Image via Wikipedia

The endless cycle of idea and action,

endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knoweldge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

 

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock (excerpt, Part 1), 1927

*****

An earlier post, with a different excerpt from the Choruses:

Marking Time, March 21, 2008 – Lent, Iraq & The Struggle of Good & Evil

Related articles

• Wisdom (demorrieaux.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

by Mark Nielsen, Jan. 2012

The Spirit Is Not a Dove, But a Hawk

I did not choose This.

No, This chose me.

I opened a window and It flew in.

More like swooped in, if you ask me –

overwhelmed me, left me little choice,

for I had been hunted from the time of my birth.

                                         *

But I did make some choices along the way:

to open that window and leave it open,

to surrender to the Redtail Hawk,

and to leave with It

through that same strange window of opportunity,

instead of through the door I had built myself

in my million-dollar house of cards.

Related articles

• Uninstalling – original poem by Mark Nielsen (markingtime4now.wordpress.com)

My Guitar Hero "machine", styled after old Woody Guthrie's, plus the axes of a few other punks

I confess I’m a big-time musician “wanna-be”, with barely a speck of actual skill or talent.

Re-posted from blog: "This Blog Loves God's Children"

What I lack in talent on guitar or harmonica, I hopefully make up for in enthusiasm about great music and recording artists, plus a big investment in my son Graham’s musical gifts.

It is likely too late for me to do anything more than just attend some cheesy “rock camp”, wherein I gather with other paunchy, middle-aged smiling hacks and stumble through “Louie Louie”, the universally-acknowledged Number One Garage Band Cover Song.

But Graham, now he’s another story. Not too late for him. He’s actually named, in part, after singer Graham Nash (of CSNY), one of my favorite singer-songwriters. And hopefully my son comes by his musical skills somewhat naturally, as Sue (his mom) played alto sax, violin, guitar and especially piano fairly well while growing up.

Graham is nine, and is now studying piano and violin himself. [ <-- Click back there for info on G's  Skokie studio/school, a good one, run by my friend Rick Cinquemani.] My son practices at home on the same baby grand piano that his mother learned upon, which is also cool. I’ll spare you the glowing details or “humble bragging” about his playing… frankly, I don’t know if he has the makings of a prodigy or not. I don’t need him to be, but if he develops into an accomplished musician, I’d be very happy — for him, for myself, and for whomever benefits from his music.

He’s also just now showing interest in the exciting world of digital music-making, and the next level of technical expertise. He’s very math-minded already, so it’s a natural transition, aided by Sue’s new MacBook Pro and the Garage Band application preloaded onto it.

I was hanging out with Graham last night as he played around with the Garage Band software. He created what may be his first real composition, calling it “Graham’s Blues”.  In addition to being a nice bonding experience, it was fun for me to talk with my son about the specifics of “Seventies Soft Piano”, “Indian Tabla” (a unique percussion instrument), or catchy but annoying Eighties synth-pop. All these, plus other styles and instruments, are offered as drag-and-drop clips in the Garage Band software.

Talent is one thing, taste and social skills are another. I enjoy coaching him on the non-technical stuff, and helping guide his tastes. He doesn’t attend much –not yet– to the Lady Gagas, Justin Biebers,  Green Days, U2s, Johnny Cashes, M. Wards or Lupe Fiascos of the world. But when he starts asking more questions, hopefully I’ll be able to steer him in some interesting directions.

I don’t know if his end product on Graham’s Blues was any good, or if it was bluesy (probably not, from what I heard midway through), or if he even saved it. It’s all about process at this point, not product. Fun with music and “messing around” often leads to coming back for more, which then leads to more knowledge, discipline and skill, and then the sky’s the limit… after that foundation is laid. The discipline stuff is where I always fell short when I was his age, and beyond. I’m glad to see he’s getting over the hump.

Little Steven (wearing do rag), Springsteen, & Clarence Clemons on sax (RIP June 16, 2011)

So now, as Jim James and Monsters of Folk sing “Say Please” to me from my computer’s iTunes,  I am tempted to go on ad nauseum about garage bands, teen angst, Louie Louie,  Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show, The Boss, … and all those essential musical lifelines that playing, singing, writing and recording music (be it blues, rock, country, free jazz, rap or emo) have provided for countless young people over the decades.

But usually, less is more. So I will stop my own “composing” here, and let the links above, and the music, speak for itself.

