more normal than not

I heard a story on the radio the other day that was kind of interesting.

It seems that when MIck Jagger was starting out in music, his vocal style was a little too refined for a blues band.

An upper crust British accent just didn’t have the right authenticity when singing the earthy blues music that the band was trying to approximate.

Now, according to the story, Mick was pretty into sports.

During a rough basketball game, he bit off the tip of his tongue after colliding with another player.

And….swallowed it.

He didn’t speak for a week while his tongue healed….and when he did, his voice had changed.

Missing a bit of his tongue altered the way he sang, too.

Suddenly, he was able to sing the blues more closely to the way it should be sung.

Instant “almost authentic”…or, at least, closer to real than it was before.

No little white British boy is ever going to be an authentic bluesman….but the new result wasn’t as glaringly wrong as it had been before.

The point of the story was that we need to recognize that an accident can be an opportunity.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, we need to look for ways to turn every situation to our advantage….to move on and make lemonade out of lemons.

That’s a pretty amazing bit of musical history….to think that a career could be made out of a collision on the basketball court.

I bit my tongue screwing around on a pogo stick when I was little.

Maybe I should sing the blues more often?

“it’s all over now” The Rolling Stones

I heard an interview with Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Bliss, on public radio the other day.

He was talking about something that he called “thin places”….places “where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever.”

What a great description.

I’ve been in some thin places in my life….but never had a description to encapsulate my awe.

“A thin place” doesn’t even really do the trick…..but it comes as close as any.

How are you ever going to “encapsulate awe”, anyway?

You don’t put the mystery of wonder in a shoebox.

You don’t describe the indescribable.

We took a trip out to Colorado to visit Jenny’s family one year….and went out on the prairie (which is kind of confusing….her family lives in what I guess is a high mountain desert….ringed by tall mountains….) to see some things….like the dump.

The dump.

You’d pass by it if you didn’t know it was there….a flat place out in the desert where people can dump their trash.

The dump is not my “thin place”.

It wasn’t our “go to” destination, anyway. It was just a place we passed through to get to someplace else.

We went to another part of the prairie….close to a mountain range.

It gave me a feeling something like vertigo….made me want to fall to my knees.

So quiet….holy, even….tall mountains all around.

I guess that it was a thin place for me.

It was one of the most beautiful places I’ll ever be.

Thin places can’t be forecasted.

I never could say when one is going to appear.

I can’t say when I’ll be in a thin place…but I know that it doesn’t have to be someplace exotic.

I look at my family and am in a thin place.

Maybe it’s not the place, anyway…maybe it’s where I’m “right” to feel God’s presence?

I need more reminders…everyday.

I need more thin places….and I need to recognize them when they come.

That high desert is so beautiful.

Maybe I need to get back there for a while?

“Colorado” Flying Burrito Brothers

 

Here’s a link to the Eric Weiner article….

 

My daughter took this picture….

We watch a lot of “home shows” on TV.

Shows about fixing up an existing house….shows about flipping houses….shows about building new houses…..shows about making your house nicer.

It’s inspiring and irritating.

“Irritating” because it gives us ideas that might be hard to carry out.

What is good that doesn’t take some effort, though?

One of the things that I’ve noticed about most of these shows….especially the shows about “flipping” houses….is that you really need to build with some other “end-user” in mind.

You build in a way that the people who come after you find your work appealing and want to buy the house.

Even if you’re going to live in the house…even if you’re building it for your own family….you have to keep the people who come after you in mind.

You can’t build something that’s unique and special to your own family’s needs and expect to be able to profit from it when you eventually sell your house.

You “build for resale”.

Man.

That kind of runs counterintuitive to any artistic impulse I’ve ever felt.

(Of course, you can do “artwork” with sales in mind. You can paint pictures of ducks or barns or pretty scenes only because you understand the “market”….but, in the end, that’s not (at least in my opinion) “art”. It might be craftmanship….but it’s not art. You may as well be working in a factory making really nice shoes. Which is not to say that a painting of a duck can’t be art….it’s really all about the motivation. Commerce and art are hard to merge, though….usually.)

I like houses that have some personality.

Functionality is important….it’s got to function and make sense…but funky and personal is the way to go.

Who’s going to want to buy “funky and personal”, though?

Maybe a house shouldn’t be “artistically” made?

Maybe a house is just a shell that you personalize (a little) in ways that can be stripped away when you move?

Maybe it’s just a box?

Maybe “build for resale” is just another metaphor for the way we live our lives?

We live for some other place….some other time….and live in a way that all we’re really doing is preparing?

Maybe all we’re doing is trying to set ourselves up for something that we think is going to be better “on down the line”?

You need to build YOUR HOUSE.

You need to LIVE YOUR LIFE.

RIGHT NOW.

That’s something that I don’t really have completely figured out….how to do that.

I don’t have it figured out.

I worry about planning….but I’m not completely up to speed about executing.

I wonder if it’s possible to live in the moment….every moment….and never give yourself over to letting the future cloud the present?

I guess I’d be a grasshopper….fiddling away in a field if I lived like that.

The music might be worth playing….for a while, at least.

The music might be good.

One of the perks of driving around all day delivering the mail is that I get to listen to the radio.

I bought a Sirius radio when I’d been delivering full-time for about 4 years…and have a broader range of programming to listen to because of it.

One of the channels that I enjoy listening to is the CBC….the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

It’s a little window into Canada that I’ve enjoyed….and one of the programs that I look forward to the most is a show called “Vinyl Cafe Stories”….a show done by a Canadian storyteller named Stuart McLean.

Here’s an example of what I hear:

There’s something about the cadence and the tone…..and the gentle humor and warmth….that I really like.

I listened to the show today and realized just how much I enjoy this show.

Here’s the guy that does the storytelling:

There’s a lot of noise in most broadcasting today.

If you listen to the “comedy” channels on the Sirius radio, you realize how much “humor” these days is pretty crude….coarse and mean…cynical….and pretty unappealing.

That’s unfortunately pretty common.

I don’t know what we have become that something like that is what passes for entertainment.

I enjoy this guy.

I’m a fan.

I’m glad there’s still decent things to listen to.

Here’s a link to a bunch of broadcasts if you like this stuff….

http://tunein.com/radio/The-Vinyl-Cafe-p337/

When I was 18, I spent the summer in Hinckley, MN working on some power lines that a company called Commonwealth Electric was building.

That was pretty heady stuff for an 18-year-old away from home for the first time for a whole summer.

There were two songs that I remember from that summer.

One was “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty.

The other was this one by Michael Johnson.

Funny how some songs are tied to a time.

That was a good song, for sure.

That was a good summer, too.

I wonder what’s up on the “Lester Dracy All-Electric Farm”?