Jacke Wilson's Blog, page 63

The Fire Alarm (A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #30)

We were in the middle of a dorm war. Every morning between one and three a.m., a resident of some enemy dorm pulled our fire alarm. Presumably someone from our dorm was doing the same at some dorm across campus.

In this war I was a mere civilian. A pacifist, a bystander, a protestor. And every night I was part of the collateral damage.

I was as young and stupid as anyone else, and I vaguely regretted that I was not out there, scheming, pranking, doing college things. Going to parties, meeting new people, heading out on unplanned road trips, horsing around in creative and astonishing ways. I did none of that, and part of me felt I was missing something important.

Frankly I was barely surviving at this place, and I was on the verge of losing my academic scholarship. Pranks were a luxury I could not afford.

And so after ten days of dragging myself out of bed, alarm horns blaring in my ear, I had had enough. Dorm wars? Not for me. I was one of the ones who demanded some action from the administration, which started with an angry meeting with our resident head, Brian.

Brian was a PhD student with a Dutch wife, a beard, and a baby, all of which impressed me. Brian was known as a hands-off resident head who didn’t care about the students experimenting with illegal substances as long as they did it in their rooms and kept the doors closed. (“I”m not a policeman,” was his resident-head mantra.)

We didn’t expect answers from Brian. Brian brought in the director of campus security, who gave us no answers either. Taking the issue seriously, measures were being taken, perpetrators would be brought to justice, penalty would be swift and severe, anyone with any information blah blah blah.

And then, on the eleventh morning, as we groaned and cursed and dragged ourselves out of bed for yet another two a.m. trip to the night streets of Chicago, a thought jumped into my head. Not even a thought. An impulse. But one with a whole wave of thoughts behind it.

The alarm was already going, the fire truck was on its way. Students were already walking out the exits. There was an alarm in our lobby. It was unpulled. And that was my thought:

I should pull it.

What compelled me to think of such a thing? In a strange way I saw it as my reward. Hadn’t I gotten up every morning for ten days straight?

A reward? Let me explain.

These were the years when I believed I was a writer, where my ambition outweighed any sort of achievement or even actual promise. When I wasn’t writing, I thought I needed experiences of all kinds.

(I’ve written about this madness before. I am aware that it is somewhat pathetic.)

In the summers I worked at a carnival, I volunteered at children’s hospitals, I hitchhiked across the midwest and hopped trains all the way to Montana.  All this activity was deposited in my writerly savings account, stored for future withdrawals.

During the academic year, under the crush of coursework, I spent my days and nights holed up in the library. For months I could only make tiny deposits in my experience bank. I seized small opportunities where I could. A brisk walk to Lake Michigan on the coldest day of the year. Riding the El train to the end of the line. Work-study jobs at a dance studio and the alumni telefund. Offering myself up as the subject of psych experiments.

This was one of those chances. Who gets to know how it feels to pull a fire alarm? How much resistance would the little bar put up? Would it click into place? Slide down easily? Would it feel cold? Metal or some other substance?

Someday I might write a story in which someone pulls a fire alarm. Having an actual experience to draw upon would be handy.

All those thoughts in a half-second. So as the horns blared in my ear, and I walked in my pajamas and slippers toward the elevator, I reached out and pulled the bar.

I have no memory of how it felt. A failed mission.

What I remember is this: A jet of blue dye shot out of the little box, staining my hand purple.

Ahhhhhhhhh, I said. I was quiet to make sure nobody heard, but I couldn’t stop myself from emitting some kind of sound. A barbaric yelp, of sorts, or possibly its opposite. Noooooooooooo.

My brain shot messages of terror throughout my nervous system. I was in a panic. Luckily everyone was half-asleep and no one seemed to notice.

My hand looked like a dead limb. What was I thinking? Why, why, why, why, why did I do this?

Now what? Several hundred furious people were outside, vowing murder against whoever had interrupted their sleep yet again. And here I was. Stained. If I left now, the mob would tear me to pieces.

I veered out of the exodus, ducked into the bathroom, and attacked my hand with heaps of pink powdery soap and the hottest water I could bear. Panicking, my heart racing, I scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed,

Suddenly a door slammed open. I thought I might collapse. Somehow I managed to look up from the sink.

It was a cop.

Not Brian. Not even a fireman. A cop in full uniform. Carrying a nightstick and a gun.

He had huge square shoulders and was wearing a hat low on his forehead. His eyebrows were darker and bushier than any I’d ever seen on a human face. He had come in to tell me to evacuate, but when he saw me at the sink, scrubbing away, my guilty hand purple under the lattice of pink foam, he smiled. There was a gap in his teeth.

“All right, kid,” he said. “It ain’t comin’ off.”

“I can explain,” I croaked.

“So can I,” he said in a way that made my heart fall to my knees. “You’re in a whole fucking world of trouble.”

I stared at him, nodding slowly. The water was still running. It sounded far away.

“It ain’t comin’ off,” he said. “And you’re comin’ with me.”

He laughed again, pleased by his own turn of phrase.

#

I spent the night being shuffled around and yelled at until I was eventually informed that my matter would be handled by the campus authorities. Four days later I received a letter giving me official notice of a hearing whee my enrollment status would be determined. Notice? Hearing? Enrollment status?

Everything about the letter terrified me. I knew how these things worked. My parents were not wealthy or powerful, and I did not know of anyone who could lean on the administration. No high-placed person to put in a call or pull a few strings on my behalf. I was a scapegoat.

My purple hand had barely even faded.

“Well, I’m off to my hearing,” I said to my roommate, desperate for some words of encouragement. “This is probably the end of my time here.”

“Good-bye,” my roommate said.

I was not given a lawyer, but they had asked my resident head to accompany me. Brian met me in the lobby. He looked disheveled; behind us, his baby was crying, and his wife was gargling out some kind of lullaby in her Dutch accent.

“Thanks for coming, Brian,” I offered as we boarded the elevator.

“You had better have a really good explanation,” Brian said.

I nodded and mentally rehearsed my speech. The alarm was already blaring, the fire truck was on its way—I ask you, could there be a better example of a victimless crime?

“You’ll probably be expelled,” said Brian, as if he were discussing whether to have another cup of coffee.

I nodded again. As we trudged out the building and down the sidewalk, I mulled this over. I still had not told my parents or any of my friends. Expulsion would mean returning to Wisconsin, to my little town, where everyone would know my disgrace.

As we walked down University Avenue, Brian filled the silence by talking about his research and a book he’d written that had just been accepted for publication. He was an anthropologist, and his book had something to do with religious rituals in contemporary rural Peru that I didn’t quite follow. He must have sensed I was in no mood to talk about his scholarship.

“Look, I know you’re scared. But just tell your story. Be honest. Then I’ll say you’re a good kid, and it sounds like probation is more appropriate, we’ve all learned lessons here. Hopefully they’ll buy it.”

Probation! That would mean staying here, on this campus, among all these people and all these books I had learned to love.

“Do you think they’ll buy it?”

“Why else did they ask me to come?” he said without even trying to hide his irritation. “To make sure you actually leave?”

Being a resident head did not seem like that much fun. But I didn’t care, because a new set of thoughts had just occurred to me.

Brian was a writer: an actual writer, someone who had written one book already (I’d seen it in the campus bookstore) and had another on the way. He told funny stories about the scathing review he’d gotten from someone who knew nothing about his topic, and about the lunch he’d had with his publisher, who’d informed him that at its current pace the book would earn out its advance in “two-and-a-half centuries.” And he spent months living in Peru. Brian knew that writers needed experiences to draw upon. I would have at least one person in the room on my side.

We reached the admin building and found the room. Brian held the door open for me. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

The room was small and crowded. Two people were sitting behind a table in the center of the room. It felt much more ad hoc than I’d expected. A third member of the panel had arrived late and was still dragging his wooden chair across the floor.

I don’t know what I’d thought I’d find: a courtroom, maybe, or a long room with a raised dais and my inquisitors sitting on a raised dais. This was much less formal but no less intimidating. A severe woman who looked like a professor was wearing a suit. The director of campus security was there; he nodded at Brian and grunted at me. And in the middle sat the Dean of Students, wearing a tan corduroy jacket over a black turtleneck sweater. I recognized him from  a welcome speech he’d given to us during orientation week. He’d delivered a message about character that I clearly had not lived up to.

“I’ll begin,” said the dean after Brian and I had sat down. “You are going to be expelled.”

Brian gasped. I felt my nose burn. My eyes started to water.

“Expelled!” Brian said. “You’re—that’s it?”

I glanced at him. It was a good thing he’d said something; I was too stunned to make any kind of sound.

The dean looked at the head of campus security, who cleared his throat. “This has been a very serious matter,” he said in a harsh Chicago accent. “It has been a severe drain on our resources. And of course, it is one of the largest threats to student safety that I have ever encountered.”

The professor nodded. “Absolutely agree,” she said. “You have no idea what a toll this has taken on our students.”

“Of course I know,” I said, thinking of all those nights I’d been roused from my bed. “I am one.”

“That’s enough,” said the professor.

The room was silent as the three of them shook their heads, angry that I had dared to say anything at all. I didn’t know what to say. This was hugely important to me. I was overwhelmed by how it was all happening.

“That’s enough? That’s enough? That’s what you’re going to say?” Brian was so angry he could barely contain himself. “What’s enough? This isn’t your class. His whole future is on the line here!”

The professor looked startled but chastened. Brian was right, and she knew it.

“And this is supposed to be a hearing,” Brian went on. “You need to give him a chance to be heard.” His tone suggested he was ready to cite due process legal precedent dating back to the Magna Carta.

Brian! My hero! The prospect of probation again dangled before my eyes. A dim hope, but still alive…

The dean shrugged. I glanced at Brian, who nodded with some impatience. It didn’t matter. His presence energized me. The others might hate me, they might have already made up their mind, but I had Brian.

I knew I should wish that Brian were  more important. These people played hardball, they viewed themselves with extreme self-importance, they ran the business of a university. They courted millionaire donors and signed off on plans for new buildings.

I could have used someone with more power, a table-pounder, a demander, a brass-knuckles defender who could speak their language. Or a fellow elite who could talk to them in the winking language of the rich.

Instead I had a writer, a lowly writer, a liberal anthropologist who spent years at a time in remote Peru, eating ancient grains out of a wooden bowl.

Magna Carta? A healthy annual donation to the alumni fund would have been far better.

But anyway I launched into my story, how I myself had been a victim for ten days, how I’d railed against the perpetrators like anyone else, how my studies had suffered and how desperate I was to pass. I spoke of my desire to be a writer, and how I spent months looking for quick experiences to store away for future use, and how I’d seized upon the opportunity to pull a fire alarm and feel just what it felt like to do so. I did not exaggerate or embellish or make any excuses. I told my facts in plain words, humbly and with the style that comes from unvarnished truth delivered in simple but well-chosen language.

It was the performance of a lifetime. The stakes were high, but I rose to the occasion, speaking fluidly in several full paragraphs. I finished with a rush of words about the importance of experience being fundamental to a liberal education, the very type of education that this university sought to provide to young minds such as my own, and crowned off my monologue with my plea:

“…and so I believe I should receive probation, and should not be expelled!”

I exhaled and awaited their response.

Nothing.

My purple hand had crept into the buttons of my shirt, like Napoleon. I pulled it out and let it sit on the table. No longer guilty but proud. A writer’s hand.

They stared at me.

The silence continued for several seconds. It felt like a lot longer. My heart was doing some kind of crazy dance in my chest.

“That,” Brian finally said, “is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

“Really?” I said. My voice sounded soft and hollow.

“No! I’ve never heard anything more stupid! In my life!”

“Not anything…?”

“Oh, I’ve heard dumber,” said the security guard with a chuckle, coming to my rescue against my former rescuer.

“I haven’t!” said Brian. “Jesus, you can’t win either way!” he said. He was so animated that spit burst out of his mouth and got stuck in his beard. “If you’re lying, you deserve expulsion. If you’re telling the truth, you’re too stupid to go to school here!”

The security guard laughed out loud.

“What did you think I would say?” I asked.

“That you were drunk out of your mind! High! Stoned! Tripping on acid!”

“I don’t drink or use drugs,” I apologized.

“Maybe you should start,” said my resident head.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The judgment was swift. The panel decided. Expelled. Justice had spoken, or snarled, or shrugged, or whatever it had just done.

I spent the next few days scrubbing my hand and not calling my parents. Every day I checked the mail for the letter that would tell me how long I had to move out and how much tuition and fees I still owed them for credits I would not be awarded.