So here’s one last gift, a piano lesson for all ages:

Carla Bley & her jazz big band – *The Piano Lesson*, 1982, fairly funny, seen live somewhere in France

Monsters, gargoyles, and the demons of everyday life…

I have kept a private journal, somewhat separate from public blogging, for many years. (Since well before blogging or personal computing existed, in fact… my oldest spiral notebook dates from sometime midway through high school, and I’m presently 46.)

But occasionally something I begin as private work, or seeds for personal reflection and healing, raises my curiosity about what a reading public (yeah, all eight of you…) might find of value in it. That’s the type of post we have today.

At least one prior post about a “nightmare” -a strange scenario where I tried keeping a lion as a pet- sparked some thoughts from others and was a bit of a turning point in my personal “anger management”. I’m not sure whether today’s post will have similar far-reaching appeal, but either way, here goes nothing… Or something:

1/9/12, 7:46am

Awakened in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which I struggled with a sort of monster. We were in a very dark tunnel, and though the creature’s form was that of a man, it was faceless and much larger than a man. Made me think of the classic Karloff movie’s Frankenstein monster – tall, slow moving, green-skinned (if it had skin at all, it seemed more “oozy”). Since I was near a doorway, I had a chance to fight or flee (I think). Somewhat uncharacteristically for me, I chose to fight.

Earlier in the same dream, or in another, there had been a kidnapping. Except my sister Laura was the one trying to find and free me. Both my sisters were definitely in the dream. I was trapped in the back of a semi truck trailer, not unlike several “powerless” women in the *Criminal Minds* episode I watched last night.

Back in the tunnel: To fight, I had a choice of several weapons, like a saw, and a railroad spike sort of thing (but sharper, seemingly with a cutting edge also). I ended up choosing the spike/short blade. As I stepped out into the hall/tunnel again, the man-creature was right there.

It apparently had no feeling, no fear, but embodied pure evil and malevolence, a cold, enslaved quality, or an inhuman one (animal/predator?). Just a will-less compulsion to destroy. Just as our physical contact happened, before any confrontation or blood, I awoke with a start, heart racing.

Then I read this in the Chet Baker bio this morning:

“It is always a terrible moment for me, that moment when I have to appear with my instrument in front of the public. It grabs me by the throat, an inexplicable terror, an unreasonable fear…I suddenly see myself exposed to failure, to shame. Only the drug can help me overcome this moment. I return to being the master. I feel calm. The public stops being an enemy, a hostile bunch of adversaries ready to strike me down with their whistles. I don’t have anyone in front of me anymore. I am alone with my trumpet and my music.”

Whistles and “adversaries striking me down”. Seems vaguely similar to the Transylvanian mob looking to kill Frankenstein’s monster with pitchforks and torches.

All because of shame, insecurity, the perceived unacceptability (of the Shadow, or the beast/monster), and because of the doctor’s need (and Chet’s, …and mine?) to prove himself. Of course, Dr. Frankenstein’s actions also had to do with pride, the shiny side of shadowy shame.

I am hearing, dreaming all this on the heels of Pastor Fred’s sermon yesterday, about how there is nothing I can do to earn salvation or grace. It is “just because”, coming from God’s pure love.

I will confess to feeling stalked this year, a very vulnerable year for me, mostly because of the divorce. “Stalked” by alcohol, tv, writing, any addiction that might take hold and numb the pain of my everyday life awhile. Delaying of responsibility, of mature choices, all very tempting. Maybe stalked by more than that, some spiritual monster, but that’s a bigger, more loaded question, isn’t it?

I saw elements of this numbing behavior in the movie “Solitary Man” with Michael Douglas, also watched just last night. Sex, another numbing agent (and Mr. Douglas’ main one in the movie), might be the only one I have kept mostly at bay — though that’s as much from inexperience in dating and geekiness, as from intention. I certainly spend plenty of fantasy time, numbing my loneliness.

My “monsters” are multiplying, my hope becoming de-stabilized. Some stuff is beyond my control. Like I can’t shave fifteen years off my life to be in that age bracket I’d like to be in, where “fresh starts” are more natural, and floundering is easier to justify.

I’ve been mostly in a lost or “under attack” state for awhile now… which makes me think of that dark tunnel, and Frankenstein’s monster. (Who was himself a victim in some ways, if I read the novel and its mythic themes properly.)

I can barely see what I am fighting against, I’m not sure I even want to fight, and not sure I have what it takes to win the fight.

