The Lonely American

"Knowing, in a deep-down sense, where you are from contributes not only to your sense of identity but to your sense of community." ~Vance Packard, A Nation of Strangers

Last night I picked up the current Utne to read an article called "The Lonely American." The article begins with some grave statistics, cited for you here:

Two recent studies suggest that our society is in the midst of a dramatic and progressive slide toward disconnection. In the first, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), Duke University researchers found that between 1985 and 2004 the number of people with whom the average American discussed “important matters” dropped from three to two. Even more stunning, the number of people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled: In 2004 individuals without a single confidant made up a quarter of those surveyed. Our country is now filled with them.

The second study was the 2000 U.S. census. One of the most remarkable facts to emerge from this census is that one of four households consists of one person only. The number of one-person households has been increasing steadily since 1940, when they accounted for roughly 7 percent of households. Today, there are more people living alone than at any point in U.S. history. Placing the census data and the GSS side by side, the evidence that this country is in the midst of a major social change is overwhelming.

The article is excerpted from the book of the same name by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz, whose aim appears to be to show how the American lifestyle leads to social isolation.

They note that socializing is not the priority it ought to be in our culture. They cite the frenetic pace of life driven by materialistic pursuits as part of the problem. They also note that social isolation is damaging to both health and ecology, though I didn't make the full connection on this last assertion.

What I found absent in the article, and hope it is not deliberately ignored in the book, was any reference to the groundbreaking work by Vance Packard on this topic, A Nation of Strangers.

Olds and Schwartz may be correctly sounding alarm bells regarding isolation, but what they're seeing is the fruit of what Packard cited more than forty years ago. In his 1962 analysis, "Personal isolation is becoming a major social fact of our time. A great many people are disturbed by the feeling that they are rootless or increasingly anonymous, that they are living in a continually changing environment where there is little sense of community."

Before citing more from Packard, though, it could be that this is simply the fruit of acidity of modernity. Existential philosophers like Camus and Sartre observed this "alienation and despair" as an isolating phenomenon which for many is the human condition in our Western world. The problem with the "existential hero" is that he can't connect, and thus claims it noble to stand alone.

The reality is that we weren't created to stand alone. Families, communities, tribes, clans, associations, friends... we need them because life is hard. And we're not gods, we're mortals who have a lot of hard things to deal with from time to time.

One of the things I remember most vividly from Packard's book was that people are more mobile in our modern (Fifties/Sixties, USA) society than ever before. With the free-wheeling lifestyle glorified in books like Kerouac's On the Road, young people left their stifling rural communities in droves and went to the big city where the lights are bright on Brodadway. The critically acclaimed Midnight Cowboy (Jon Voigt, Dustin Hoffman) portrayed one pair of lost souls in this exodus. And the theme song by Nillson says it all, "Everybody's talkin' at me, I don't hear a word their saying." Seeker Joe Buck finds himself alone in a big world, and it's a hard world.

But Packard cited other causes for this rootlessness, much of it work related. In the course of my life I've been aware too that military kids and preachers' kids are often the victims of mobile lifestyles that make it challenging to develop connections. It's almost a byword now to say, rather flippantly, you have to go where the jobs are.

For more on Packard, and an interesting application of Packard's observations to the Red States / Blue States divide, check out this perspective by the Brothers Judd.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Ok, admit it. You loved the song, have always loved the song, but have never been entirely sure what it was all about.

That’s how it has been for me to some extent. Right from the start when it first aired in the Summer of Love it had a gripping, seductive quality. The chord progressions mesmerized as did the lyrics, strangely abstract yet vivid enough to play with your imagination. It seemed like there was something there but you just couldn’t get your hands on it. At least that’s how it was for me. Whether the lyrics or the evocative music, in England when Sgt. Pepper was the number one album, this was the number one single.

Twenty years later I still played the 45 once in a while. (I think it’s still inside my Wheels of Fire album by Cream.) And to this day as an amateur pianist I can’t help but run through those chords now and then, just letting the sweet sounds saturate the room.

But those lyrics… Unraveling the poetic unto total transparency is not always necessary. Appreciating a turn of phrase, and accepting the ambiguities, this is what gives a poem or a song like this one, and many of Dylan’s, it’s longevity. The mind can play with it endlessly, like an impossible labyrinth or Borges’ Library of Babel, and you never figure it out. But each time it leaves you with something to take away, a moment of delight and self-forgetfulness.