After a week I started going to class again, just to have something to do.

Every day, as I went down to the lobby to check my mailbox, I braced myself for the awful news.

Days went by. Weeks. One month. Two.

Exams came. The year was ending. I received my financial aid packet for the following year. I relaxed; it seemed like nothing was going to happen to me. I stopped dreading the daily trip to the mailbox.

Maybe they had changed their minds. Maybe they thought Brian’s vitriol had been punishment enough. For whatever reason, the three-person panel had failed to follow through, and I was not dumb enough to remind them.

I decided that it was my job to keep going. At some point they might review my file, and they would see that my grades had lifted, and I’d been a model student, with no additional negative behavior…

Toward the end of exam week, Brian announced to our floor that he and his family were being relocated to a different apartment on the other side of campus. I sat on the carpet trying to be invisible. I didn’t want Brian to notice me and wonder what I was still doing in the school I was too stupid to attend.

The next day everyone helped Brian move boxes down to the U-Haul truck he’d rented. I sat in my room with the door closed.

I still did not know exactly how to take Brian’s outburst. I didn’t think he meant it – pulling a fire alarm couldn’t have been the dumbest thing he’d ever heard of anyone doing. But I did feel like he was being honest in the moment. Something about my wanting to be a writer, and my way of going about it, had irritated him. I thought it might have something to do with being young. Even though Brian was a success, his life was pretty much in place. Who knew what dreams he had abandoned along the way? There must have been something difficult about being surrounded by people who still had their dreams alive.

Even so, it did feel like punishment. No, I had not been expelled. But Brian’s hatred felt like something I did not fully deserve. Actually, the feeling I had was strange: somehow I felt I did deserve it, but I did not know exactly why.

That night I passed by a liquor store on 53rd Street and happened to notice a sign that said “DRINKS AROUND THE WORLD.” I went inside and found a bottle of Peruvian wine on a dusty lower shelf. It was so old it stuck to the shelf and left a purple ring when I pulled it off.

“That stuff’s harsh,” said the clerk. “Not smooth.”

“Fine,” I said.

“All sales final,” he said, tapping a handwritten sign taped to the counter.

“Yep,” I said, feeling slightly uneasy.

I took the bottle back to my dorm and smashed down the cork with the handle of a screwdriver, somehow managing to cut my hand. Then I poured half the bottle into a plastic Wisconsin Badgers cup and looked at myself in the mirror.

Here’s to you, Jacke Wilson. 

It was the worst drink I’d ever had, and it took me all night to choke it down.

The Beatles and You: Finding Inspiration in Abbey Road’s “The End”

Ugh, my big plans for the blog this year have run into some real-life snags. More posts soon, I promise!

On the other hand, I’ve been enjoying this trip through the Beatles catalog and exploring the genius and creativity behind it. So here we go with another spin of our Jacke Wilson Randomizer… the wheel spins… the marble drops into place… and…

Oh no. Really?

The End (Lennon-McCartney, Abbey Road)

(The clip is of three final songs* of Abbey Road, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End. This is the recommended way to listen to The End (it builds, it builds, it builds!). The End starts at 3:07 if you want to skip ahead.)

*Yes, I’m aware of the mistake-snippet Her Majesty that got tacked onto the end of Abbey Road. And no, I’m not counting it. In this post, we shall end with the proper end. The End.

THE SELECTION

Never has it been more difficult to stick to the song chosen by the gods! If I was doing this in any sort of order that made sense, The End would come last. Because, of course, it was The End for the Beatles: the final song on the final album they recorded, the majestic triumph Abbey Road. The story goes that after the bitterness of Let It Be, they agreed to close out the Beatles with a real album, a spectacular one, one with George Martin at the helm and the four of them applying their powers in a final unified way. An album by a band, not just four individual musicians working sort-of-together a la the White Album.

So Abbey Road was the end. And The End was the end of the end.

How do you cap off such a preternatural run of brilliance? For a brief period these guys owned the world. Music and inspiration flowed through them like the spirit of God flowing through four angels.

Yes, I can get carried away. But come on! Here’s a list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs, presented by Rolling Stone. Number 100 is Hello, Goodbye. Number 100! A catchy, compelling song that beat out I Am the Walrus to be the A side!  (For more Walrusing, check out our last choice of the gods.) And perhaps most to the point, a song that was a number-one hit.

What other band has a song that went to number one as their 100th-greatest song? Really, you have a band in mind? Well, tell me: did they write all the songs themselves? In seven years ?

For that kind of whirlwind achievement I think you need to look across centuries. Who else is comparable? Keats? Shakespeare? Picasso? Mozart? Bach? Alexander the Great?

CLIMBING THE FINAL PEAK

So what do you do when you’ve done everything possible? For the Beatles, you top yourself, once again, with something new. That’s The End.

Oh, sure, you say. The End isn’t even the best song on the album! There’s Oh! Darling, for example, and Here Comes the Sun, and of course the Medley from Heaven, and the criminally underrated You Never Give Me Your Money (listen to this podcast episode for a brilliant and amusing defense of the song). Come Together was on this album! And Something!

Where does The End fit among all this genius?

Those other songs are like the brilliant plates brought out near the end of the seven-year feast we’ve all had together. The End is the little cup of espresso at the end. The perfect finisher. A last burst of taste for the palate, a last bit of energy for the road.

The other songs on Abbey Road set the table. The End clears it.

The End tells you exactly why the Beatles were brilliant. It tells you that the phenomenon of the Beatles are finished. And it tells you what it means that the finish has arrived.

People. It’s The End.

THE MESSAGE

These were rough days. Filming the Let It Be movie had been a disaster. Things were falling apart; the center did not hold. Bickering had set in. The four of them knew the band was breaking up—had already broken up, essentially—and that things would never be the same. It was a time for looking back on what had just happened. The people inside the maelstrom, the only ones who could really know what it was like to be in the middle of all that chaos, all that creative fervor, were about to tell us what it had all meant.

What is the essence of the Beatles? How about this (actual lyrics):

Oh yeah, all right

Are you gonna be in my dreams tonight?

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Love you, love you

Twenty-four love yous! They loved us! They loved us all! It’s love, baby, it’s what we need, and it’s All We Need!

Years later, Ringo would talk about how proud he was that the ultimate message of the Beatles had always been (and will always be) Love. Their trajectory could have gone a lot of different ways. It arced toward Love. It culminated in The End.

Here’s the final word. The philosophical lesson they’ve learned. Our words to live by. Our example to follow:

And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make.

That’s the message from the Beatles:

That’s it, people! That’s what we were! That’s what we stood for! Now get out there and share the love! You’ll be a better person for it!

IN THE END IS A BEGINNING

Here’s one of my favorite Abbey Road stories. On Because, the Beatles sing in a beautiful, all hands on deck harmony. Actually, the song is sung by John, Paul, and George. They then triple the voices, so the three of them are singing in nine-part harmony. It took the three of them all day to do it. Do yourself a favor: put in headphones and listen to this for two minutes:

Love is all, love is new. Love is all, love is you. Beautiful. And very John.

But wait: what about Ringo? No drums on this. And he wasn’t part of the harmonizing. So where was he?

This is the part of the story I love: Ringo sat in a chair as the other three sang. He was there just… well, because.

Several people commented that when all four Beatles were in the same room, the atmosphere changed. One Beatle was powerful enough, two or three was almost intimidating. But when all four were together, something magic happened. A kind of electricity. A powerful, otherworldly force surrounded them all. People who experienced it often—like George Martin—would warn new employees that it was about to happen. You’re about to enter a room with all four of the Beatles, and when that happens, something powerful occurs. Be ready. Brace yourself. Hang on.

And so Ringo sat there with the others as they harmonized for the last time. They didn’t need his voice, but they needed his presence. He was part of the special chemistry they had. Without him, the others might not have blended. Without him, the electrochemical reactions might not have occurred.

He knew he was part of the magic.

That’s all in the song Because, which kicks off Abbey Road‘s second side, the side that runs through the Medley, and culminates in The End.

And in The End, as in Because, the band is tight, the musicianship is perfect, the magic is happening. But there’s a difference. In Because, you can’t pry the Beatles apart with a crowbar. But in The End, you hear all four of them as individuals.

What do they do? They trade solos. And yet it’s a perfect act of togetherness.

What do Romeo and Juliet do when they first meet one another?  They speak these lines:

ROMEO [To JULIET]

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO

Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.

Do you notice what that is? They are speaking lines separately, of course (soloing!). But taken together, their lines form a perfect Shakespearean sonnet, fourteen lines with three ABAB quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end.

So here the Beatles are, trading solos and yet uniting one last time, in a two and a half minute rock-and-roll version of a sonnet.

Did Shakespeare think his audience would catch that? I think he felt it was right, and he trusted that the audience would feel what he felt. So too the Beatles.

Here we are, they seem to be saying. All four members of this divine supergroup. And all four have our own personalities, and can do our own thing, and yet we can make this happen together. That’s what we feel right now, and that’s what we feel that you’ll feel when you hear it, even if none of us are thinking this through.

Paul claimed that you could hear the personalities of each Beatle in their solo, and it’s easy to do once you know what to listen for.

Listen again to those solos (they start at 0:53 of this clip).

First comes Paul, fluttering in the window, first to arrive, like a bird who chirps nine different melodies before breakfast, just because the sun is rising, he’s happy, and song is what he was put on this planet to do. George is next, the quiet one soaring to the heavens, lifting himself spiritually, doing more with less, exercising restraint, shedding the ego in a search for higher meaning. And then John: caustic, driving, grungy, dirty, selecting a dark palette of notes and pushing them forward in a sneering melody, making his guitar go, making it move, insisting. Each of the three gets three chances. Nine voices started the album side. Nine guitar solos end it. (Oh, how they loved that number.)

That’s what we got from each of them as Beatles: the combination of those talents that together made everything sing. And now, looking forward, we would be able to hear them in their solo careers, where they would give us the purer version of each of the three talents. That’s what the song is. It’s a reminder of the past and a look to the future, all at once.

And Ringo? Ringo has a drum solo. He hated drum solos—he liked being in the group, supporting the others, blending in. But the others encouraged him to add a solo, his first and only solo with the Beatles, and he came through perfectly: eight bars of his metronomic timekeeping, in his left-handed-unique-style drumming.

The others made him do it because they knew what was happening.

Yes, Ringo. A solo. You too will need to be on your own soon.

A POP QUIZ

Q: Who was the only Beatle to release two full-length solo albums in 1970 (the year the Beatles broke up)?

A: Ringo Starr.

A QUOTE

I’ve talked before about John’s honesty, and about how his generous admiration for Paul. Yoko once compared Paul to a Salieri envious of John’s Mozart, but John didn’t see it that way. He knew genius when he saw it, and his honesty compelled his recognition that Paul’s gifts were at least equal to his own and in some ways probably exceeded him (just as his own genius at times surpassed Paul).

Even in the area typically thought of as John’s strength—that he was the deeper thinker, or the better lyricist—John’s honesty compelled him to recognize that Paul could be just as good. Here he is talking about The End:

“That’s Paul again … He had a line in it, ‘And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give,’ which is a very cosmic, philosophical line. Which again proves that if he wants to, he can think.””

The Beatles would never have happened without John’s honesty and willingness to recognize Paul’s greatness.

Listen for that as those guitar solos trade off against each other: the admiration the three have for each other. The admiration, the excitement, and the love.

It was the spirit that had formed them since the beginning. Had John been envious and protective of his own superiority and smaller-souled than he was, he’d have kept the others out altogether. The Beatles would not have happened.

ANOTHER QUOTE (A COMPILATION)

John Lennon on the day he met Paul McCartney:

“It was through Ivan that I first met Paul. So one day when we were playing in Woolton, he brought him along. We can both remember it quite well. The Quarry Men were playing on a raised platform and there was a good crowd because it was a warm , sunny day. We talked after the show and I saw he had talent. He was playing guitar backstage, doing ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ by Eddie Cochran. I was very impressed by Paul playing ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. He could obviously play the guitar. I half thought to myself, ‘He’s as good as me.’ I’d been kingpin up until then. Now I thought, ‘If I take him on, what will happen?’ It went through my head that I’d have to keep him in line if I let him join. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him. Was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had in? To make the group stronger, or to let me be stronger? Instead of going for the individual thing we went for the strongest format-equals.”

Equals. The strongest format of all.

ONE MORE USE FOR THE END

Surprise!

(Listen at the 2:00 mark.)