And I’m not sure where God is in all of it, either: why I don’t feel like I have been fought for, saved, or embraced. I take it on faith that I have been, but when the monsters come, and keep coming, it’s hard to keep the faith.

Bear Wide Receiver Hurd Exposed As Drug Kingpin

Franchise Cub Shortstop Castro Implicated in Rape Charge

Daniel “Car Bomb” Carcillo Suspended 7 Games for Vicious Head-Injuring Hit

Sam Hurd, formerly of the Chicago Bears & Dallas Cowboys (image via NY Daily News)

I awoke this morning and innocently turned on sports radio while doing some chores. I was hoping for a bit of “light” listening. Silly Mark! Lately, in the wake of the Penn State scandal, sports radio has become the last place one should go for good, clean fun.

The sujet du jour on my radio today was a young woman’s accusation that Chicago Cub shortstop and rising star Starling Castro had raped her. So the radio personalities (Mac and Speigel on The Score, for those who care) made the obligatory mentions of comparable past sportsmen accused or convicted of a similar crime: Ben Roethlisberger, Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant. (I’m not sure Kobe was actually mentioned, but I sure ain’t giving him a pass here just cuz Mac may have for the moment. Kobe’s a jerk.)

Full disclosure: I didn’t stick around for many details about the Castro case, and I’m not planning to provide them now, either. That’s what the REAL news outlets are for.

And yeah, I know most of the above is “alleged” –not to mention a hard hockey check (as referenced in my mock headline clipping) is not nearly in the same category as an actual felony– but I got a bigger point to make, and painting in broad strokes is simply what bloggers do… because we CAN! So don’t come in hard at me with your shoulder saying hockey enforcers have a place in the game, because that’s not what we’re talking ’bout here, okay?

What we are talking about here is the erosion of trust in people, in coaches, and in our “heroes”. Meanwhile, what’s this? I just saw Charles Barkley on tv the other day saying he’s still not a role model… except now he’s a pitch man for Weight Watchers and advocating better health. So which is it, Chas, are you a role model, or not?!

I also think with the Chicago guys (though they’re not from here, they just play here), we are facing an erosion of the generally wholesome values that used to be associated both with organized sports as a pastime, and with the Midwest as a whole.

Maybe I’m being naive again, but I don’t remember it being like this when I was a hopeful 10, 12, or 14-year-old student athlete and fan — when I had my un-tarnished sports hero posters plastered on my wall. (Okay, I also had a HOT Cheryl Ladd poster when I was 14, but that goes without saying…)

Steroids, cocaine, horny young men… yeah, I know they’ve all been around a long time. And the 24-hour sports networks and radio stations actually have not been around that long, all things considered. We’re still writing and re-writing the rules in some ways.

But as to the question of whether things are actually getting worse, or if we’re just finding out about them more frequently, I think things really are getting worse. For example, when technology advances, the ease of drug distribution would tend to advance as well. It’s simple science, with a large dose of moralizing, religious dialogue and political posturing thrown in just to muddy the water.

The religious piece is why I find the Sandusky (Penn State) and Sam Hurd cases so troubling.

In Sandusky’s case, the name of his supposedly charitable organization was The Second Mile. It’s a direct reference to Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount to “go a second mile” as proof of one’s own kindness and therefore of God’s goodness. So now my Jesus and his teachings are permanently tarnished worldwide by this sick old man out in Pennsylvania, and the unkind enablers who let him get away with it.

Meanwhile Hurd, at least according to the accounts of many in Dallas, was a very involved churchgoer and gave his props to Jesus in interviews plenty of times. So now his apparent “double life” comes out, and by association many other Christians end up looking like idiots, hypocrites, or both.

Not that we aren’t. Like President Jimmy Carter, I too can admit to mine eye causing me to sin in my mind plenty, like with that Cheryl Ladd poster I mentioned above.

But Americans tend to like keeping things simpler. One is either a good person, or a bad one. Sure, we often give our Charlie Sheens and Mike Tysons second chances, and sometimes they make good on those chances. But we also seem to want them to be bad, or to fail. We like our scapegoats, or our guilty pleasures, however you want to spin it.

Winning!  (Or are we just devolving into a bunch of overgrown teenagers?)

When it comes to crime, or law and order, we can be a puritanical lot, as well. It’s easier to demonize someone than to face the hard truth of “There but for the grace of God go I”. This “tough” attitude also gets certain people elected, whereas humility is generally derided as unnecessary in a leader.

