Hook, line and sinker on the YBR. We all need to take a break.

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Striking up the band on the YBR. We need to be reading the same sheet music.

At the end of third grade I literally begged my father to let me take up the clarinet.  (What was I smoking?) My father being true to himself said “no.”  There was no arguing with him on anything.  He did, however, leave a little wiggle-room.  He said that if I still wanted to play the clarinet in a year, he would let me start playing the clarinet in the fifth grade.  Since I still wanted to play, he relented and I started my music career as a ten-year old who was eager but not a musical prodigy.

I actually worked hard. I did practice to the annoyance of my sister who kept telling me I sounded like I was killing cats.  I was not to be deterred.  While a student in the Seaford Public school district I didn’t, to my father’s surprise, quit. No.  I kept killing cats.

By my senior year as a student at St. Agnes Cathedral High School I managed to work my way up to first chair clarinet.  (Not a position that garnered me any status, but an accomplishment nonetheless. I even had a solo in our spring concert.)

There was something about looking at a piece of sheet music that intrigued me.  There was something else.  I had this understanding that an orchestra is only as great as the weakest player.  I also learned how amazing it was that when third row clarinets or trumpets played their individual parts it didn’t sound like the piece of music we were playing.  The piece of music only came alive when all the parts of all the instruments were played together that music was made.

Although I only played in a band/orchestra for seven years, the experience ruined me for ever becoming a rock or heavy metal fan.  That’s because my ears were trained to hear all the different sounds being made by the different players.

To this day whenever I hear an orchestra play, my ears revert back to a time when they were attuned to hearing the difference sounds an instrument made as a part of a whole.

We live in a world filled with hundreds of different instruments all of them playing at once. Only the sound being made is cacophonous.  It’s hard on the ears. There is no harmony. There is no melody.  It is just noise.

I remember a quote on one of my music folders when I was in the sixth grade. It read: all noise is sound, but only good sound is music.

Is there someone we can blame for the horrible sound we are making?  I don’t want to point a finger, but there’s one factor I’ve left out of this analogy. That’s the director/conductor.  Without a good conductor the assembled instruments will just make noise.  A good director literally knows “the score,” and they know how to make sure all the parts are heard. They know how to make music.

America is in need of a good conductor.

Note:  The link here is a four minute example of the “sound of music.”  Listen and you’ll hear music for more than a dozen Broadway musicals.

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Wonder on the YBR. It’s simply complicated.

As I flipped through the pages of our local/daily newspaper, my eye caught a picture of the young actor Jacob Tremblay who played the part of Auggie Pullman in the movie “Wonder.”  The paper’s “blurb” about the movie said: A boy who has a facial deformity attends a public school.

My reaction to the blurb was WTF?  Imagine “Gone With the Wind” described as a movie “about a couple who can’t get along during the Civil War.”  Or “Casablanca” described as a movie “about two people who unexpectedly run into each other in a bar in Morocco.”

Obviously complex movies that are really about something cannot be described in a sentence of a dozen words.”

“Wonder” had to be experienced to understand what it was all about.

So, what does this have to do with the YBR?  How often are you described by people in a sentence of 12 words?  Maybe it’s your occupation that takes center stage or perhaps it might be about your social status.

None of us can accurately be described.  We are all beyond words because there are no words that can describe us…and if who we are can be reduced to a single sentence, there is something wrong.

When Dorothy began her journey on the YBR she was the victim of a limited description.  She was Dorothy the meek and humble. She was Dorothy the house-dropper.  She was Dorothy the girl who wanted to get home.

But we all know she was much more than that.

And so are we. The problem I believe we run into is that we believe how people define us is the same as our “meaning.”  All words have definitions, but the “meaning” of a word cannot alway be found in its definition.

The definition of the word “wonder” is: a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

Not bad, but “wonder” means a lot more than that.  Wonder is being transported to a world almost beyond our reach.  Wonder is an experience that leaves us “breathless.” Wonder is the driving force that leads us to discover…everything.

Come to think of it, the full title of the Baum classic is “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”  And isn’t that what it’s all about?  Wondering? A life without wonder is not a life at all.

Note: If you’ve never seen the movie “Wonder,” do yourself a favor…watch it.

 

 

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The long and winding yellow brick road will lead you home.

Despite the fact that college commencements have been cancelled, I have been chosen to remotely address the Class of 2020. Having reviewed Dorothy’s 2019 commencement address I could just have easily suggested that it be re-played because it was so 2020 in both scope and content.  But, people who know me, know I never take the easy way out. I am loyal to a fault.

To all the members of the Class of 2020 I say that this year turned to shit. It will go down in academic history as a real WTF year. We all know that, so let’s move on because that’s what we not only have to do, it’s what we should do.

I would like to follow commencement history by beginning my talk with a quote that is supposedly attributed to Confucius. He said, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Think about it.  Today you are here. Tomorrow you won’t be here, you will be there wherever there might be. You have no choice but to go there to a place that is as forbidding as it is foreboding. It’s a place called the future, a place that we continually think we can control. It’s the place you are dreaming about.

Six months ago no one on this planet would have ever thought the future was so frightening. We thought we had it all figured out. And then we were hit by a virus that introduced us to an oft repeated term, the “new normal.”