ONE QUICK TAKE FROM IAN MACDONALD

On the song’s final few seconds:

In conclusion, McCartney touches for the last time on the poignant A minor of You Never Give Me Your Money for the famous line ‘The love you take is equal to the love you make,’ landing unexpectedly – if, in terms of the Medley’s overall key-structure, logically – on a sadly smiling C major.

A sadly smiling C major! That’s so true!

I’ve cued it up here:

Here’s Christian Schubart, an eighteenth-century music theorist on the personality of C major:

C major: Completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children’s talk.

Using C major—C major—for the final chord of the album side, but bending all that simple, naïve innocence into a sadly smiling triumphant farewell…good lord, could anything be more perfect?

It reminds me of the day I watched my oldest head off to kindergarten. And he climbed the bus, with his little backpack and its note telling people his name and who his teacher was in case he arrived at school and forgot, and he climbed right on board by himself and didn’t even turn around to wave. He was ready. His independence was beginning,. And our five-year stretch of parenting, where he was dependent on us for everything and where our most important job was to keep him healthy and happy, and which we alone were responsible for, was ending.

That’s what we did, I realize now. His mother and I waved at his smiling silhouette in the window, the silhouette that was looking forward and not back, the two of us choked up by the ending of the five-year cocoon we had provided for him, and which had felt so important and vital and essential to his development. But we were also smiling with pride at the butterfly with the little blue backpack who was more than ready to fly.

Proud, teary smiles. A sad and smiling C major. That chord has in it everything I felt that morning. Years of my life culminated into that one moment on the sidewalk, and all of it captured and expressed in one perfect chord.

Man. Is there any doubt that these guys were channeling the music gods?

AND ONE FINAL QUOTE

Ringo Starr:

Yes, I was in the Beatles. Yes, we made some great records together. Yes, I love those boys. But that’s the end of the story.

Sometimes it has to be over. All things must pass. It is the nature of stories, and bands, and people. It is the essence of time. It is what it means to be human.

It is The End. And that is all right.

UNLOCK YOUR INNER BEATLE!

Something in your life is not working. Don’t be afraid of change. Instead, use all your creative gifts to put the finishing touches on the thing you know must end. End it with a flourish, end it with something new and perfect you’ve never created before. And then, look to your new future with anxiety (but not fear), with sadness (but not sorrow), and above all with courage and excitement and the joy of new experiences. And love.

Happy Monday, everyone! Be creative! Love one another!

The Fire Alarm

We were in the middle of a dorm war. Every morning between one and three a.m., a resident of some enemy dorm pulled our fire alarm. Presumably someone from our dorm was doing the same at some dorm across campus.

In this war I was a mere civilian. A pacifist, a bystander, a protestor. And every night I was part of the collateral damage.

I was as young and stupid as anyone else, and I vaguely regretted that I was not out there, scheming, pranking, doing college things. Going to parties, meeting new people, heading out on unplanned road trips, horsing around in creative and astonishing ways. I did none of that, and part of me felt I was missing something important.

Frankly I was barely surviving at this place, and I was on the verge of losing my academic scholarship. Pranks were a luxury I could not afford.

And so after ten days of dragging myself out of bed, alarm horns blaring in my ear, I had had enough. Dorm wars? Not for me. I was one of the ones who demanded some action from the administration, which started with an angry meeting with our resident head, Brian.

Brian was a PhD student with a Dutch wife, a beard, and a baby, all of which impressed me. Brian was known as a hands-off resident head who didn’t care about the students experimenting with illegal substances as long as they did it in their rooms and kept the doors closed. (“I”m not a policeman,” was his resident-head mantra.)

We didn’t expect answers from Brian. Brian brought in the director of campus security, who gave us no answers either. Taking the issue seriously, measures were being taken, perpetrators would be brought to justice, penalty would be swift and severe, anyone with any information blah blah blah.

And then, on the eleventh morning, as we groaned and cursed and dragged ourselves out of bed for yet another two a.m. trip to the night streets of Chicago, a thought jumped into my head. Not even a thought. An impulse. But one with a whole wave of thoughts behind it.

The alarm was already going, the fire truck was on its way. Students were already walking out the exits. There was an alarm in our lobby. It was unpulled. And that was my thought:

I should pull it.

What compelled me to think of such a thing? In a strange way I saw it as my reward. Hadn’t I gotten up every morning for ten days straight?

A reward? Let me explain.

These were the years when I believed I was a writer, where my ambition outweighed any sort of achievement or even actual promise. When I wasn’t writing, I thought I needed experiences of all kinds.

(I’ve written about this madness before. I am aware that it is somewhat pathetic.)

In the summers I worked at a carnival, I volunteered at children’s hospitals, I hitchhiked across the midwest and hopped trains all the way to Montana.  All this activity was deposited in my writerly savings account, stored for future withdrawals.

During the academic year, under the crush of coursework, I spent my days and nights holed up in the library. For months I could only make tiny deposits in my experience bank. I seized small opportunities where I could. A brisk walk to Lake Michigan on the coldest day of the year. Riding the El train to the end of the line. Work-study jobs at a dance studio and the alumni telefund. Offering myself up as the subject of psych experiments.

This was one of those chances. Who gets to know how it feels to pull a fire alarm? How much resistance would the little bar put up? Would it click into place? Slide down easily? Would it feel cold? Metal or some other substance?

Someday I might write a story in which someone pulls a fire alarm. Having an actual experience to draw upon would be handy.

All those thoughts in a half-second. So as the horns blared in my ear, and I walked in my pajamas and slippers toward the elevator, I reached out and pulled the bar.

I have no memory of how it felt. A failed mission.

What I remember is this: A jet of blue dye shot out of the little box, staining my hand purple.

Ahhhhhhhhh, I said. I was quiet to make sure nobody heard, but I couldn’t stop myself from emitting some kind of sound. A barbaric yelp, of sorts. Whoooooaaaaa.

My brain shot messages of terror throughout my nervous system. I was in a panic. Luckily everyone was half-asleep and no one seemed to notice.

My hand looked like a dead limb. What was I thinking? Why, why, why, why, why did I do this?

Now what? Several hundred furious people were outside, vowing murder against whoever had interrupted their sleep yet again. And here I was. Stained. If I left now, the mob outside would tear me to pieces.

I veered out of the exodus, ducked into the bathroom, and attacked my hand with heaps of pink powdery soap and the hottest water I could bear. Panicking, my heart racing, I scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed,

Suddenly a door slammed open. I thought I might collapse. Somehow I managed to look up from the sink.

It was a cop.

Not Brian. Not even a fireman. A cop in full uniform. Carrying a nightstick and a gun.

He had huge square shoulders and was wearing a hat low on his forehead. His eyebrows were darker and bushier than any I’d ever seen on a human face. He had come in to tell me to evacuate, but when he saw me at the sink, scrubbing away, my guilty hand purple under the lattice of pink foam, he smiled. There was a gap in his teeth.

“All right, kid,” he said. “It ain’t comin’ off.”

“I can explain,” I croaked.

“So can I,” he said in a way that made my heart fall to my knees. “You’re in a whole fucking world of trouble.”

I stared at him, nodding slowly. The water was still running. It sounded far away.

“It ain’t comin’ off,” he said. “And you’re comin’ with me.”

He laughed again, pleased by his own turn of phrase.

#

I spent the night being shuffled around and yelled at until I was eventually informed that my matter would be handled by the campus authorities. Four days later I received a letter giving me official notice of a hearing whee my enrollment status would be determined. Notice? Hearing? Enrollment status?

Everything about the letter terrified me. I knew how these things worked. My parents were not wealthy or powerful, and I did not know of anyone who could lean on the administration. No high-placed person to put in a call or pull a few strings on my behalf. I was a scapegoat.

My purple hand had barely even faded.

I was done.

“Well, I’m off to my hearing,” I said to my roommate, desperate for some words of encouragement.

“Good-bye,” my roommate said.

I was not given a lawyer, but they had asked my resident head to accompany me. Brian met me in the lobby. He looked disheveled; behind us, his baby was crying, and his wife was gargling out some kind of lullaby in her Dutch accent.

“Thanks for coming with, Brian,” I offered as we boarded our elevator, keeping my eyes focused straight ahead.

“You had better have a really good explanation,” Brian said.

I nodded and mentally rehearsed my speech. The alarm was already blaring, the fire truck was on its way—I ask you, could there be a better example of a victimless crime?

“You’ll probably get expelled,” said Brian, as if he were discussing whether to have another cup of coffee.

I nodded again. As we trudged out the building and down the sidewalk, I mulled this over. I still had not told my parents or any of my friends. Expulsion would mean returning to Wisconsin, to my little town, where everyone would know my disgrace.

As we walked down University Avenue, Brian filled the silence by talking about his research and a book he’d written that had just been accepted for publication. He was an anthropologist, and his book had something to do with religious rituals in contemporary rural Peru that I didn’t quite follow. He must have sensed I was in no mood to talk about his scholarship.

“Look, I know you’re scared. But just tell your story. Be honest. Then I’ll say you’re a good kid, and it sounds like probation is more appropriate, we’ve all learned lessons here. Hopefully they’ll buy it.”

Probation! That would mean staying here, on this campus, among all these people and all these books I had learned to love.

“Do you think they will? Buy it, I mean?”

“Why else did they ask me to come?” he said without even trying to hide his irritation. “To make sure you actually leave?”

Being a resident head did not seem like that much fun. But I didn’t care, because a new set of thoughts had just occurred to me.

Brian was a writer: an actual writer, someone who had written one book already (I’d seen it in the campus bookstore) and had another on the way. He told funny stories about the scathing review he’d gotten from someone who knew nothing about his topic, and about the lunch he’d had with his publisher, who’d informed him that at its current pace the book would earn out its advance in “two-and-a-half centuries.” And he spent months living in Peru. Brian knew that writers needed experiences to draw upon. I would have at least one person in the room on my side.

We reached the admin building and found the room. Brian held the door open for me. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

The room was small and crowded. Two people were sitting behind a table in the center of the room. It felt much more ad hoc than I’d expected. A third member of the panel had arrived late and was still dragging his wooden chair across the floor.

I don’t know what I’d thought I’d find: a courtroom, maybe, or a long room with a raised dais and my inquisitors sitting on a raised dais. This was much less formal but no less intimidating. A severe woman who looked like a professor was wearing a suit. The director of campus security was there; he nodded at Brian and grunted at me. And in the middle sat the Dean of Students, wearing a tan corduroy jacket over a black turtleneck sweater. I recognized him from  a welcome speech he’d given to us during orientation week. He’d delivered a message about character that I clearly had not lived up to.

“I’ll begin,” said the dean after Brian and I had sat down. “You are going to be expelled.”

Brian gasped. I felt my nose burn. My eyes started to water.

“Expelled!” Brian said. “You’re—that’s it?”

I glanced at him. It was a good thing he’d said something; I was too stunned to make any kind of sound.

The dean looked at the head of campus security, who cleared his throat. “This has been a very serious matter,” he said in a harsh Chicago accent. “It has been a severe drain on our resources. And of course, it is one of the largest threats to student safety that I have ever encountered.”

The professor nodded. “Absolutely agree,” she said. “You have no idea what a toll this has taken on our students.”

“Of course I know,” I said, thinking of all those nights I’d been roused from my bed. “I am one.”

“That’s enough,” said the professor.

The room was silent as the three of them shook their heads, angry that I had dared to say anything at all. I didn’t know what to say. This was hugely important to me. I was overwhelmed by how it was all happening.

“This is supposed to be a hearing,” said Brian. “You need to give him a chance to be heard.” His tone suggested he was ready to cite due process legal precedent dating back to the Magna Carta.

Brian! My hero! The prospect of probation again dangled before my eyes. A dim hope, but still alive…

The dean shrugged. I glanced at Brian, who nodded with some impatience. It didn’t matter. His presence energized me. The others might hate me, they might have already made up their mind, but I had Brian.

I knew I should wish that Brian were  more important. These people played hardball, they viewed themselves with extreme self-importance, they ran the business of a university. They courted millionaire donors and signed off on plans for new buildings.

I could have used someone with more power, a table-pounder, a demander, a brass-knuckles defender who could speak their language. Or a fellow elite who could talk to them in the winking language of the rich.

Instead I had a writer, a lowly writer, a liberal anthropologist who spent years at a time in remote Peru, eating ancient grains out of a wooden bowl.

Magna Carta? A healthy annual donation to the alumni fund would have been far better.