So I predict that one of these big Chicago sports/crime cases will end up at least as the basis for a Law and Order episode by the end of 2012.  The dramatic potential, for example, of Starling Castro leaving the country (on a previously scheduled trip) the day after the alleged incident, is too tasty a titillating tidbit for tv producers to avoid indulging.

Okay, hands successfully wrung.

Now would my Chicago Bulls please just get through this short season with minimal scandal (or injury), and bring the NBA title back where it belongs… to the Heartland!

I used to actually know my friends.

I suppose I still do, but I certainly don’t know all my Friends.

Know what I mean?

When I first started on Facebook,

Facebook layout as of 2007 -Image via Wikipedia

Remember this?

…as a refugee from bad old MySpace, I enjoyed catching up with old classmates and friends, or discovering a few new ones based on common interests 0r Friends in common. I still do that, of course. Just not as much as I used to.

For one thing, Facebook has kept changing rather rapidly, and I think so have I –both as a person and as a Facebook user.

I used to casually “troll” for Facebook Friends by going to an existing Friend’s friend list to see if they’d had contact with somebody I knew or was looking for. But now, Facebook itself has quickly become much more expansive in defining a potential Friend to suggest adding to my Social Network (click for a curious Fincher/Sorkin movielink, to The Film Sufi).

Or else the privacy pirates at Facebook have just gotten more agressive, …if you see beefing up “You May Know” as a marketing move, then I would certainly agree.

So when I clicked on my “You May Know…” Facebook link last Saturday, then asked to “See All”, I had no clue what a heavy load I was in for. Literally hundreds of names were on that list.

When all those algorithms kicked into high gear, then all the people I sorta know …who know other people I sorta know …started showing up on the list.  Then I got a little giddy and carried away with the Friend Requests. The list kept coming, and I kept clicking “+1Friend” every six names or so, and never did get down to the bottom of the list.

But I now fear I may be overreaching in who might be considered an actual friend.

Sorry. I just like people, and I want everyone to like me, too… whether or not you choose to “Like” me, or to “Like” Marking Time (or to like marking time, but that’s another story…)

So… if you are among my new potential acquaintances, or a semi-famous person whose article I once read a couple years back, or a person I talked to at a conference once for two minutes, or a hot chick, or the child of old casual friends whom I’m just curious about, feel free to Deny me.

If you need to Ignore me, or Deny me three times, or throw me under the bus for my questionable political agenda or whatever, go right ahead. I will not be offended, for honestly we barely know each other, so I can’t expect you to care.

Even so, here’s a small, relevant musical gift for your trouble. Stop on by to see this Solitary Man again sometime – if you like me, that is.

My man Chris Isaak covering recent Rock Hall of Famer Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man”.

Related articles

• Why Did My Facebook Friend Unfriend Me? (greatmentor.net)
• 10 Types of Facebook Friends From High School (socialnetworkinglifestyle.com)

Chet the young lion, ...before he became the old junkie. Image by svennevenn via Flickr

Or if I do, I will not beat myself up over not keeping them…

Life’s too short to make oneself miserable about not getting over some self-made bar.

It’s just bad juju: judging my personal success or failure by a narcissistic or socially-derived, fairly arbitrary standard that has nothing to do with my belovedness “under God”.

But I will try to keep moving forward in 2012 nevertheless, whether or not I stumble — and I’m sure I will. It’s the nature of the beast.

One way I’m moving forward: I’ve been back hard at work lately on my novel (or back “at play”, to be honest). However, I’ve never been very disciplined in my creative writing (to be honest yet again).

Still, I must say I am enjoying my on-and-off, undisciplined research on jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, the model for one of my main characters and one of the most undisciplined and sloppily brilliant “stars” of the past fifty years.

Chet, singing and playing in 1953, when he was the same age as my own novel’s 1959 “hero”, Bill Marino.

My novel, tentatively titled Murder at Birdland, has changed substantially in its focus over the past few years, in both its themes and the characters who will carry it forward.

It was originally planned as a John Irving-like study of family life and socio-religious interactions in 1959 Massachusetts. It is now looking like a much grittier study of bohemian life for young musicians, Beatniks, addicts and other ne’er-do-wells in 1959 Manhattan. But I’ll still have a little “vacation” trip to quiet Cape Cod, MA thrown in, to introduce the McKittredge family and provide a sweet, offbeat counterpoint to NYC’s hip, urban milieu. (Yes, I used the word “milieu”. I’m a snobby intellectual. So sue me.)