I am here to tell you that we should celebrate the “new,” but get down on our knees and pray that we don’t aspire to a “normal,” new or otherwise. Normal is just another word for “ordinary,” and that’s not our purpose. We all need to strive to be extra-ordinary.

You are about to step on what Paul McCartney called the “long and winding road.” There is no doubt it will be long, and thank God it will be winding because who wants to travel a straight and narrow road.

People might tell you the world is in a chaotic state. I can’t argue with that, but I should hasten to point out that in Greek mythology Chaos was the origin of everything and the first thing to exist. From Chaos sprang the future.

You, the class of 2020 should consider yourselves the origin of everything that is to follow. You have a chance, not to follow in the footsteps of other generations, but to be pioneers on the long and winding yellow brick road that will lead you home because as Dorothy said, “there’s no place like home.”

Keep in mind that Dorothy meant that home was a place in your heart. She was telling us to find that home in us on our yellow brick road.  I challenge you to be the first genuine generation. A generation that does not discriminate. A generation that has no borders. A generation that breathes new meaning into those forgotten words of the Great Seal of the United States: Novus Ordo Seclorum (a new order of the ages).

Let me bring this home by letting me tell you that you won’t be alone on your journey. No matter how dark it might get, don’t worry, you will be found.

 

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The 2020 Presidential Race with Muck and Mire on the YBR? Is history repeating itself…again?

Preface in the name of transparency: I could never run for political office because I don’t wear a hat I could throw in the ring. I never have and never will wear a MAGA hat. I also won’t wear a hat bearing any symbols of the party that embraces donkey icons.

The 2020 Presidential Race on the YBR. Here we go again.

This is not the first presidential race where I scratch my head and say, “is this the best we can do?”  And while every presidential race is important, this one, I firmly believe, carries with it a weight that might even surpass that of the elections during World War I, the Great depression, and World War II. In 2020 we are going to the polls not only to elect the next president of the United States but of a world leader with 20/20 vision because POTUS has to have a world vision.

I ask, is this possible since we have, for lack of a better name, Muck and Mire running for office.

So we are all on the same page here, let’s refer to Mr. Funk and Mr. Wagnalls: muck is slimy mud while mire is deep mud.

Donald Muck is, without a doubt, slimy mud.  Putting aside both the ass-kissers who would follow Mr. Muck into hell and the brainless haters of the Muck who wouldn’t approve anything he did even if he walked on water, he is slimy. Giving him credit where credit is due and calling him out on some of his most egregious decisions, there is something slimy about the man. And that is not meant to be a disparaging term for a man who holds the highest office in the land. President Muck came up through the slime that comes from years of wheeling and dealing, rolling in the money, playing kissy-kissy with mindless jet-setters, and playing the part of a celebrity.

There was no way that anyone who lived such a life could not have been covered with muck. And as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be a cure for muckiness because an inflated ego can never be cleaned.

At this point in time it appears the former Vice-President Joe Mire is going to be the candidate endorsed by the Democrats.  Joe Mire appears to be a nice and decent guy. In fact the first word that comes to mind is “harmless.”  Harmless? Is that the penultimate quality we want in our next president?  He might have served as vice-president under President Obama for eight years, but the only image I have of him reminds me of a great-uncle who smiled a lot, but was never in the room when important matters were discussed.  (And let’s be honest, Obama was playing it politically cool during the early days of the Democratic run-for-the White House.)

Joe Mire didn’t get to his political pinnacle the same way Donald Mire scaled the heights of richdom, but Good ‘ol Joe is deep in the political mud.  He played the right games, kissed the right assess, and made the most banal comments to get him where he is today.

OMG! Muck and Mire!  If there is a God can we all get down on our knees and pray for a do-over.

My gut tells me that the next four years are going to be wasted years.  The Dems don’t want to present us with greatness in any shape and form for fear that it would destroy that candidates political career in a race against Muck. And of course any sensible (if there are any left) Republican realizes it would be impossible to offer America another candidate.

Politics is not only a dirty game, it is sinful.  Our two party system is totally outdated.  It’s like an eight-track player in a day when everyone is streaming their music.  Instead of having only two boring stations to listen to, people are listening to their music, their way.

At my age I won’t live to see it happen, but I pray that my children and grandchildren will live at a time when instead of another presidential race with the next Muck and Mire, they have a chance to vote for Ready or Willing and maybe a third candidate Able.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a candidate who was really ready to take the presidential oath of office and swear they would uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. How refreshing would it be to have a candidate ready to consider the needs of ALL Americans without playing petty party politics..even if it mean only serving one term.  Can you imagine a president ready to take on the challenges of helping the world become a place where all people are all entitled to those inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!

And what about a Willing candidate?  Is it possible to have a president who is willing to break the chains of partisanship? Can you envision a time when President Willing doesn’t have to reach across the aisle because there is no aisle that divides Congress? What a new day it would be if we had a president who was willing to put the people first instead of the party.

Candidate Able could also be a viable candidate, but, they might not be necessary as long as both candidates Ready and Willing were able to lead with the qualities found along the Yellow Brick Road… intelligence, heart, and courage…to do the right thing.

(Please note that no alcohol was consumed while posting this blog.)

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