I launched into my story, how I myself had been a victim for ten days, how I’d railed against the perpetrators like anyone else, how my studies had suffered and how desperate I was to pass. I spoke of my desire to be a writer, and how I spent months looking for quick experiences to store away for future use, and how I’d seized upon the opportunity to pull a fire alarm and feel just what it felt like to do so. I did not exaggerate or embellish or make any excuses. I told my facts in plain words, humbly and with the style that comes from unvarnished truth delivered in simple but well-chosen language.

It was the performance of a lifetime. The stakes were high, but I rose to the occasion, speaking fluidly in several full paragraphs. I finished with a rush of words about the importance of experience being fundamental to a liberal education, the very type of education that this university sought to provide to young minds such as my own, and crowned off my monologue with my plea:

“…and so I believe I should receive probation, and should not be expelled!”

I exhaled and awaited their response. Nothing. They stared at me.

The silence continued for several seconds. It felt like a lot longer. My heart was doing some kind of crazy dance in my chest.

“That,” Brian finally said, “is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

“Really?” I said. My voice sounded soft and hollow. “You’ve never heard anything dumber…?”

“No! I’ve never heard anything more stupid! In my life!” Brian said.

“I’ve heard dumber,” said the security guard with a chuckle.

“I haven’t!” said Brian. “Jesus, you can’t win either way!” he said.He was so animated that spit burst out of his mouth and got stuck in his beard. “If you’re lying, you deserve expulsion. If you’re telling the truth, you’re too stupid to go to school here!”

The security guard laughed out loud.

“What did you think I would say?” I asked.

“That you were drunk out of your mind! High! Stoned! Tripping on acid!”

“I don’t drink or use drugs,” I apologized.

“Maybe you should start,” said my resident head.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The judgment was swift. The panel decided. Expelled. Justice had spoken, or snarled, or shrugged, or whatever it had just done. I spent the next few days scrubbing my hand and not calling my parents. Every day I checked the mail for the letter that would tell me how long I had to move out and how much tuition and fees I still owed them for credits I would not be awarded.

The letter took a while to arrive. After a week I started going to class again, just to have something to do.

Every day, as I went down to the lobby to check my mailbox, I braced myself for the awful news.

Days went by. Weeks. One month. Two.

Exams came. The year was ending. I received my financial aid packet for the following year. I relaxed; it seemed like nothing was going to happen to me. I stopped dreading the daily trip to the mailbox.

Maybe they had changed their minds. Maybe they thought Brian’s vitriol had been punishment enough. For whatever reason, the three-person panel had failed to follow through, and I was not dumb enough to remind them.

Toward the end of exam week, Brian announced to our floor that he and his family were being relocated to a different apartment on the other side of campus. I sat on the carpet trying to be invisible. I didn’t want Brian to notice me and wonder what I was still doing in the school I was too stupid to attend.

The next day everyone helped Brian move boxes down to the U-Haul truck he’d rented. I sat in my room with the door closed.

I did not know exactly how to take Brian’s outburst. I didn’t think he meant it – pulling a fire alarm couldn’t have been the dumbest thing he’d ever heard of anyone doing. But I did feel like he was being honest in the moment. Something about my wanting to be a writer, and my way of going about it, had irritated him. I thought it might have something to do with being young. Even though Brian was a success, his life was pretty much in place. Who knew what dreams he had abandoned along the way? There must have been something difficult about being surrounded by people who still had their dreams alive.

Even so, it did feel like punishment. No, I had not been expelled. But Brian’s hatred felt like something I did not fully deserve. Actually, the feeling I had was strange: somehow I felt I did deserve it, but I did not know exactly why.

That night I passed by a liquor store on 53rd Street and happened to notice a sign that said “DRINKS AROUND THE WORLD.” I went inside and found a bottle of Peruvian wine on a dusty lower shelf. It was so old it stuck to the shelf and left a purple ring when I pulled it off.

“That stuff’s harsh,” said the clerk. “Not smooth.”

“Fine,” I said.

“All sales final,” he said, tapping a handwritten sign taped to the counter.

“Yep,” I said, feeling slightly uneasy.

I took the bottle back to my dorm and smashed down the cork with the handle of a screwdriver, somehow managing to cut my hand. Then I poured half the bottle into a plastic Wisconsin Badgers cup and toasted myself in the mirror.

Here’s to you, Jacke Wilson. The writer. The survivor.

It was the worst drink I’d ever had, and it took me all night to choke it down.

Embrace Your Inner Beatle! (“I Am The Walrus”)

Whoa. The dice tumble, the dial spins…and the gods have chosen!

Oh, ye gods. What a sense of humor you have.

A work of genius? Yes. It’s a big one this time. A landmark in weird, mindblowing creativity. In context, maybe the strangest song ever written, and yes, I’m including Revolution 9 in that calculus. I think this song is stranger.

Yes, that’s right, we’ve landed on…

“I Am The Walrus” (Magical Mystery Tour, Lennon-McCartney)

Man. This is the Beatles in full flower. In fact, it used to scare me a little, when I was ten and listening to these songs for the first time. Not just because of the drugs, although I sensed that something was going on, something that grownups had warned me against. But because it felt to me insane.

There’s a great piece in the Anthology where they talk about John going insane at Shea Stadium. (“A little bit mad,” was Ringo’s quote, I think.) Look at him in this video, especially at the end:

That look—wild, exhausted, exhilarated, sweating, grinning, tipped out of our normal world and entering into some strange manic place—I’m not sure John intended to travel to this place, but whenever he found himself there, he knew what to do.

(Was it because of all the pain he had repressed? Maybe! And on top of all the pain we looked at the last time, there was new, fresh pain to deal with (or not). This song was recorded eight days after their revered manager Brian Epstein suddenly died.)

Onto the Walrus! What the hell is the walrus? Or semolina pilchard? Crabalocker fishwife? Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye? What did any of it mean? Or was the meaning that there was no meaning? You could scribble, scribble, scribble all the speculation you want on this (and I’m sure many others have), but what did the Beatles think of it?

One thing seems clear: they knew it was crazy. You don’t wear a 18th-century madman’s cap (that white egglike thing on John’s head) or dress up in fuzzy animal costumes and masks if you’re singing a normal song.

You don’t wear the madman’s cap for “In My Life.” You don’t put on the costumes for “Yesterday.”

What an evolution. In 1962 the Beatles were nervously flubbing their audition with Decca,, running through Buddy Holly and Phil Spector songs.

Listen to Paul’s voice quiver on the Broadway chestnut “‘Til There Was You”:

He sounds terrified! And now, by the time they get to Walrus in 1967, they’ve got Hard Day’s Night and Help! and “Penny Lane” and “Nowhere Man” and Sgt. Pepper and “Michelle” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” and a hundred other songs you’ve heard of in their rear-view mirror.

They sang “Besame Mucho” at the Decca audition. Besame freaking Mucho.

From that to Walrus in five years.

You’ve come a long way, baby.

THE MUSIC

Ian MacDonald frames this song in the context of drug raids and a general establishment crackdown on youth in general and the Rolling Stones (who were facing trial on drugs charges) in particular. The droning “semitonal seesaw” was apparently inspired by a police siren heard in the distance as John was sitting down at the piano. He then turned it into “a perpetually ascending/descending M.C. Escher staircase of all the natural major chords.”

You just KNOW Paul had to admire this one. I love that look on his face when he’s playing the bass in the foreground while John’s playing the piano in the background. So serious, so focused on his instrument. Knowing what his partner was up to while he was working on “Your Mother Should Know” and “Hello, Goodbye.” Lovely songs, both, but still. Kind of tame by comparison.

Let’s see, what was Paul’s next recorded song after they recorded Walrus? Let’s take a look. Maybe it will shed some insight into Paul’s view of what was going on with his comrade in arms.

Hmm. Hmmmmmmmm. [looking it up]

Wait, what?

You’re kidding me. “Fool on the Hill”?

You can’t make this stuff up. But there it is. “I Am The Walrus” from John. Then comes Paul with “Fool on the Hill.”

Poor Paul. Sometimes you jump in. And sometimes you can only stand back and marvel.

THE WORDS

Childhood rhymes, playful nonsense, nods to Lewis Carroll (the eggman is Humpty Dumpty, the Walrus is from The Walrus and the Carpenter)—much of the time this is viewed as a druggy, tripped-out, meaningless, childish. I think more than a few people dismiss this as just goofing around. There’s an often-cited story in which John heard that people were starting to analyze his lyrics seriously, and so he threw out a bunch of nonsense just to keep them guessing and to make fun of people who overanalyzed them. That’s there, I suppose, but there’s also a much stronger point. This is a boy who had always chafed against the rules. And now he was a man, and the rules were still there.

MacDonald again:

Gradually turning into an angry sequel to the darkly melancholic “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “I Am The Walrus” became its author’s ultimate anti-institutional rant – a damn-you-England tirade that blasts education, art, culture, law order, class, religion, and even sense itself.

The Rolling Stones were on trial. John himself was a few years away from being spied on by the FBI and harrassed by the U.S. government. And it all goes back to the little boy, facing down the “expert-textperts” who crammed pointless facts into his head while missing what was going on his heart.

I’m crying.

Does nobody care?

THE PRODUCER

From engineer Geoff Emerick’s book:

“That one is called “I Am The Walrus” John said. “So, what do you think?”

George [Martin] looked flummoxed; for once he was at a loss for words. “Well, John, to be honest, I have only one question: What the hell do you expect me to do with that?”

So they gave it a score, and added the hee hees and ha has and years later George Martin talked about how he loved the anarchy of John’s mind and tried to enhance it as part of the recordings. And he did, and it was brilliant. But even so: bizarre.

While they were recording John turned on a radio and started fiddling with a knob until he landed on a version of King Lear going out over the BBC. So hey, why not record that and throw it into the mix? You can hear it better here (cued up to the radio fiddling and the play):

This is SUCH a strange song.

A POP QUIZ

Q: In the play King Lear, which character asks the king for an egg?

A: The Fool.

(I did not make that up.)

DOES IT EVER END?

Walrus has spawned all kinds of crazy on youtube. There’s the Frank Zappa version, the Jim Carrey(!) version, the backwards version with its multiple encoded messages, the slowed-down 800% version. There’s some meaning in all of the madness, people are certain. Some communication from other realms. Some larger mysteries revealed.

You can explore all those for yourself. But here’s one I’ll throw in.

What’s the randomly generated shortlink for the I Am The Walrus youtube video? The one I myself chose at random and linked to above?

It’s “youtu.be/eCALeCZe_gg”

Take a look at those last three letters. E underscore GG. Egg.

Yes, we are really through the looking glass on this one.

UNLOCK YOUR INNER BEATLE!

This week, find a safe, quiet place to do your best creative work. Once you are there, take all your inhibitions, ball them up into a fist, and fling them out a window. Leave that window open and see what flies in. Maybe it’s something new and slightly crazy. Or maybe it’s something new and very crazy. Maybe it’s a whole new person, coming to visit. Make friends with that person. Invite the crazy person in, push out a chair, and listen to what he or she has to say. It might be nonsense, but then again it might not be. It might be something that no one else is saying but that needs to be said. It might be you.

Happy Monday, everyone! Koo koo ka choo!

Embrace Your Inner Beatle! Nowhere Man by John Lennon

THE SELECTION

Aha! This week we use the perfect randomizer: four spins of a Life board game dial. Szzzzzzzzz-tika-tika-tika…. and the gods of creativity have chosen!

NOWHERE MAN (LENNON-MCCARTNEY, RUBBER SOUL)

Oh, wow. Once again, the gods seem to have looked out for themselves. Here’s another divinely inspired song, or at least divinely delivered. More on that later.

“Nowhere Man,” from the album Rubber Soul, was written in what John later called his “fat Elvis” period, when he was unhappy, bitter, isolated, troubled, uncertain. Oh, you never knew that? You never knew he was suffering? Here’s Paul:

I think at that point, he was a bit…wondering where he was going, and to be truthful so was I. I was starting to worry about him.

(Gee, Paul, you think? I mean, the guy only wrote a song called Help!)

Oh poor baby, I hear you scoff, a millionaire rock star, lauded by everyone, eating whatever he wants, riding around in limousines, staying in a mansion when he’s not in fancy hotels, boo hoo hoo hoo hoo.

Stop there, scoffer! Do you really know John’s story? Because that simplistic view simply doesn’t get at the pain John had absorbed just a few short years before.

Let’s recall John’s youth.