It's the opening line of the second verse that really used to get me. "She said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see..." Which truth? The truth that there is no reason? Or the ultimate truth that caused her face to turn a whiter shade of pale?

The playing cards speak to me of the old "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" type of thing, though Kenny Rogers didn't do The Gambler till a few years later. Dylan, too, refers to having to play the cards your dealt in Series of Dreams. And the last couplet in that stanza "Although my eyes were open, they might just as well've been closed" it speaks of an interiority of transcendence, the contrariness of Truth with a capital T, and seeing the light. Which I did, but did not. Or, of blindness in spite of light.

Here then are the lyrics. Frivolity and fear, clarity and obfuscation, vividness and ambiguity all rolled into one. Afterwards I've given you a link to a page with much more insight about this song than I would have mustered on my own. Before you head there be sure to watch the YouTube vid below featuring Gary Brooker, who co-wrote this, accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Ringo Starr on drums.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

We skipped the light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said there is no reason,
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards,
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast.
And although my eyes were open,
They might just as well've been closed.

And so it was later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

For more background about White Shade, check this site out. Listen first to the music, however. Let it take you away.

In Defense of Lincoln

“The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice.” ~Dinesh D’Souza

When the news broke it was really quite a surprise. This month Duke Ellington became the first black ever minted on U.S. currency. What surprised me is that I’d never noticed the absence before. In January we inaugurated our first black president, which escaped no one’s notice. With Ellington’s image now imprinted on a quarter, one wonders what we'll see in March.

What I found especially interesting is that when I Googled it, the story was in British, Netherlands, and a host of other European news feeds. I didn’t realize this was an event of such global significance. But it’s a good move and probably overdue.

I doubt there’s any relationship but it did make me think once more of how this is the month of Abe Lincoln’s birthday bicentennial. He of the five dollar bill fame would also probably be saying, “It’s about time.” If he’d lived another hundred years I wonder what he’d have thought of the birth of jazz. It doesn’t take much for me to picture the tall lanky Lincoln tapping his foot to the rhythm of a big band.

Lincoln’s importance was never questioned when I was a kid growing up in the fifties and sixties, but like everyone else who ever achieved anything, the detractors will have their day. Throughout my life I have in my readings run across Lincoln anecdotes that helped define him as a wise, sensitive leader who was driven more by conviction than ambition. His wise words and carefully considered actions have provided inspiration for millions. And he never flinched from making known where he stood on the slavery issue.

As he built his cabinet, President Obama let it be known that he was in league with the pro-Lincoln camp. At least this was the image he sought to project by carrying around the latest Lincoln bestseller Team of Rivals. To be pro-Lincoln is not only a pro-black position, it is pro-humanity. The book touts the genius of Lincoln in selecting a cabinet comprised of men more likely to get into a barroom brawl than run the ship of state, but as history has shown, the backwoodsman from Illinois achieved his aims thereby.

In keeping with this Lincoln theme, I commend to you an insight-filled article by Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza is a deep well of experience and knowledge, and his observations on our times cannot be easily dismissed. Here in this article, which appeared in the April 2005 issue of American History Magazine, he defends Lincoln against his critics. Be sure to read Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate Statesman?

Getting in Focus: Five Minutes with Jeff Frey

"Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative act." ~Ansel Adams

I met Jeff Frey in 1987. My success in setting up an advertising program at AMSOIL that year caught the attention of a marketing VP for The Chromaline Corporation, a small manufacturing firm here in the screen printing industry. I was hired to become their in-house ad agency.

Chromaline had gone through four ad agencies in less than three years and, among other problems, their literature lacked continuity at the time. I set about to review and analyze their sales and product lit. After having been at AMSOIL, where standards were extremely high, it seemed the Chromaline lit (at this time) was shoddy at best. The product photos on these printed pieces looked especially bad and washed out, so I decided to switch the company to another pro photographer in town who I thought did decent work. First, however, I had to find the original photos that were used in the literature. Chromaline made photostencil films and emulsions in an industry where imaging is important.