It may be wishful thinking, or coattail-riding, but I want to casually incorporate a few well-known figures like poet Allen Ginsberg and jazz saxophone legend Lester Young on the fringes of my murder mystery. The plot is loosely based on the real-life murder of Irving “Zach” Levy, one of the owners of Birdland, the 52nd Street club that was the epicenter of the jazz world in this fascinating period of American history.

By settling in on the eve of the Kennedy era, I can still focus on the moral, political and cultural transition from Eisenhower’s sunny (but shady) late Fifties into the darker but equally fascinating early Sixties. But by moving my setting from pastoral Cape Cod to jumpin’ Manhattan– the original fast-paced postmodern city that defined hyperspace before supercomputers were even conceived– we get more latitude in what we can explore.

Of course, 1959 Manhattan is also to some extent the world of  the television hit “Mad Men“, which I like but do not follow closely and do not intend to emulate. Instead, “Lady Day” Billie Holliday and her ilk are just closer to the bone for me, personally. As are geeky photographer William Claxton and seminal Beat/hippie poet Diane DiPrima, two other real-life models for my novel’s characters. They’re more overtly odd, and broken, as opposed to the shiny exteriors and dark underbellies of discreetly philandering ad executives and repressed suburban housewives.

I also think there are a lot of contemporary parallels with that historical period, compared to the Bush and Obama years. It’s in the clash of hope with disillusionment, when we find out how hard it really is to live ethically and yet still hold onto our “happily-ever-after” ideals. Vietnam (and yes, that region was simmering in ’59) is not exactly Afghanistan, but you see what I’m getting at, right?

Bringing all this down to human scale, in the lives of some hopeful but deeply troubled twenty-somethings, should make it a story not just about the Fifties, or a few creative pioneers, but a book about you and me, here and now.

But like I said, I can’t even resolve to finish it this year. Instead I entrust this challenging but enjoyable work to Destiny, to Future Mark, whom I barely know and am only just now beginning to trust.

But he’s a good guy. A little geeky, but with a good heart. I think you’ll like Future Mark, and the stories he has to tell.

Related articles

• The Drive to the Cape (lifeabsorbed.com)
• Chet Baker & Diane DiPrima – Getting Lost in the Late Fifties (markingtime4now.wordpress.com)
• Time for New Year resolutions again (thehindu.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Since the original lonelygirl15 was a scripted hoax posing as “reality”, I will state right up fron here (not being a fan of hoaxes) that this post is not really about the former YouTube star, but is in fact about real loneliness. So if you can’t hack being both amused and depressed simultaneously, or were just looking for yet another cheap video voyeur’s thrill by checking in on young lonelygirl Bree, then get out now while the getting’s good.

Nevertheless, in the interest of clarity, here’s a thumbnail sketch of Bree, the actual lonelygirl15, compliments of Wikipedia:

lonelygirl15  first came to international attention ostensibly as a “real” video blogger who had achieved massive popularity on YouTube. The show was eventually proved as a hoax by suspicious viewers who identified the actress playing Bree as 19-year old American-New Zealand actress Jessica Rose.^[2]

I will also offer this tidbit: Wired magazine did an article a few years back tracking the lonelygirl15 phenomenon (a good pre-Twitter “follow”, for you dull-minded youngsters who don’t remember the days before Twitter).  The Wired piece was a bit of the “where are they now” stuff,  but mostly it discussed the internet business and social media aspects of lonelygirl15. But, if you want to see if Bree found love, or got divorced, or whatever… maybe start there.

For everyone else still sticking around, call me lonelyguy46.

This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I was sparked to explore this theme in my quest, during a challenging but healthy divorce process, to give myself permission to feel my real feelings, express them when I need to, and maybe even build community by being transparent. Or by blogging…

I was also sparked by a close listen to a classic song by a classic folksinger, The Original Lonelygirl, Joni Mitchell. The song is called Urge for Going, and it goes like this:

Ahhhh.