Abandoned by his father, a merchant sailor who can’t stay in one place, then abandoned by his mother, a fairy-like sprite of a woman who can barely sit still.
He’s turned over to his Aunt Mimi, a severe woman who does what she thinks is best, which includes a lot of rules and restrictions for a growing boy, even one as gifted and rebellious as John. And although this life is difficult, it is at least tolerable, especially because her husband, John’s Uncle George, is a kindly man and adds a little levity to the household. Then Uncle George dies, leaving John to be raised by the grieving Aunt Mimi.
John’s mother returns when he’s a teenager, still not raising him but at least acting somewhat motherlike and…she’s tragically killed, hit by a car after leaving one of her visits to John at Aunt Mimi’s house.

What if that was your childhood? And then suddenly—just seven years later‐ you’re world-famous. Except you’re also unhappily married. And you can’t leave your house. And you don’t know exactly what happened, or why you feel so morose, except…well, you never really figured out how to deal with that past, did you? The Beatles have dominated your present for the last five years. But the Past hovers over you. The Past is deep and dark within you. And at night, when you’re alone in your house and the whirlwind is quiet, the Past looms up.

This was around the time of John’s notorious remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. But can you blame him? I don’t think he was bragging at all. I think he was trying to cope.

How do you deal with that much adoration? Those screaming crowds? The sudden feeling that the world finds you special, amazing, transformative? Girls bursting into tears when your car passes by? You know you’re NOT Christ, of course, but you also know that people you’ve never met care more about you than anything else in their lives. What ARE your obligations? What can you DO for them? Give, and give, and give some more? But then what do you do with your own misery?

You don’t want millions of women screaming for you. You want the one woman you can’t have. You want your mum.

And there’s another pitfall of fame, too: you’re treated like an idiot. You read the news, you’re intelligent, you know there are big problems out there that should be addressed. You have a platform: you write songs that millions of people listen to around the world. You’re interviewed by everyone, your picture is everywhere. You COULD make a difference, and maybe you SHOULD. And yet the reporters want to ask you if you plan to get a haircut when you’re in America. There there, young goofy fella, play yer guitar and we’ll clap our hands. My daughter’s jes’ crazy for yer noise I mean music, ha ha. She’ll learn what real music is when she gets older.

All this in a span of time better measured in months than years. Is it any wonder he wrote “Nowhere Man”?

THE MUSIC

“Nowhere Man” is one of roughly two Beatles songs I can play on the guitar, which if you know me will tell you something about the instrumentation. (Very, very, very basic: start here, young Beatles guitar player!) George has a perfect George solo: understated, undistracting, unforgettable. Ringo is Ringo. I admire his drumming the way I admire running water.

But the real heart of the music here are the vocals. Oh man, those vocals. Here they are, isolated in all their glory:

John, Paul, George. And Paul at the end with that final high harmony.

How do you finish off this cry for help? This driving urge (or dirge) of a song? (Dirge? Driving urge? Is that where that word came from?)

Here’s what you do. You bring in Paul to deliver one of his soaring harmonies and you raise the song into something slightly different. The end of the song comes with something slightly finalized and maybe even a little hopeful, though it’s a weary, pessimistic hope.

Pessimistic hope. Hopeful pessimism. John Lennon.

Look at these lyrics.

“Nowhere Man”

He’s a real nowhere man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn’t have a point of view

Knows not where he’s going to

Isn’t he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, please listen

You don’t know what you’re missing

Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

He’s as blind as he can be

Just sees what he wants to see

Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

Nowhere Man, don’t worry

Take your time, don’t hurry

Leave it all till somebody else lends you a hand

Doesn’t have a point of view

Knows not where he’s going to

Isn’t he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, please listen

You don’t know what you’re missing

Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

He’s a real Nowhere Man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

I know it’s sung in the third person, and there’s that great line “Isn’t he a bit like you and me,” which universalizes the story into something that we all can share. That’s a great way to listen to the song: here’s a Nowhere Man, and John is a genius who knows people like that, and John shows how we communicate with (and show empathy for) someone in that condition.

But think about it another way. Read those lyrics again and imagine that John is the Nowhere Man, and part of him recognizes this, and his hopeful side is singing to his depressed side.

To appreciate a John song, you have to understand the different sides of John. And a lot of the time, those different sides come out in the song’s different sections. (Sometimes those sections are contributed by Paul, WHICH MAY BE SAYING THE SAME THING.) John has a particular method of setting the tone of a song in a world-weary, heavy, driving, cynical, semi-depressed state, and then changing gears with something imploring and verging on optimism. Here’s the middle of this one:

Nowhere Man, please listen

You don’t know what you’re missing

Nowhere Man, the world is at your command

He always sings the hell out of these sections. A great example is in “Hey Bulldog,” when he interrupts the quasi-philosophical fragmentary nonsense to cry “You can talk to me, you can talk to me / If you’re lonely you can talk to me” as if his life depended on it. It comes in at around 1:20 of this video:

Several of his songs have this pattern. It’s as if one side of him is down in the dumps, wallowing around, and then another side of him says, “Come on, then. Be down there if you want, it’s your choice. But there’s life up here too, and it’s going to pass you by if you can’t get yourself together and get up for it.”

As if his life depended on it. As if his life depended on saving your life.

At the end of “Nowhere Man” he sings the middle again that imploring, stepped-up voice:

Nowhere Man, please listen

You don’t know what you’re missing

Yes, John. You are the Nowhere Man. And we are the Nowhere Man. And we all need to remember what we’re missing. There’s a whole world out there. Life is out there. For us.

Nowhere Man. Now Here, Man.

THE PERFORMANCES

I love the song as it’s recorded on the album, and I love the isolated vocals. But I REALLY love watching the Beatles perform this. They’ve all admitted that the sound was terrible in these shows. Equipment back then was primitive and could not accommodate the noise their fans made; the Beatles performed without being able to hear themselves. And yet, there’s something so gorgeous about watching these four play together.

Look at the smile on George’s face when they start singing the “ahhhh-la-la-la” choruses. What’s behind that smile? I think it’s this: they had already known what it was like to excel at a live performance of a song like “Twist and Shout.” And now they’re singing songs like this one that THEY wrote. And the songs are like bits of philosophy, or beautiful fragments of a mind, like poetry, full of pain and suffering and inner turmoil—and here they are, singing them with the same elements that made their early hand-clap love songs popular. And the three of them can just lock in and sing one of these brand new (and groundbreaking) gems because they’ve been playing and singing together for years but they have the creative energy and the spirit and the presence of mind to take this genre of music into a whole new world.

That’s what I see on George’s face when he can barely contain his smile: Here we go, are we going to hit the harmonies…ah yes. There we are! We locked in. Because we’re pretty good at doing this.

“If you’re going to be in a rock band,” George once said, “you might as well be a Beatle.”

THE WAY, THE WAY, THE WAY

Divinely inspired, you say? Come on, Jacke! You said this was divinely inspired. Looks to me like a suffering young poet, wallowing around in his pain. What’s divine about that?

Well, something divine happened in the song’s origins. John spent a night trying to write something for the new album. Nothing was working. Then he went to bed and suddenly had the entire song in his head. He called it “received.”

“I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down.”

There you go! Divine! Paul gets “Yesterday.” John gets “Nowhere Man.” Can you summarize those two any better than that?

And then there’s this, which Ian Macdonald catches in his fascinating book Revolution in the Head:

Lennon described his favourite experiences in songwriting in terms of being passively ‘in tune’ with ‘the music of the spheres': ‘My joy is when you’re like possessed, like a medium, you know.’

Yes, John, I know. That is, I know what you mean. I’m not sure I know how it feels.

UNLOCK YOUR INNER BEATLE!

This week, be open to inspiration, which may come only after you’ve given up trying too hard to make something happen. Don’t be afraid to let go and let your subconscious work. And don’t be afraid to expand your creativity into new territories. You’ve gotten pretty good at many things, and VERY good at some of them: why not apply your strongest talents to a new creative realm? Only through a journey will the very best you be revealed. Don’t be afraid to mix the bitter with the sweet, the strong with the weak, and all your pessimism with a slight note of hope. Truth comes from digging deep, but illumination comes from a single ray of light.

Happy Monday, everyone! Have a great creative week! A whole world is at your command!

It’s The Jacke Wilson Show! Life’s Unanswerable Questions (Episode 2.1)

ONE…ONE ONE…ONE ONE… IT’S THE JACKE WILSON SHOW!!!!!

Season Two! We’re off to a GREAT start with the new Jacke Wilson Show season. New producer, new studio…and a much more professional sheen. In episode 2.1 we cover Life’s Unanswerable Questions, as contributed by you, the listeners.

Hope you enjoy the show!

You can stream the show here:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/jackewilsonshow/The_Jacke_Wilson_Show_2.1.mp3

Or directly download the mp3 file: The Jacke Wilson Show 2.1 – Life’s Unanswerable Questions (part one)

You can also find previous episodes at our Podcast page.

And subscribe to the whole series at iTunes by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE TO THE JACKE WILSON SHOW ON ITUNES

Let me know what you think! Thank you for listening!

Show Notes:

It’s the JACKE WILSON SHOW!

Season Two! We’re off to a GREAT start with the new Jacke Wilson Show season. New producer, new studio…and a much more professional sheen. In episode 2.1 we cover Life’s Unanswerable Questions, as contributed by you, the listeners.

JACKE WILSON is the pen name of a writer whose books have been described as being “full of intrigue and expertly rendered deadpan comedy.” Born in Wisconsin, Jacke has since lived in Chicago, Bologna, Taiwan, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Mountain View, and New York City. Jacke now lives and works in the Washington D.C. area. Like his writings, the JACKE WILSON SHOW takes an affectionate look at the absurdities in literature, art, philosophy, great books, poetry, current events, hard news, politics, whatever passes for civilization these days, and the human condition (that dying animal). For more about Jacke and his books, visit Jacke at jackewilson.com.

Credits:

Danse Macabre Hook by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

The Account (A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #29)

And during those drifting years, when the peaks were low and the valleys were deep, my futility found a particular nadir during my stint on Capitol Hill, where I briefly worked for a United States Senator. I believed in government in those days, and in politicians, and in myself and other young people, and—well, you’ve heard this story before. Young idealist goes to Washington, loses ideals. Ho hum.

This is not that story.

Not exactly, anyway. I could say that this story raises some deep issues about personal identity, origins, and longing for the unattainable, the unrecoverable. I could say it’s about the permanent absence we all hold within us, from the moment we leave the womb to the walk across the high school gym floor to receive our diploma…

I could say that, but we don’t need to be that pompous about it. This is a story about fitting in and not fitting in. That’s it.

(Eh, who am I kidding? I wish it was only that. The truth is that’s it’s a story about more than that. The truth is something much worse.)

#

The Senator I worked for was from Wisconsin. My home state, except in those days (which lasted years, to be honest) I wasn’t sure what that meant. I was born there, had grown up there, had in fact barely left there in my first eighteen years. I was a Wisconsin boy, through and through, because there was really nothing else for me to be. My parents had both been born there too. My siblings and cousins. All my friends. Everyone, that is, that I could be close enough to actually model myself after (the Beatles and Michael Jordan did not count).

And now, a lucky break! A job with a Senator, and not just any Senator, but this Senator, who sought to reform D.C. in exactly the same ways I would have. The Senator who pointed out that the practice of giving gifts to members of Congress and their Staff, which seemed de minimis to most Senators from most states, was not in fact de minimis. I agreed! A steak dinner at a fancy restaurant? With expensive bottles of wine? If that happened in Wisconsin we’d talk about it for months. It damn well could unduly influence even the best of us. So when the Senator fought for—and managed to get passed—a gift ban, I was on board. Our democracy was cleaned up, in a small way. Campaign finance reform, here we come!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First I should tell you about the six-year period between the end of my formative Wisconsin years and my just-as-formative floundering career years. These were the lost years, the Great Wanderlust Gap. I’d left Wisconsin for college in Chicago and Italy, and eventually a year in Taiwan, and a year backpacking through Asia and Africa and Europe. D.C. came at the end of this, when I was trying to figure out how one person could stand so still (at first) and move so much (eventually) and still be the same person. Maybe one couldn’t.

So now I was a little confused. I was still basically the same person, but undeniably I had some different ingredients. How was I supposed to advertise myself? Was I still a Wisconsin product, or did my wrapper need some new label?

After my interview I came home to my girlfriend somewhat surprised that the Senator’s chief of staff had been so excited to take me.

“An unpaid press intern?” my girlfriend said. “You’re surprised that they’ll let you work for free?”