Then it happened. I still remember the moment. I saw a black and white glossy, so crisp and rich it was literally eye-popping. The subject matter: a gallon container of photostencil emulsion. I knew then that the problem lay not with the photographer. I found it stunning that a boring, black container could look so dynamic.

Jeff's work has always been nothing short of astonishing. He does true magic with a camera. There are no shortcuts. His equipment is always state-of-the-art, and the outcomes always worth the effort.

Like myself, Jeff is also a New Jersey transplant to the Midwest. But high standards are what brought us together. This past week we talked about the photography business.

Ennyman: How did you get into photography as a profession?
JF: It was a hobby. Then I worked at a camera store here in Duluth, got friendly with an established commercial photographer and partnered up with him. I had pursued the hobby seriously when I was working in the camera store.

Ennyman: What have you enjoyed most about the photography business?
JF: The sales tax reports. (laughs) Writing the check to the department of revenue.
Besides that, my favorite thing to shoot is people at their jobs, because I allow them to participate in the building of the image. They tell me what is important, what they do, how they manipulate what they do. It’s a collaborative effort where the subject is helping to create the image.

Now, with digital, when I shoot to a computer, it’s very easy to get feedback and work together.

Ennyman: What are the two or three biggest mistakes that amateur photographers make?
JF: Thinking they can make money at it. (laughs)
An artist is not necessarily an entrepreneur. Just because you can satisfy customers with nice pictures does not mean you can have a successful business.

Ennyman: What about lighting… how important is that with digital?
JF: It’s every bit as important as it ever used to be. But you don’t need as much now.

You’re way better off making it right from the start. Basically I weigh situation. After I understand that aesthetically it can happen one way or the other, I ask where it is going to take less effort. You have to know the limits of Photoshop. When it comes to light on someone’s face, there’s no way I am going to try to fix that later.

Ennyman: Do you have any secrets you’re willing to share that help turn good photos into great photos?
JF: Make sure the eyes are in focus. Also, it always makes a photo more interesting with more depth if you include a complimentary foreground element.

Ennyman: How has the digital age changed professional photography?
JF: Formerly, a Polaroid test was as much immediate feedback as we could get to check lighting, etc. The Polaroid was never the final product. You always had to then shoot the film and hope you get it right on film, like facial expression or catching the peak of a jump with a dancer. The dancers are thrilled because they don’t have to jump forty times to make sure you got it once.

I don’t have to worry about bringing different types of film, different speeds, different color balance film. Now we can white balance in the camera, can change the sensitivity on the fly.

Check out a portion of Jeff's portfolio here

Get In The Game

On Sunday our pastor preached on this theme, saying that it's time to get in the game. The message resonated with me because it seems like there are simply too many people content to sit in the stands and watch as spectators. Or to sit on their couches or their duffs or whatever... waiting for the next thing to happen, instead of making it happen.

Life is for living.

The message Sunday was about Christians who expect the clergy, pastors and priests to do the work of ministry. But this blog post is intended to prod all of us to get get passionate about making a difference in the world. There are needs all around us. And each of us has different abilities or strengths. It's time to get out of the stands and into the field of play.

Maybe your thing is business. Excel in that and you can employ others whom you train and help get into the career game. There are a lot of talented, smart people who have been hurt by this past year's economic turmoil. If you can make money and employ even a few of these good people you will have made a huge difference.

Maybe you're an artist. By creating and sharing your work you inspire others with creative gifts. Don't quit. Stay in the game. We need art, lest the entire Western world become a sterile white walled environment with no character.

If you're a musician, follow that passion and let others be swept up in the music. Music can help people forget their pain. Music can fill the long voids in a sorrowing heart. Music can inspire action... or reflection. Music can make people laugh and smile. Stay with it. Find new ways to share it. We need your gifts.

Writers, don't despair. There are some who will say it's all been said before. Yes, this may be true, there's "nothing new under the sun" on one level. But on another level, we need your voices, your words, the prismatic revelations of your hearts on paper and/or monitor screens. Nothing new? Every moment in time everything is new, and this world is exploding with newness. New stories being experienced, new stories that need to be told.

Journalists, stay in the game, because the politicians need watchdogs.

And if your calling is to the political arena, don't despair at the ethical contortions and inefficiencies of government. At all levels we need people with good hearts who have the courage to get in the game and stay in the game. Don't give up. You can make a difference....

Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Derek Jeter, Pablo Picasso, Mother Theresa, Jack Nicholson... we know their names because they were not spectators in life. There are millions of others who are lesser known, who are also seriously pursuing their callings or dreams. We do not know their names, but we see the fruit of their passion.

If you're just watching, and drifting... wake up! There's work to be done. Get stirred and make a difference. Get in the game.

The Unfinished Stories (part 3)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

The narrator, writer Joe Urban, has learned of a relatively unknown writer whose work is purportedly incredible. Till now, his own writing has been impotent in part because of a lack of passion for his subject matter. As he learns more about this unknown, it fires him and sets him out on a quest...

Only two people have ever had access to Richard Allen Garston's works. One was his friend Gary Spencer. The second, Garston's brother.

The Unfinished Stories of Richard Allen Garston (3)

I set about to find his brother and it led me to Camden in South Jersey where he had been pastor of an Independent Baptist congregation. Greg Garston had died the year previous. My determination to locate his wife, however, was rewarded. Her name was Emma and we spent a small portion of an afternoon together talking in generalities until I finally came to my point.

"I don't mean to pry, but can we talk a little bit about your husband's brother?"

"Well, he was a writer."

"Anything else?"

"He seemed very sad and dark, like he had secrets."

"What kind of secrets?" I asked.

She seemed unable to answer.

"I was told that your husband became caretaker of Richard's manuscripts after Richard died."

"I don't think so."

"What do you mean, you don't think so.?"

"I mean, Greg did that before Richard died."

"Did what?"

"Was caretaker of Richard's work. I'm using your word. I would have put it differently. We stored a lot of his things at our place. Collected them in our attic. Richard had a small apartment in Somerville. Not a lot of space."

"Did you ever read any of his stories?"

"They were stories? No, Greg made me practically take a vow not to look inside those boxes. One day he decided that he didn't want them in the attic anymore and he had them incinerated."

"And you never opened any of those boxes? Weren't you even just a little bit curious?"

She lightly scratched her chin with the tips of her fingernails.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I was."

"But you never looked?"

"One should not make a habit of keeping secrets from one's spouses."

"So you did look!"

"Please, I'm sorry."

"Sorry about what? So you opened a box."

"You never know what you'll find when you open boxes. Some boxes are better left unopened."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not sure what to say. I'm afraid to tell you the truth."

"Why? What is there to conceal? Your husband isn't going to be angry any more. He's passed away. And Richard Allen Garston has been dead for a dog's age. Who is there left to offend?"

Emma stood up and left the room. I could hear her crying in the other room. Then I heard the sound of drawers opening, interspersed with rummaging. When she returned she was hold a single sheet of yellowed paper with typing on it. In the lower right it had the initials R.A.G. I took it from her as if receiving a sacred host. It was a fragment from a story beginning, ending with these words:

Untitled
A sunday afternoon ramble through the underbrush, nettles and thorns, where ideas lay dormant, nestled in for winter, hibernating against the cold. He had left the path to forge his own way. He wasn't sure what to write about any more. There were so many things he had become unsure about. Now this. He had lost his way.

Here's the reality: he was tired. And indecisive, vascillating between an ideal of what his life ought to be and trying in vain to find a voice that was authentic. All decisions originating from within himself seemed arbitrary, thus incapable of commanding his complete and undivided allegiance. The result: a paralysis of will, an inability to mobilize his powers, to consolidate the resources of his mind, heart, soul, experience, training.

He was wounded, with a wound he knew incurable.

In an upstairs room, sitting in the dilapidated cushioned chair which he had obtained at a flea market for fifty cents, he organized his thoughts and prepared to scratch out the story of his life, a suicide note. --R.A.G.

I was stunned, for this writer, this writer who had lost his way, who had been wounded with an incurable wound, who was once confident but now confused... this writer was me. Inside I trembled, though I concealed it from my hostess.

"Do you have more?" I asked.

She looked as if she were about to break down. Her cheeks were red, eyes averted.

"I'm having trouble putting this all together," I said. "For years your husband stored his brother's manuscipts in his attic. Then one day he decides to burn everything. Did he ever say why?"

"He only said that it was 'God's will' and that he didn't want to talk about it."

"Was this like, say, a week after Richard died?"

She shook her head.

"A month?"

She continued shaking her head.