Urge for Going  (Joni Mitchell, released 1970 [B-side of  Big Yellow Taxi single] )

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling’s heart could win
But when the leaves fell trembling down
Bully winds did rub their faces in the snow
He got the urge for going And I had to let him go

He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

The warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They’ve got the urge for going, they’ve got the wings to go

They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I’ll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
and I’ll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I’d like to call back summertime and have her stay just another month or so
She’s got the urge for going and I guess she’ll have to go

And she gets the urge for going when meadow grass is turning brown
All her empires are falling down
winter’s closing in

Though I’m a big Joni Mitchell fan, I had not been aware of this song till I heard it the other day in a cover version by the great Irish folk-rock singer-songwriter Luka Bloom. Bloom did a terrific album of covers a few years back, called Keeper of the Flame. Upon hearing Urge for Going, it felt familiar, but only vaguely so.  Honestly, I thought maybe it was from another beloved Canadian folksinger, Leonard Cohen.  So I looked it up and was not surprised to find it was a Joni song.

I’m inclined to say more of a personal nature about my experience of the song, and my lonely state of late, and Seasonal Affect Disorder, and the starkness of winter in the upper Midwest (or in Saskatchewan, Canada where Joni wrote it).

But I just got called in to work on short notice. So all that will have to wait for another day.

I’ve got the urge for staying, but I guess I’ll have to go.

I dropped the ball this week, friends. But I’m not alone.

(Yes, Virginia, there IS a Monty Python video for every blogging occasion. This makes three I have used in the past two weeks.)

First, here’s the response I posted to a Commenter at my original (and erroneous, though not slanderous) MT post about Jon Bon Jovi‘s cardiac arrest/coma/death/hoax:

I did not write the original Bon Jovi story, I foolishly re-posted the headline & link (I think just by hitting a Facebook button), without verifying the truth. I barely skimmed the material. Didn’t find out it was an internet hoax (my first to be burned by, btw) till a day or two later. Should have known better. Sorry folks. And rock on, Jon!

JBJ proves he's got a sense of humor about it all.

Secondly, here is a link to that much more “trustworthy” site, E! Online News, explaining how the tempest in a teapot about Bon Jovi’s death got started, and then unfolded over the course of two days:

E! Online

I feel so used. So icky. So corrupted. So, so…

Aw, so what?!

Does one celebrity more or less on the planet really matter THAT much? My own prior post, seen here, was actually not so much about Jon, but about just such an imbalance in American popular culture and trends. It galls me that the Bon Jovi fake death got as much if not more press than those of Czech president Vaclav Havel, atheist blowhard Christopher Hitchens, and North Korean kindly old grandmother Kim Jong-Il.

I got caught in the crossfire, though. Tried to play both sides of the fence: hook you with the popular stuff, then hit you with the serious news and commentary. At least– unlike that ridiculous Forbes.com headline that also mentioned Bon Jovi– I’m not trying to hook you to sell you some stock tips.

All this business about what’s trending, and why, actually makes my head hurt. It’s one of the reasons I still don’t tweet. We already have such short attention spans as children of the Fruity Pebbles generation. (Is Fred Flintstone still on that box?) Why make it worse?

On this point, I have borrowed one of my life mottos from my hero, Henry David Thoreau, father of the civil disobedience movement and therefore a likely great-great-grandfather of the Occupy movement. In his best-known book, Walden, he said this:

“Read not the Times, but the eternities.”

In other words, pay LOTS of attention to that man behind the curtain. Don’t let them yank your chain, or pull your lever, or tell you that what’s important today will be important forever.

And when you make a mistake and get suckered into an internet hoax, forgive yourself, forgive each other, and move on.

What are you still doing here? Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

Image via Wikipedia

International Rockstar Legend Jon Bon Jovi dead again at 49.

The “Wanted, dead or alive” comments will be flying fast & furious about this one. I was not a huge fan of Bon Jovi’s music, but the man did carry himself honorably as a person.

A decent actor, too (though don’t let that cause you to spend $10 on his current “New Year’s Eve”… I hear it’s awful despite some good actors, and as a cheap grab for holiday movie-goers cash, I’m betting it is in fact pretty shallow and bad).

I’m not even sure why I feel called to respond publicly to Jon’s passing. Maybe it’s a “fellow Italian” thing.

Or maybe about striking a balance between “pop culture” and more serious culture, given the passing also this week of three other major cultural influences: North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, Vaclav Havel (playwright & former Czech president), and Christopher Hitchens (foremost international spokesman for atheists and champion of scientific thinking).

It also strikes me as ironic in the face of my post last week about death, Thomas a’ Kempis and his classic book “The Imitation of Christ”. Indeed, we all need reminders now and then that tomorrow is not promised to us (as Thom blathers on about), so we can let that fact lead us to greater spiritual discipline, and appreciation of what is possible or what is good about today.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matt. 5:4)