“I get a stipend,” I said, somewhat defensively, though we both knew I was doing this for the experience and The Chance To Make A Difference. “No, I’m not surprised I got a job, just at how excited they were. I wasn’t sure they’d see me as one of their own.”

“Of course they do! You’re a Wisconsin boy. Your mind might still be in Tibet. But your heart’s in Wisconsin.”

I was quiet. My secret was that my heart was still in Tibet too. Not just because it was the most incredible place I’d ever experienced, and I’d felt more alive there than I ever had before. But because of the freedom I’d felt in leaving behind America, and my former self. I had shed something significant. A layer of my soul. The scar tissue had flaked off and something raw and real had been exposed to air. I was not certain if something existed there: was it the real me? Or just an emptiness? Maybe I had scraped away the only thing that made me who I was?

And now this. An unpaid press intern. Surrounded by several dozen Wisconsin dreamers my age, who had maybe made it this far, but had not quite left Wisconsin the way I had. Something big and important about myself seemed up for grabs.

Ron, the guy I was assigned to work with, was a little different. He was in his fifties, formerly a reporter for a small-town newspaper in Wisconsin, brought in now to write speeches for the Senator. He was not slick like the handful of D.C. political operatives who were in senior staff positions. But he could write in the Senator’s voice, in a way that resonated with the Wisconsin audiences. He was authentic.

What was I? What did I bring? Authenticity? Eighteen years of it, I guessed.

On the other hand, after I joined the Staff the Senator wanted to meet me, which I was told was rare. And it was not because of those eighteen years in Wisconsin, which were normal in his circles, but the six years that were not. Not in Wisconsin, and not normal.

I set about doing my tasks trying to read those around me. Could they tell I was different? Did they treat me as the same?

My job is somewhat comical in today’s context, but it felt important at the time. Those were the earliest days of the Internet, when email barely existed, retrieving Internet articles were slow, and the fax was still the king of effective and slightly exotic telecommunications technology. My job was to go through a dozen or so newspapers each day, cut out articles of interest (cut out literally, with a pair of long scissors), photocopy them onto 8.5 x 11 paper, and distribute them by hand around the office.

In the afternoons I responded to constituent emails, and now and then I drafted part of a speech or a letter to an editor. Within months I’d probably be writing speeches themselves and someone new would be doing the clips. But for now the bulk of my job was to locate, cut, arrange, copy, and hand out the articles, so I did it with gusto—and like all good interns everywhere, I enjoyed exploring the world that my intern pass provided me access to. I gave my friends tours of the Capitol building and the Senate gallery. I took them on the train between the Capitol and the back offices, and up and down the private elevators.

For lunch I ate in the Senate cafeteria, which presented a dilemma. My stipend barely covered my Metro cost and left little for my lunch. If I bought a hamburger and fries, and nothing else all day, I could run a small surplus. That forty cents extra felt great: not because it was some great amount, but because it meant I was actually making money on the day. But if I opted for anything else—like the fish sandwich, which was sixty cents more than the burger—my razor thin margin disappeared and I had to dip into my own cash, which felt terrible: I was paying to work! Only later did it occur to me that everyone around me at that cafeteria was in the middle of authorizing deficit spending that literally ran in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And I was sitting there among them, dipping my fries in tartar sauce and agonizing over my own deficit spend of twenty cents.

Naturally I had to supplement my internship with two days of temping in order to pay for rent and groceries, and none of this was sustainable. But for now, I could hardly believe my luck: this was a great first step to some kind of career, and I could be proud of my devotion to public service. I was helping the Senator ban gifts and reform campaign finance laws! How could he properly do those things if he didn’t know what was in the news each day?

Of course I also believed that the entire staff needed the news, but really, the highlight was when I dropped off the articles in the Senator’s mailbox, or if that was too full and no one was around, directly on his desk.

After a couple of weeks of this I learned that because nobody working on Capitol Hill makes any money, power has replaced money as the currency of choice. I guess I had known that about presidents and senators. But that was when I learned that it went all the way down to the staffers, even my idealistic brethren.

“What are you doing?” a guy named Caleb said to me one day after I dropped off the articles.

“This is my job,” I said. “I copy these and distribute them.”

“You don’t give those to the Senator,” said Caleb. “You give them to me. We can’t have unpaid interns bothering the Senator.”

“But he’s not even here.”

“Then his mailbox is his person.”

I didn’t understand what that meant. Caleb didn’t want me to bother a mailbox? It did not help that I had never spoken to Caleb before and had no idea what his job was. “How will the Senator get the articles?” I asked. “Are you going to fax them to him?”

“I will put them in his mailbox.”

The next day I handed two packets to Caleb, who was sitting in his cubicle watching C-Span on a small black-and-white television. “This is the batch for you. And these are for the Senator,” I said. He grunted at me, and as soon as I was gone he jumped up and strode briskly to the Senator’s office, where he dropped off the articles. Nobody was around. Nobody saw him. It didn’t matter. He had defeated me on some imaginary scale.

A few days later I saw him sourly giving the Senator’s articles that I had given him to another guy named Timothy, who apparently outranked Caleb. Pointless bureacracy was forming before my very eyes, like fungus in a petri dish.

This and other similar incidents gnawed at me. I had a growing feeling that I didn’t fit in. Not just because my mind (and secretly my heart) was half in Tibet, or because I had left the state and those around me barely had. (Their coming to Capitol Hill didn’t count: like an embassy, the Senator’s office was basically still Wisconsin territory.)

No, it was more than that: it was that I was not playing the game they were. I believed in the mission, in the cause, in the crusade, not these petty little problems. What did I care if I handed articles to the Senator. We were banning gifts! Reforming campaign finance laws! Taking a broom to the system! Shining light on cockroaches and rats! Disinfecting the place! Draining the swamp!

Others around me noticed this difference, I sensed. They knew I was not an outsider. I was not powerful, so that made me inconsequential, but on the other hand my refusal to care about what they cared about turned out to be a source of strength. I could act freely without worrying about the ticky-tack stuff like my own position on the ladder of delivering articles.

As a threat, I became a pariah. The longer I stayed—as the weeks turned into months—the more it became true, and obvious to me.

At first, I had been welcomed with smiles and invitations to events. As time passed, I stopped receiving them. As I sat in my cubicle, in my cocoon of idealism and self-regard, I heard others talking about happy hours I had not been invited to. Hookups happened. Gossip, chatter, news from home—none of it involved me. In the spring a softball team formed, and I, formerly a varsity baseball player (second team all-conference just six years before!) was not invited to join.

One day the entire staff congregated to take a photo with the Senator. Of course it happened without me.

From my cubicle I could see the photo being staged: several dozen people crowding into the Senator’s office, laughing, having an ostensibly good time. I sat in place, staring at them, amazed that I had not been invited.

Never had my special status as an outsider been more clear. I must truly be a threat to them, I thought. I must have enemies who recognize me as someone different, someone special. Who had organized this? Who had left me out?

I decided not to care. I was planning to apply to graduate school. I would be leaving D.C. altogether, and I would go on to bigger things. My colleagues here could stay in their world of petty grievances and cramped one-upsmanship. I would make them pay—or at least regret not being closer to me when they had the chance.

I would get my revenge—but against who? Who had left me off the list? Others were in there getting their picture taken. Otehrs who were less talented, less important. I alone had been left out. I alone was the threat.

Or maybe they just did not want me there. They knew I was not one of them. They had rejected me, as I had suspected might happen. Well then, screw them. I had my past in Tibet and my future with its as-yet-to-be-determined success. I was different, and they all knew it! Let them fester in their own toxic little stew of petty grievances and meaningless assertions of power. Enjoy your photo op, suckers. I’m outta here.

It felt good to be right. And to hate.

Typically I drifted around feeling bad about myself. My natural tendency was to feel unworthy—not even toward anything in particular, just generally unworthy. Unworthy to do anything. To exist as part of the cosmos.

But now I felt empowered. I was different. Because I was special! They rejected me because they sensed this. I had left, I had shaken off my chains, chains they still wore, under the mistaken belief that they were jewelry.

That night I told my girlfriend how glad I was to be leaving them all behind. I told her how they had hated me for weeks, and how I was happy to return their hatred, because it made me feel alive.

“Okay,” she said in her most patient voice, “I think you’re exaggerating this.”

“The old me would have thought so!” I roared. “But there’s no getting around it. I’m right, I’m sure I’m right. There’s no other explanation.”

“Really? They hate you? They care that much?”

I told her about the photo with the senator. “And the other day, they had a birthday cake for one of the legislative interns, Heidi.

Everyone stood up at the same time—everyone—like it was all prearranged, beause of course it must have been. They all went to a conference room and had cake.

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I hadn’t been invited. So I sat at my desk, looking through my papers and clipping articles.”

“Brooding?”

“Of course!” I cried. “I could hear their singing and laughter. Their joy.”

My girlfriend bit her upper lip, thinking. “Didn’t they think you were strange? The oddball who just sits at his desk while everyone else has cake and sings happy birthday?”

I stared at her. She just wasn’t getting it. “I should think they’d have found it stranger had I crashed their party,” I said hotly. “for all I know, Heidi was the one who didn’t invite me!”

My girlfriend’s eyes widened and I could tell she was involuntarily mirroring my own expression. I must have been getting agitated.

“You think I’m paranoid but you haven’t been there,” I said. “I have. And I know. I’m surrounded by enemies! Haters! Well, I can hate as well as they can.”

“You’re a very good hater.” She looked like she was trying not to laugh.

“The best,” I muttered.

The next day I told the chief of staff that I was leaving for a new opportunity in another state. He gave me some spiel about appreciating my efforts and wishing me well and a lot of other garbage.

“Oh, and make sure you give us a forwarding address,” he said. “A permanent one, to make sure you can receive mail from us.”

“Right,” I said. “For my last stipend check?”

“I meant for our fundraising list,” he said. “But yeah. If there’s a stipend check we’ll send that too.”

We smiled at each other awkwardly.

“Oh, and we’ll probably be reusing your email account,” he continued. “Remind me of your password again?”

I felt like someone had just hit me in the face with a flagpole. “Email account?”

“Yes. We’ll just reassign it. It will be easier if I just log in as you and change the password.”

“I have an email account?” I said dumbly. “Here?”

“You’re intern5,” he said. He looked at me curiously for a moment, then glanced down at my file. “Oh, wait, nevermind, I’ve got it right here. The password is just the same thing, intern5. You never changed it, did you?”

“I did not,” I said. My voice was clogged in my throat.

He handed me some papers, and I drifted from the round table back to my work station. My enemies ignored me. Because they were busy. With their jobs.

My edge was gone, the rousing anger no longer as easy to summon. The colors of the room seemed duller, and the outline of all the shapes crisper. I realized I had been seeing through a filter of rage that had heightened colors and blurred edges, as if my eyes had been suffused with hateful energy that had distorted my vision.

My heart was kicking at the back of my throat. My mouth tasted vaguely like cheese.

At my cubicle, I logged on to my computer and double-clicked my email program. Which I had never done before. Prompted for a username and password, I typed in intern5, because that was who I was, and intern5 again, because that was apparently my key to accessing who I was. My self, with its insecure password.

The inbox was empty for a half a second. Then it flooded with unread messages.

They were all emails to me: invitations to happy hours, birthday parties, and photo opportunities. Jokes. Inside info. Politics. News of the Senator’s appearances. Gratitude for the clippings. Questions for me.

All messages I had not received. All messages that I had unwittingly ignored.

I felt like an idiot, of course, but mostly I was overwhelmed by regret. There was an invitation to Heidi’s birthday party, and a followup email from Heidi, asking if she and I had gotten off on the wrong foot somehow. Enemy? She was the sweetest person alive, and I had sat there brooding, hurting her feelings! Her birthday had been marred by my stupid body sitting at the cubicle, which made her feel that she might have somehow offended me.

I’m sorry if I did, she wrote. I always thought you were a cool person. I heard you were in Tibet—that’s so awesome!—and I’ve always wanted to ask you about that. We have something else in common, too. Did you know my cousin’s from Cadbridge? And I think you and I might have met once at a student counsel retreat, but I was younger and was afraid to talk to you then…

It went on. I couldn’t bear to read more. I clicked my way through other emails. An entirely different experience stretched out before me, a path I had not taken. In my mind, the people I had grown to see as enemies morphed into something else altogether: friends, confidantes, colleagues, fellow travelers.

My people, welcoming me home. And I had ignored them all.

