Music

Stairway or Highway to Where?

Lester
Pilar Romero Meza, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Last night on YouTube I listened to an operatic singer and teacher reacting to her first hearing of the Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven.” As a singer, she focused mostly on Robert Plant’s performance, of course. The emotion of it, conveyed by his masterful technique. (The sheer length of time he could hold a note without breathing!) But she also had much to say about the beauty of the song’s overall composition, its slow build from a restrained wistfulness to an eventual crescendo of wild energy.

And the power of the drums. Which don’t enter the song until about minute four of its full eight minutes. I hadn’t realized what a legend John Bonham is among drummers. His inventiveness and performance in this song prove why.

Last night I heard “Stairway to Heaven” for the umpteenth time in my life, but this time with a deeper appreciation for the creativity and expertises threaded all through it. This time I was pretty much awestruck, misty eyed even, at the sheer creative beauty accomplished by these four human beings.

Last night I went to bed feeling better about the world.

This morning I woke to the news that my nation had performed a wide-scale military strike on Venezuela, blown up parts of Caracas, and captured their President and First Lady. That we’ll be “running their country” for the foreseeable future. A land and resource grab under the pretense of a drug war. Or smoke and mirrors to hide the Epstein files.

So much for my feeling better about the world. Today I’m once again heartbroken, frustrated, and angry.

I find myself perpetually confused that the human race can contain at the same time people of such creativity, and those of such destruction. How we continually put into positions of power people who add nothing to human accomplishment, but whose only skills are hoarding, destroying, and propagating the myth that they’re the cream of the crop.

These words don’t express the depth of my dejection right now.

There are old friends and family members whom I’ll never again be able to look at in the same light. Whose innermost hearts have been revealed, and I’ll never again be able to give them my trust.

Many of them are Evangelical Christians. Some of them even pastors. But their religion has proven itself a servant to their politics, and their reading of holy texts a servant of that debased religion. To paraphrase the Hebrews 11:1 of my youth, “Now faith is the [rationalization] of things hoped for, the [pretense] of things not seen.”

I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the fact that some people are so full of goodwill and creation, and others so tightfisted and destructive. How desperately ignorance protects itself from enlightenment. How tradition, the peer pressure of the dead, is so often used to excuse hatefulness toward the outsider.

At times like these, I wonder what’s the point of existence. If we aren’t here to help one another—everyone another—then why bother.

I suppose because of “Stairway to Heaven”s. At least until the last copy of that masterpiece is buried in the rubble of war, along with so much other art, as sacrifices to the merchant princes who would be gods.

Span or Tandem?

Lester

Image by bafritch from Pixabay

In my head are two horses. One is a creative force, prone to enthusiasms, award-winningly clever, easily bored, easily dispirited. The other a disciplined adult, clear-eyed, trained as an editor and educator, tempered by experience. Faithful, honest, enduring.

As a writer, I’ve learned to nurture the first when starting a project. After all, it’s the one that came up with the idea in the first place, the one with a view beyond the horizon.

And when the creative horse falters, the disciplined one nickers encouragement: “This really is a genius concept, and only you can envision where it’s headed. Only you can carry it through.” But once the first horse is knackered, it’s the disciplined one who analyzes the product, polishes the language, fills in any holes, and trots it out for others’ feedback, before carrying it over the finish line. (Meanwhile, the first horse is dreaming up something new.)

As to the metaphor, I’m unsure whether span or tandem best suits. Are the two horses walking side-by-side in span the whole time, or am I switching the lead horse in a tandem fashion?

Whichever. The point is that there are two very different horses in my head, working together to write things. And of late they’re being forced to haul two very different loads in the same wagon.

One is a load of joy. Not just from creating my own games, essays, and poems, but also celebrating and promoting other people’s creations. It’s fascinated by well-crafted things, from a clever choice of words, to the perfectly timed rotation of a microwave. (Have you ever noticed that punching the “30 second” button brings your coffee cup handle conveniently back to where it started?)  It stands in  awe of the transcendent art of humankind. And of the simple kindnesses shared.

The other is a load of horror. That while some create beauty, others build bombs. That a millenia-old sculpture can be forever destroyed in seconds. That a museum’s worth of art and knowledge can be crushed and burned in minutes. That a hospital devoted to healing can be targeted for cannonade. And all at the direction of a few highly placed people, either hoarding wealth or seeking to leave their mark on history. Those few, and the many they convince to support them, through fear or greed (which is just another type of fear).

Beauty is difficult and ephemeral. Brutality is easy and lasting. And I can’t champion the one without actively opposing the other.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that if you’ve noticed my social media lurching from announcements about new games to shaming or lampooning tyranny, it’s the same two horses as always.

The nation is just on a really rocky path right now.

Touché, inner self, touché.

Lester

Finally got this UFO chandelier working again. It’s been unusable, powered off for ages, ever since I cross-wired something in the ceiling receptacle while trying to install a smart switch in the wall.

The wiring in that receptacle is an odd set-up, with lines in from the circuit box, lines out to other rooms, and lines to the wall switch. Counting the light itself, that’s four ground wires, four black wires, and four white wires. The switch’s black connects to the light’s black, but the switch’s white connects to the other two blacks. Sort of like pulmonary arteries and veins, I guess. I’ve popped a circuit breaker more than once in the past before finally unearthing correct directions online today.

But the worst thing today, even worse than climbing that ladder again and again, and working over my head for hours, is that I couldn’t figure out why the song “Elevatin” kept running through my head, apparently served up by my subconscious. I mean, I like the song, but WTH?

Then I remembered the band’s name. 

Wow. That’s a sick burn. High five, inner self.

The Both

Lester
Photo by Nihal Demirci Erenay on Unsplash

To hear someone say, “I never listen to the words of a song, only the music,” is nearly as disconcerting as if they had said, “I never pay attention to both ballroom dancers, only the one.”

Words and music are more than just two companions on the same sidewalk.

They are a dance. Even if the one is foreign, or seems to be (Massive Attack’s “Silent Spring”), or is simply so poetic that all it conveys is mood.

Some music comes to a party stag. But if music comes with lyrics, they are more than its “plus one.” The song is a couple, a marriage of two souls, mutually complete.