insisted on classical. The characters in that series were living a life that I dreamed of living (and was still naive enough to think could exist).

Like a lot of dreams, though, this stagnated when I reached proper adulthood.

A few years ago, my wife gave one of the coolest Christmas gifts ever. I’ve always talked about my days as a drummer and how, in another life, I would have just been in a band forever had my parents just bought me that kit I wanted so that I could take it seriously. That Christmas, she gave me an electronic drum kit that I could play without annoying the entire household. I look at it wistfully now every time I’m in the basement play room, but usually the closest that I get to playing is watching videos of various drummers from the 80’s.

Just like the characters in Catwalk, in real life, there are day jobs, and, for most of us, what we’re passionate about happens after. I’m trying (perhaps even getting better at…?) carving out that time after hours. Watching less and reading more helps that creative spark, but just being open to things is the most helpful, and, in that regard, my daughters inspire me.

I’m reaching a point where I want to…am about to, I think…re-invent myself again. I’m tempted to call it a mid-life crisis, but I don’t know if the first part of that phrase is the most accurate descriptor at the moment. I know that I want to take what’s good about my present vocation and leave the rest. Normally I’d go back to school at this point. Is that a possibility? Maybe, but doubtful. In whatever case, I’m drawing a line in the sand, because I want to see what’s next.

Memoirs of Power Tools

Last year, a new neighbor bought the house across the street.

The previous owner had a…colorful personality that led to some interesting stories to tell. So, we were wondering what the new owner would bring. They’ve done a lot of renovation to the house, which has been interesting to watch. This guy is always building, sawing, hammering, putting something together, or, alternatively, bringing in a lot of supplies and re-doing the landscaping of the property.

When I think of that kind of work, I think of a couple of things. First is my father…it’s perhaps apropos that I’m writing this on Father’s Day. He kept a workshop in a detached building and was always outside in the evenings after dinner. The saws could always be heard, and he was always building. My dad made his living in electronics, but he loved woodworking, and the shop was his man cave. He sculpted with wood, as much an artist as a craftsman.

The other thing that I think of is my college career, because I spent most of it as a theatre major. My focus was largely on the technical side of theatre, and as such I spent a good amount of time in the scene shop. Even though I grew up observing my father’s use of power tools, I didn’t really learn to use them until college. While I’m far from being a pro, I do know my way around a drill, a rip saw, and various other tools, but to use them today would surface just how incredibly out of practice I am, because I don’t use them every day.

Or every month.

Or most of the year.

In recent years, for various reasons, I think about my dad often. Part of this is harboring some guilt for not calling him nearly as often as I should. Part of it is that things like seeing this new neighbor working outside all the time reminds me of what my dad did when I was growing up, and I wish sometimes that l was less academic and more hands-on with life.

A few years ago, before we moved to our current house, I was driving home from…somewhere… and I passed a house with a work van parked in the driveway. I forget what sort of work it advertised on its side…electrician, perhaps? Roofing? Given that it was the weekend, the van was not in use, and I remembered my father coming home from work, being with his family, engaging his hobbies, living a simpler life. There wasn’t email then, but if there had been, he wouldn’t have been checking it, because he wouldn’t have had a smartphone in his pocket. He left in the morning, worked his day as a specialist in his field, and returned home to live life, much as I imagine the owner of that van did. Then, after a significant number of years, he retired, which he was able to do because he was rewarded for his longevity with a pension.

While I don’t really want to change who I am in this regard, I often think that life would be simpler if I worked in a field…or in a time…that brought with it a similar lifestyle. Leave for work, do your trade, come home to the family. Work outside on the weekends, watch the game in the evening. There’s an enviable simplicity to that rhythm. That simplicity pre-supposes a security that doesn’t exist in our world any longer (who among my generation can realistically ever expect to retire?). Even without this, though, I feel that there must be ways to re-introduce a simplicity into our lives. Some are obvious…refuse to let work have a foothold in our after-hours lives (I deleted work communications from my phone some time ago), pare back on social media’s poisonous influence. Some are less obvious, or at least they are to me as I haven’t figured them out as of yet.

My techno-optimism has died in its old age, and I’ve started looking for ways to bring back this sort of simplicity. I want work to have its appropriate place, to mean something, and for life to be free from tech billionaires making decisions for me.

As foreign as this sounds to a generation that has grown up in this landscape, I can’t feel that this is what it was meant to be. Our lives have fallen out of balance, and we need to get that back. I’m not sure how exactly that happens. I just know instinctively that it involves less complexity than our current state.

A Thought Experiment

Indulge me a hypothetical scenario.

Let’s say someone was born in an area that he grew up to only want out of. There was a lack of culture there, a vacuum, and a lack of understanding as to who he was…not from his family, but from the world around him. He went to college nearby, and the vacuum left its mark. This was sort of like a fundamental incompatibility. He just didn’t fit. One of the results of this was that he couldn’t decide what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Of course, he grew up. That happens whether one wants to or not, and so he cycled through three majors in college before achieving a degree. He didn’t have the connections in that area to do what he really wanted, so he ended up in a field that was largely unrelated to his degree. He liked it, though, so he threw himself into it, identified with it, became good at it. He learned about people in that profession. Until, one day, he realized that maybe there was something else out there.

You see, he had held God largely at the periphery for a lot of his adult life, and now was impressed with the realization of how unsustainable that was. Through a series of events that were based largely around his discontent with still living in that area, he got his arms around his faith for likely the first time in his life. He walked away from one particular experience feeling that he actually knew God for the first time, and that changed everything, as it must. And so he pursued that into ministry, into graduate studies, and into a new profession. That profession turned out to be short-lived, but the studies involved altered everything even further. The problem was that, as he learned so many new things, he didn’t realize that he didn’t know what he thought he knew, and so he left behind his experiences so far, because he felt they were incompatible. He was beginning a new life without a foundation, as a sort of misguided concept of repentance.

Except that a foundation, once laid, tends to stay put. As he grew and finished his graduate studies, he realized one day by hanging some theatre masks on his wall that he was who he was in large part because of his experiences, and that those experiences were not only not bad in and of themselves, but informed his newfound relationship with God. And so, he had to re-think some things.

Growing up has a way of continuing to happen, though. So, as he was trying to figure all of this out, he fell in love and got married, and, because bills continue to arrive whether one is trying to figure out life or not, he returned to that original vocation to pay them. Then their first child, and then and then and then…many dreams, and much difficulty in making them a reality, difficulty borne primarily of indecisiveness and discontent.

And then, one day, because of those bill that kept arriving, they decided another career change was in order, and so he returned to school to enter a very technical field. He had learned about people, he had become (he hoped) close with God, his creative spark was always working…but he entered a technical field. Pay the bills it did, certainly, earning back the cost of the new schooling in short order, but it took so much and gave back little else. And then a second child. And, somehow, 15 years vanished in a blur of frenetic activity that accomplished only unimportant things and left him missing what was overwhelmingly important.

And that, you see, brings us to now, and this person…this subject of our hypothetical thought experiment…is once again rejecting something through a fundamental incompatibility, feeling an exasperation with both this third career as well as the fact that the world trusts technology more than people, science more than art. And he dreams, and the dreams continue to not come true, because the data keeps interfering.

What is there to do? What should this person do? What would be the next step to make it right?

Asking for a friend.

“Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true? Or is it something worse?” – Bruce Springsteen