I sat frozen in my chair, stunned by the alternate reality I had suddenly glimpsed. When I finally came to, the office was dark. I logged out of my computer and destroyed the current manifestation of intern5. What a hideous run he’d had.

Who was I supposed to hate now? Intern5? He seemed like an obvious choice.

And so I boarded the Metro for the last time, aware that I was pretty much back where I was when I had begun. My moment of clarity had come and gone: I could no longer hate and be right. I was not a good hater at all. I was as bad at that as anything else.

The train rolled forward, clattering its way out of D.C. And I had the same raw, exposed feeling I’d had when I arrived, as if my soul were made of nothing but emptiness. Ho hum. Except this time there was something new there. Now I had the memories of my brief period of idealism and self-regard, and the conviction that those qualities had once taken up room inside me but were lost to me forever. Now I was not the same person I had been when I arrived in D.C. Now my emptiness had holes.

Oh boy. Another work story, much like The Blood Cake (office birthday parties are becoming a theme), and The Mugs (workplace futility: another theme!), and The Rope (Wisconsin-boy confusion: yet another theme!). This one kind of reminds me of The Sweater as well, with its dark ending. Oh well. Sometimes a little darkness makes the world better. It’s why I can’t stand paradises like Palo Alto or Orange County until nighttime, when they turn into something a little more mysterious and wild. All the Objects can be found on the main page. Has anyone made their way through all of them yet? I suspect a few of you have. Others might still be stuck somewhere in the teens. Read at your own pace, my friends!

And of course, this one has a huge similarity with my book The Race, still priced at the holiday discount of under a dollar for the e-book version and ALWAYS under five bucks for the paperback. That one is about a Wisconsin governor, not a senator, and the narrator is a hack attorney and quasi-biographer, not a Capitol Hill staffer. But I think you know me well enough by know to guess the themes will be similar. Probably no birthday cakes, in other words, but probably a lot of failure, misplaced optimism, confused idealism, and deadpan humor. And a whole lotta hate. Hey, I need something to cling to! Nothing gets my storytelling motor going like failure and hatred, for some reason. It’s like espionage to Le Carre or injustice to Zola or childlike wonder to…well, I’m not going to name names. An author who wins prizes; that’s all I’ll say about that.

I have a lot planned for the new year. Check out yesterday’s Tao Te Beatles for a taste. And thank you so much for sticking with me, dear readers! We’ll have a good year together—or at least I promise to do everything I can to make it so! And here’s a little onward and upward as a down payment (make sure you stay for Prince, destroying the world with his guitar):

Embrace Your Inner Beatle! Long, Long, Long by George Harrison

EXPLORING THE TAO TE BEATLES

As with your consultations of the I Ching, trust the gods to select the song to serve as the basis for your creative contemplation. Close eyes. Breathe deep. Open eyes. Work out elaborate system to guarantee randomness that is harder than hell to actually get right. Fill Post-Its with numbers. Throw out. Try again. Try twelve-sided die. Try twelve-sided die and six-sided die in combination. Rip Post-Its into tiny pieces. Say, “F–k you, numbers, start cooperating, this is a spiritual thing!” Finally devise system to produce one song from the Beatles catalog, chosen at random. The gods are pleased: they shall select the song. It is the Way. Move on quickly before mathematical flaws in randomness system become apparent.

Close eyes. Inhale. Exhale, whispering jai guru deva om.

Open eyes and prepare to throw dusty Tibetan coins. Realize you’ve misplaced Tibetan coins. Use two Hungarian forints and a Canadian quarter instead. Trust that it is the Way.

Produce randomly generated song.

#152 – Long, Long, Long (from the White Album)

THE CHOICE

Oh, wow! The first installment and the gods have chosen a George Harrison song! Then again, is that such a surprise? The gods look after their own.

George Harrison was of course the Quiet Beatle. And “Long, Long, Long” is the Quiet Song. Literally, it has to be the quietest song in the entire Beatles catalog. I used to struggle with this as a kid, lying in bed in the darkness in my crackerbox palace listening to the White Album. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I were asleep or awake. The middle part of the song grows louder, and the ending rises…but for the most part the song drifted in and out of my consciousness like a quasi-dream. The song ends the album’s third side; the needle lifting from the vinyl was louder than the song.

Well, maybe that’s as it should be. The song is addressed to God, and it’s as quiet as a prayer. Not one of the chanting Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep prayers, with a little boy kneeling at the edge of his bed and shouting out what he wants and who he wants blessed. No, this is not that. This is an aching, agonizing search for meaning, full of humility and gratitude and hope. It’s the hushed cry of someone on a lifelong spiritual journey. An imploration. A humble entreaty. Supplication set to music.

It’s been a long, long, long time

How could I ever have lost you

When I loved you?

It took a long, long, long time

Now I’m so happy I found you

How I love you

So many tears I was searching

So many tears I was wasting, oh oh

Now I can see you be you

How can I ever misplace you?

How I want you

Oh, I love you

You know that I need you

Oh, I love you

Wow. Just beautiful.

The Beatles started recording the song at two thirty in the afternoon, worked through the night, and stopped at seven the next morning. There is something so right about this. It’s the long night of a soul not at rest. Or coming to rest, just before dawn.

GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS

What was it like to be George!? Imagine you’re creating something with your closest childhood friend. You’re fourteen or fifteen years old. What do you do together? Play sports? Program computers? Write plays? Okay, let’s say the two of you write plays.

You meet another kid from across town who writes plays too. The three of you write plays together. You’re having a blast. You dream that someday you’ll have a play on Broadway. Why not? Kids are allowed to dream.

You put on a play by, say, August Wilson. Maybe Tony Kushner. Wendy Wasserstein. Throw in a Shakespeare or two to impress the grownups. David Mamet for some street cred. People start coming to the plays! This is fun! The three of you take turns playing the lead parts. People around town start asking when you’re going to be putting on the latest from Suzan-Lori Parks or Tracy Letts. Well, no, you hear your friend say, we actually thought we’d write our own plays. That’s our plan.

Really? you think. Write our own plays? Wow.

And then, by the time you’re twenty, your friend, that kid you knew on the bus when the two of you were anonymous teenagers riding to school, turns out to be THE GREATEST PLAYWRIGHT EVER. Well, maybe except for THAT OTHER GUY YOU MET, who is JUST AS GOOD. And the two of them HAVE DECIDED TO SHARE CREDIT AS CO-AUTHORS OF EACH OTHER’S PLAYS. And THOSE PLAYS ARE SUDDENLY HAILED AS THE MOST POPULAR AND SUCCESSFUL AND CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED PLAYS OF ALL TIME, LEAVING YOU TO WONDER JUST WHOSE IDEA IT WAS TO HIT THE ALL-CAPS BUTTON ON THIS STRANGE CRAZY LIFE YOU’RE SUDDENLY LIVING.

So that’s your new reality: your friend is a genius, as is your other friend, and everyone in the whole world suddenly knows it. But hey, they tell you, you can still be IN our plays, we need actors after all, so we might as well use you, we have some residual loyalty toward you.. And guess what? We’ll still play parts in your cute little plays, when we have some extra time. It’s one of the great satisfactions we have, to see how much success we’ve bestowed upon you! Chin up there, old friend. You’re still one of us. Just, um, don’t forget how lucky you are, ha ha, did we say that? Well, we didn’t have to, because the newspapers are saying it for us. Boy, there are alotta talented actors around who’d love to be in our plays, wouldn’t they? I mean, if you ever decided you wanted to do something else, there would be TONS of actors who…just kidding! Chin up, chin up!

Sound crazy? It’s basically what happened to George. And here’s the thing: GEORGE WAS GREAT TOO. He had to keep up with John and Paul, first of all, which he and Ringo don’t get enough credit for. Paul and John could come strolling in with some brilliant idea for a song as if they had angels humming tunes in their ear (and who knows, maybe they did), but it’s not like they came in with full arrangements and handed out sheet music. They came in with tunes, or ideas, or vague general descriptions (John), or demanding technical specifics (Paul). Imagine if that was you in that band, asked to learn a new song, AND learn to play it in a way that meets the approval of one of two very different creative geniuses, AND come up with a solo or something of your own—something that doesn’t irritate the creative genius but manages to strengthen the song without ruining it. Oh, and of course, you can’t let it sound like anything you’ve done before, because originality is prized. In fact, you might need to do all this on an instrument you just started playing a few days ago.

How long would it take you to come up with your part? What would seem fair? A couple of months? A few weeks?

Well, what if you had a day? Or an HOUR? What if you had to do it on the spot with the tape rolling and John or Paul ASSUMING you could play it right? That was how it was for George and Ringo. And they came through.

But we don’t need to limit George’s genius to his playing, because he himself was a brilliant songwriter. I’m sure we’ll cover those in future weeks (it is the Way) but let’s just note his songs on Abbey Road (“Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”) are as good as anything else on that album. But of course, it was their last album. The Beatles broke up before they could fully harness George’s power as a songwriter. He had just turned twenty-seven.

Read that last sentence again. What have you done with your life?

THE WAY, THE WAY, THE WAY

The mysterious ending of the song was completely fortuitous. Apparently Paul hit a low note on the organ, which caused a bottle of wine sitting on a speaker to vibrate, and…well, listen to this part again. I’ve cued it up to the 2:25 mark:

That’s Paul holding the note, the wine bottle rattling, George wailing, and Ringo rolling with the tremble before George strikes a jangly chord (the minor version of the chord that starts “A Hard Day’s Night”), and Ringo caps things off with the deadening snare drum beat. The coda expresses the theme of the song: it’s the sound of searching and self-annihilation, of life and of death, of questions begetting more questions and resolution without resolution but with resignation and relief—all in one beautiful and eerie and devastating thirty-second stretch. This is where song stretches into sound, just as life stretches into suffering which stretches into understanding and peace. The Beatles didn’t plan any of this (the vibration), but they knew what they had when they heard it. You can almost sense their excitement as they recognize the gift from the sound gods (the divine tremble) and jump on board, as they did whenever the Cosmic Harmony Bus swung by their stop. The Beatles never waved the bus past to wait for the next one. They jumped on and rode as far as they could.

One more time for the tremble:

Man, these Beatles were tapped into something holy. And to think my randomization process, which was designed to allow a spiritual force to select a song from the Beatles catalog, chose THIS song first? The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.

It’s 6:21 a.m. where I am. Time to wrap this up. Something very bad could happen if I don’t finish by seven. Something will be angry. So let’s jump to…

UNLOCK YOUR INNER BEATLE!

This week, apply your creative energies to the deepest and most powerful questions of your personal spiritual journey. Don’t be afraid of exposing emotional vulnerability; recall that only through humility and honesty can you achieve your greatness. Embrace cosmic harmonies and karmic accidents.

(And when all else fails, a little triple-time boogie piano with some aching chord changes (inspired by Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands!) can’t hurt.)

Feel free to share this post with all your creative friends. And if you turn out to be particularly inspired by George and his Song of Search, let me know. Share your thoughts in an email or the comments. Together we can say our quiet thanks to the saintly (and much missed) George Harrison. Spiritual Quester. The Dark Horse. The Quiet One. And our genius in the shadows.

Happy Monday! Have a good creative week, everyone!

(Note: while most of my sources have stretched over too many years for me to try to trace them all, I’m particularly indebted to the excellent book Revolution in the Head by Ian Macdonald.)

The Gift (A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #28)

I was riding in a car to my grandma’s house with my father and sister when we stopped off at the dime store. It was Mother’s Day and my dad was buying flowers for my mom.

Can there be a better place in the world for a kid than a dime store? Comic books, candy bars, plastic toys, pink superballs, squirt guns, and a mynah bird in the back that said the store’s name over and over. “Ben Franklin… Ben Franklin… Ben Franklin…“

It was like a paradise. You could not have invented a store more designed for me.

And then, as we slowed for the big curve that told me without looking that we were about to enter the neighboring town, my father asked if we remembered to bring our cards. Our Mother’s Day cards.

“Of course,” said Ellen, bored. Without looking up from her book she held up her construction-paper heart. Somehow it had lace around it. It looked perfect.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MOM

My cards never looked like that. Mine looked like someone dropped glue and glitter and construction paper and a magic marker into a blender.

Her cards looked like a machine made them. Mine looked like the product of a sneeze.

But in this case it was even worse, because I had no card. For Mother’s Day! Her day.

She had two kids. I was one. And I had forgotten to make her a card. I was about to let her down.