"A year? Or when?"

When she didn't make any reply there was a long pause in our conversation which, though awkward, gave each of us a few moments to reflect. As I studied her pale grey eyes I could only guess where her thoughts were escorting her. The ticking clock on the mantle seemed to stress that I had overstayed my welcome, nevertheless I did need to ask about one more thing.

"Would you mind if I asked how Richard died?"

"It was terrible. He died in a fire."

"I thought it was a suicide."

"Yes, he set himself on fire in his bed."

"Sounds like an awful way to choose to die. How did they know it wasn't accidental."

"Oh yes, that's exactly what they thought until Greg got the letter."

"So there was a suicide note?"

"It was mailed the morning of the day he died."

"You're sure of that? And you're sure it was his handwriting."

"Definitely. He had a very distincitive way of making his letters, all full and round. His penmanship was like a work of art, like calligraphy. His whole life was that way, actually."

"Do you remember what it said?"

"Something like, 'When you read this I'll be gone.'"

"You sound as if you almost liked him."

She did not reply and I could tell she cared about him very deeply.

"How often did you see him?"

She didn't answer again.

"Do you still have his last letter?"

It seemed a stupid question as soon as I said it. Her husband had burned everything else the guy had written.

The story fragment was lying on the table and I selfishly wanted to ask if I could have it. Instead I pulled two dollars from my wallet and set them on the table. "Can you photocopy this for me?" Then I scribbled my address on a piece of paper. "Mail it to this address."

She nodded, as if this wouldn't be a problem.

"Oh, did you know his friend Gary Spencer?"

"His name was mentioned a few times. A writer friend, I believe."

"I'm trying to find him. Someone said he joined a monastery. You wouldn't have any idea where, would you?"

I left feeling pretty much like I'd come to a dead end and feeling sad in myself for these two brothers. Still, the blue sky and brightness of the sun lifted me up a bit as I returned north to my home. Though my thoughts were strange and all over the place, they continually returned to a single notion: to now find, if it were possible, Gary Spencer.

CONTINUED

Series of Dreams

I get asked from time to time which is my favorite Dylan song, and I laugh. Not possible to list one. I do, however, have lists of favorites. Favorite acoustic, favorite lyrics, favorites that get most played over the years, favorite live versions, favorites for their significance.... Series of Dreams would make a few lists. It has certainly received plenty of playtime in my life. What impresses me in part is how the music conveys the hauntedness of the lyrics. Both -- music and lyrics -- emerge and merge in surrealistic streams from a nebulous center somewhere in the deep places of Dylan's soul, and connect with my own deep places.

The poetic phrasings are woven throughout with an originality that is completely Dylan. Who else would write a song like this? "I was thinking of a series of dreams..." From this matter of fact opening statement everything flows out. It's a mature Dylan making life observations from a place further down the road.

I, too, relate to this imagery because there is an unreal quality to dreams, and in this instance, to memory and ultimately life. There are times when one is older that our memories and experiences are something akin to a series of dreams made of tissue being disintegrated by time. And like the images in the song we try to grasp their meanings which, like dreams, are uniquely our own and not always understood, if there are meanings at all.

Series of Dreams

I was thinking of a series of dreams

Where nothing comes up to the top

Everything stays down where it's rooted

And comes to a permanent stop

Wasn't thinking of anything specific

Like in a dream, where someone wakes up and screams

Nothing too very scientific

Just thinking of a series of dreams.

Thinking of a series of dreams

Where the time and the tempo drag

And there's no exit in any direction

'Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes

Wasn't making any great connection

Wasn't falling for any intricate schemes

Nothing that would pass inspection

Just thinking of a series of dreams

Dreams where the umbrella is open

And into the path you are hurled

And the cards are no good that you're holding

Unless they're from another world

In one, the surface was frozen

In another, I witnessed a crime

In one, I was running and in another

All I seemed to be doing was climb

Wasn't looking for any special assistance

Nor going to any great extremes

I'd already gone the distance

Just thinking of a series of dreams

Dreams where the umbrella is open

And into the path you are hurled

And the cards are no good that you're holding

Unless they're from other world

I'd already gone the distance

Just thinking of a series of dreams

Just thinking of a series of dreams

Just thinking of a series of dreams

Copyright SPECIAL RIDER MUSIC