I started to cry. I could sign my name to Ellen’s card, but that’s what I always did, and lately I’d begun to suspect that people saw through it. Certainly Mom would know. She saw through everything.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said my father. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head, unable to speak. My face had melted into tears. My mouth was stuck open.

“He forgot to make a card,” said Ellen, my interpreter in these moments. I hadn’t said a single word about the card. Somehow Ellen operated by big sister ESP.

“Oh the heck,” said my father. “Well, don’t worry. You can buy her one at the dime store.”

Buy her one! This was a treat! I could pick out something fancy, a perfect card. A card better than Ellen’s card.

I cheered up immediately. Vanilla cokes or cherry cokes (another dime store bonus), plus a perfect card, plus the flowers.

I was on my way.

#

The dime store and its Xanadu charms did not disappoint. I tried not to be too distracted by the comics, noting for future reference the new Batman, Flash, and Archie that were coloring the rack (later, later, later, today was Mom’s day, not mine), and headed to the greeting cards aisle. Suddenly I stopped short.

Before me was a wall of kitchen trinkets. Dishes, potholders, and a narrow section of spoon rests.

Spoon rests!

We had a new stove, which was sleek and black and had a smooth top instead of electric coils like the old one. My mother was thrilled. But I had heard her complain that the old spoon holder, a chipped dish, was an eyesore.

I had heard her say that yesterday. And now: here they were! Spoon rests! Brand new!

It was rare that I knew what Mom wanted. Dad always seemed to know, and if he didn’t, he’d ask Ellen, who could tell him. No one ever asked me. How would I know?

This time was different. I knew, I knew, I knew!

My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry.

My dad passed by and attempted to steer me toward the cards because he assumed I’d been distracted by other things, things I wanted for myself. Not this time!

“Mom wants one of these!” I blurted out. “She needs one for the new stove the old one is an eyesore and—”

My dad nodded. “Okay, good. We can tell her they have some here. Maybe she’ll swing by on the way home.”

“Can I buy her one now?” I said in a rush. “For Mother’s Day?”

My father looked closely at me. My face felt hot. I was desperate. Nothing seemed more important to me than getting this approved. I had forgotten to make a card!

“I’ll use my allowance,” I said, the magic words for any purchase. This was treacherous because I had not yet checked the price. Five dollars? Ten? I had no idea. Twenty? That would break me.

But she wanted one. She needed one. I knew that. And it was Mother’s Day.

“Oh, I spose,” said my father. “If you can pick out one you think she’ll like.” He told me to bring the spoon dish to the counter when I was ready and wandered off to the batteries aisle.

I turned back to the shelf and took a deep breath. There were a lot of choices. I eliminated a half-dozen right off the bat. A chicken? A seashell? Those didn’t seem right. I found myself drawn to ones that had words. We had things like that around our house, and they seemed like her. I had just figured out the cleverness of “We aim to please. You aim too, please” sign that we had in our bathroom. Slogans. Words of wisdom. Gentle reminders. That was Mom.

Two stood out. One was white with blue trim and bright black letters that said:

SUPERMOM works here!

That was good—very good. Supermom! Could there be a better compliment on Mother’s Day?

The second was decorated to look like a lemon, with a yellow background and green leaves. The slogan said:

When life gives you lemons…Make lemonade!

Wow! This was new to me. It sounded wise and philosophical, optimistic but with a note of wistfulness. I was dazzled by the feeling. It felt like Mom. It was the sort of thing she’d say. Life isn’t easy. Life isn’t fair. We make do. Those were all Mom’s quotes.

Then again, this dish looked like a lemon. Sure, that fit the kitchen theme, lemons were found in a kitchen after all, but wasn’t it too sad?

A horrible thought struck me: I would be giving her a lemon! Life and little boys give you lemons…

No, no, that was the point! You make lemonade! THAT was the point.

I swear this expression was new to me, but it had the ring of eternity to it. It felt grown up and mature.

And Supermom! What was that, anyway? She didn’t care about Superman, and she didn’t go around calling herself Supermom. In fact it felt more like a comic book, like something more appealing to me than Mom. I had made that mistake for Father’s Day, when I’d forgotten to get my dad a gift or make him a card. I had literally given my dad a comic book from the floor of my closet, which had made him chuckle in a way that did not make me feel great.

He was grateful. But it had been transparent. Supermom might be the same deal.

The fact that Supermom worked put me over the edge. Mom did not work like some employee at a restaurant, or maybe she did, but she certainly didn’t need a constant reminder of that. It seemed slightly presumptuous of me, who did no work at all, to give her something that informed the world (and reminded Mom) of all the work she did in the kitchen, in this jokey way.

Lemons it was. We would accept our lemons but then transform our misery into something beautiful and joyous. Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade!

I carried my spoon rest—soon to be Mom’s spoon rest—to the counter. I was so excited I didn’t even notice the price and the hit my savings would take.

Four bucks, within my range of dollar bills without even needing to tap my stash of quarters. Doable. I’d have gotten a card too if I’d had time. But Ellen was already at the lunch counter, sipping her vanilla coke, and I couldn’t miss out on that.

As I drank the coke I gripped my brown paper sack. Even Ellen couldn’t say anything. She just had her card—a perfect card, yes, but still.

I had a gift.

#

The excitement of my own generosity mounted, and by the time we arrived at my grandmother’s house I could hardly keep myself from singing with joy. Finally we pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. Ellen was ahead of me, as always, but I was close behind. It was a hot, sunny day. Grandma’s flower boxes were full of pink and white and purple wood violets and tulips. All in all, it was a perfect day for Mother’s Day: the best I could remember.

I could see Mom through the screened-in porch. She had come up early to be with her mother. I forgot sometimes that that’s who grandma was: Mom’s mom. For a second I wished I’d gotten something for her too. Oh, right. The flowers. Dad had it covered. Man, it was a good day to be a mom. Sunshine and flowers…and my gift!

I jumped out of the car and hit the driveway running. And tripped.

What had happened? I had stubbed my toe on nothing at all. My sandal buckled forward and I fell flat on my face. My knees and nose skidded along the concrete. But that was not the worst of it.

My arm had windmilled around to break my fall. The weight of the bag had thrown me off, pitching me forward, and as I fell I heard a terrible sound. A crack and a tinkle. A smash.

I didn’t break my fall much. Instead I broke the contents of my bag. A lot.

I managed to get to one knee. My sister was shaking her head, disgusted.

I opened the bag and peered inside. As I feared, my gift was in a million pieces. I clenched the bag shut and started to cry. I could feel my mouth hanging open again, but that couldn’t be helped.

Mom had emerged from the porch and was walking toward us.

“Jacke had a present for you,” Ellen said, handing Mom her card. “He just dropped it when he fell.”

Mom looked at me. “Oh…sweetheart…are you okay?”

I nodded. My jaw could not close. Just wide open. I was lucky a bird didn’t fly inside and build a nest. I would have had no means of stopping it from happening.

“He probably broke it!” Ellen said with what sounded like glee. “I bet the present is smashed!”

“Well, let me see,” said my mother, reaching for the bag.

I thrust the bag behind my back. I did not want her to see what was inside. I wanted to give her an unbroken, not-smashed present. Why, why, why did everything have to turn out so badly?

I knew what Mom would do if I gave her the bag. She would glue the stupid thing back together, and it would probably be usable, it would probably be just fine—but it would live in our house, a testament to my debilitating presence, just like the end table with the ruined finish that served as a reminder of the time I sneezed on the varnish and my mom tried to clean it with the wrong product., marring the table for eternity.

“Let me see, sweetheart…” she said in her gentlest voice. “I’m sure we can fix it.”

“No you can’t!” I bawled, because I didn’t want her to. And she couldn’t fix it in the way I wanted. She couldn’t make it new and whole and perfect.

“What was it?” she asked, trying to circumvent me.

“A spoon rest,” I blurted out. “Just like what you wanted.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I need one of those, don’t I? For the new stove. How thoughtful.”

“Tell her what it said,” Ellen said.

I don’t know if this was my clue. Maybe something in her voice triggered something in me. A new awareness. I knew what would happen.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

And this, this broken gift, was the lemon! And my mom, being reasonable and generous and caring would suggest that we do just that…make something positive out of this disaster…and Ellen would smirk, because her card was not a lemon. Only my stupid broken gift was.

It was too much to bear. I had brought Mom a lemon. A broken present. And she had to make lemonade out of it. On Mother’s Day!

Some birds flew by. My mouth closed involuntarily, in self-defense. Now it felt like it would never open again. The cool breeze made my knees sting. Behind my back, my hand tightened around the opening of the paper sack.

“It said, ‘Supermom works here,'” I lied.

Ellen snorted. “It did not.”

I stared at my mother, trying to telepathically inform her that she should not ask further questions. I saw kindness but confusion on her face. We were entering a different zone, one where she needed more information in order to understand what to do.

“What did it say?” she asked.

I clenched the bag tighter. “It said that!” I said.

“No it didn’t! It said, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,'” Ellen said.

“Oh, well,” said my mother. “Then that’s what we should do, shouldn’t we?”

Just what I had feared! Exactly what I thought she would say!

“It says ‘Supermom works here!'” I insisted.

“It does not,” Ellen said.

My mother was thoroughly confused now, baffled by the discrepancy. How could her two kids have such different views of something so simple? Ellen was the superior reader, of course, and by far the more reliable. Mom frowned. Had I forgotten? Had I not read it correctly? She did not discern my dilemma.

“It does,” I said. “I bought it. Because you’re Supermom!”

And as I lied my mind raced with plans to throw the bag away. No one would know! They’d all forget! Maybe I’d take it home with me and stuff it in a trash can. Or put it in Grandma’s trash can. I could put it under some newspapers, and hide it, and no one would ever—

With feline power my sister snatched the bag from my hand. The spoon dish fell out. It had not broken into a million pieces after all. Four pieces clattered to the driveway.

Ellen picked up the piece that said:

ou LEMONS,

ake LEMONADE!

I was caught.

“You lied!” she said. “You lied to Mom. On Mother’s Day!”

Mom had had enough. My tears were hard for her to take sometimes. And my broken gift. And my lies.

She returned to the house and told my grandmother what had happened. Grandma chuckled and went for the glue. She was even better than mom at this kind of thing. The two of them fixed up the spoon rest in no time, and I had to pretend that everything was okay, because to do otherwise would only have prolonged my agony.

#

I lived with the spoon rest in our house for the next several years. Then, when I was older, I slid it into my jacket pocket and jumped on my ten-speed. I rode to the parking lot behind the hardware store on the edge of town. Some of the dumpsters around town were fair game for kids to climb into and scavenge for cool junk, but this one was tall and remote and no one ever bothered. Still on my bike, I hurled the stupid thing over the green side wall, glad that no one could see into it.

I hated that spoon rest. Destroying it made me feel like a liar all over again, and a thief and a vandal on top of that, but now I was old enough not to cry, because now I was old enough to wallow in the pain of my own bitter imperfection. The thing had haunted me with its cracks for years.

Its cracks….and its wisdom. Yes, I lied, but so had it. Life, lemons, lemonade – it was all a big lie. It seemed like my life was different from everyone else’s, because I knew a truth that the people around me didn’t. Sometimes life gave you lemons and you should NOT make lemonade.

Sometimes you just needed to accept your lemons and snarl and fume and jam them in your pocket.

Because sometimes lemons were your gift, and sometimes you’d be lucky if that’s all you got.

 

Oh readers! Poor young Jacke, trying to do the right thing. That kind of thing happened to him SO MANY TIMES. One disaster after another. Ah well, it’s been a good run.

You can hear the audio version of this story by checking out The Jacke Wilson Show Episode 5. All of the Jacke Wilson Show episodes are available here, for free.

And what else? Getting ready for New Year’s! How about a run through the entire 100 Objects series? Or at least a quick look at some of the more optimistic, fresh-start, new-beginnings stories. Maybe My Roommate’s Books or The Motorcycle or The Tickets to the Premiere.

And of course my books are still priced at holiday prices. Why not? It’s my present to you. And unlike my other present, these won’t arrived cracked and in pieces, although I did have one reader who said she enjoyed my book on her Kindle even though she dropped her Kindle and the screen was shattered. A twenty-first century problem.

 

Life’s Unanswerable Questions

Just a quick reminder that we’re still taking suggestions for Life’s Unanswerable Questions, which we’ll be featuring on an upcoming episode of the Jacke Wilson Show. Tell me (either by email or by leaving a comment) what questions have long tormented you, and I’ll do my best to alleviate your curiosity…or at least join you in marveling at the mystery of it all!