DEEP THOUGHTS (AND SHALLOW ONES) FROM A WRITER-PRODUCER-POET-COLUMNIST WHO'S STILL TRYING TO FIGURE THINGS OUT
A friend who shall be nameless (because I’ve forgotten who it was – sorry whoever you are) sent me the cartoon above awhile back. And recently another friend asked me the appropriate question.
So now you’ve got the answer. Yessiree. Or, to put it another way:
LYMI,
LB
Like most people, I live a life where if anything can go wrong, it does.
Several months ago, though, the Universe took pity on this obscure inhabitant of the Milky Way, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around what happened.
Gwen the Beautiful and I were in China when creation itself seemed to reach out and touch me and say, “This is your moment, Larry B!”
What a moment it was! Far from cosmic. Not especially significant in any broad sense. But oh-so satisfying.
Gwen and I were at a showbiz party. Surrounded by stars of the Chinese stage and screen. Our Generous Hostess asked if I played any musical instrument, and I’d had just enough wine to say, “I play the drums.”
At that, our Hostess grinned and clapped her hands together. Immediately, her Major Domo rushed to my side.
“You will like this,” he said and ushered me into the next room, which was set up like a bandstand, complete with instruments. Behind a line-up of guitars and keyboards was the drum kit of any drummer’s dreams. Drums, drums, and more drums. Big cymbals. Little cymbals. Everything and anything that went crash, bam, or boom.
“Music is Madame’s passion,” the Major Domo said. He pulled the drum “throne” out for me. “Please—rock on.”
I’ve played the drums for over fifty years. Started in the Junior High band. My parents got me my own drum kit, a Ludwig Buddy Rich Super Classic in “black diamond pearl” in 1958.
My high school buddy, tenor sax man Ron Tiersky (now an eminent political scientist teaching at Amherst), and I started a band that played at all the school events and gigged around locally as well.
For awhile I thought I’d make drumming my life’s work. Except that I wasn’t quite good enough for that. Had one tiny little weakness—keeping a steady beat.
I turned to the typewriter, and later the computer, for my livelihood. Still, over the years I’ve played with a great many musicians, both minor and major. I love doing it, but every session has been stressful at best…and a few have been outright terrifying.
For some reason, however, that night in China I wasn’t at all frightened or even tense.
I sat down, picked up the sticks, and started wailing.
And as I played, party guests who were musicians made their way into the room, grabbed guitars, began playing. Guests who were singers joined in. We played together in various combinations, and as though we’d known each other for years, traveling a rocking road from ’50s rockabilly through ’70s psychedelia to 21st Century pop.
We jammed for hours, and everything I did sounded…well, to my ear I sounded the way I’d always wanted to, for the first time in my drumming life. I was wild, but my beat was steady. I hit the heights I’d always aimed for but never came even close to before.
When it was over, and we’d all crashed from exhaustion, I looked around at the happy faces of my One Night Band Mates, and then I looked up at the ceiling, trying to see beyond it, to the stars.
Two thoughts leapt into my mind.
The first one was, “Thanks.”
The second was, “Why?”
Since that night, I’ve often relived the exhilaration I felt when, for a few hours, I got a taste of being someone I’d so much wanted to be when I was young.
And, each time, my gratitude immediately is followed by a search for the cause. Finally, I decided it had to be the drum kit. The quality of its components. The way they were set up.
If those drums were mine….
I checked out the price online and found that it was way out of my reach. But I saw another kit, similar but way more affordable. And so, after fifty-plus years with my original Ludwigs, I finally bought new drums.
They arrived a few days ago, and I spent the next several hours setting them up, tuning the heads, doing the things drummers do. I’ve been playing constantly ever since.
Do I sound the way I did that night in China?
Gwen says, “Of course you do.”
But my ear tells me something different.
I need to make sure. To know, absolutely, whether the Universe handed me a one-nighter or intends for Larry B to rock on.
Anyone out there have a band that needs a drummer? Or want to jam?
Give me a call.
The cartoon by Joe Dater above speaks for itself.
I love it and hate it and can’t help wondering if it also speaks for the human condition. Or maybe only for our society and our time.
Or–
Never mind. I’m too depressed to keep pursuing this train of thought. I hope the obviously brilliant Mr. Dater is handling it better than I am.
This and more at Joe Dator – Cartoonist
LYMI,
LB
Every night for the last three weeks I’ve had the same dream.
More than every night, in fact, because it comes back to me any time I relax or close my eyes.
For someone like me, who’s been trying to figure out the meaning of life ever since I can remember, this is a wonderful dream. A dream that comes thisclose to answering my questions.
And then—but of course—turns around and gives me about fifty thousand new questions to ask. In the dream, I live in a small town. Like Paradise, it has two main streets. Unlike Paradise, the architecture of all the buildings is Victorian. Also unlike Paradise, the town is along a sea coast. What sea, I don’t know. What coast—east, west, north, south—I don’t know either.
I do know that it’s a beautiful place. One where, along with a Partner I can’t see and don’t really know, I run a business out of one of the buildings closest to the sea. I don’t know the name of the business, but its purpose is crystal clear. I—make that “we”—teach people of all ages how to live.
Specifically, we teach them how to live proudly and openly and with as much style and excitement they can. In this dream Shakespeare was dead right when he said in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” (Except I’d drop the “merely” because I don’t see anything “mere” about this.)
That’s right. Everything we do is part of a show, designed for the entertainment and enlightenment of both an unseen audience of who knows who or what and also one consisting of ourselves. The school I share with my unknown Partner teaches everything you need to put on a show to everyone else in the world.
Now that’s cool.
In the dream, I divide my time between sitting in an office and working with other writers to write scenes for the actors to play as part of their lives (including scenes about writing scenes) and stalking through the halls helping younger students—children—and their parents grasp the general point of everything.
The writing part is a snap. I do it well and love every instant. But helping the kids and their folks grasp the general point is tough. Because I don’t know the general point. I’m clueless as to why everyone in the world is living this show business life. And totally in the dark about who the unseen audience is.
Because of my ignorance, I find myself turning more and more to the unknown Partner for help. Which isn’t so easy when you don’t know what he looks like, or even where she is.
It takes work, but I always manage to find him when I need to. Sometimes she’s able to help me. Most of the time, though, he’s as bewildered as I and the two of us just mush on as best we can.
But every time we “mush” we succeed.
When I was writing and producing television I learned that both jobs were about making decisions. It didn’t matter what you decided, just that you decided something. Making a decision, even the wrong one, meant the show could go on. Not making one brought things to a shuddering halt.
The dream reaffirms that. The dream tells me that it’s the mushing—the trying—that counts, and not whether what we try is right or wrong.
For three weeks now, I’ve been trying to dig down to a deeper interpretation of this dream. One of the main ways I interpret thoughts and feelings and dreams and events is to write them down and see what the act of writing turns them into, which is why I’m writing this.
And in the course of this writing I’m starting to understand that one of the points of the dream is that we’re not going to get any grand meaning out of life as a concept…because the meaning is in the actual living of the life. It’s in going onstage and doing our best. Getting totally involved in putting on that great, big, wonderful show.
I could’ve written this just for myself and then put it away. Instead, I’m throwing it out to everyone who comes to this space. To do otherwise would be to betray my part of the Partnership. To abdicate the teaching thing.
So that’s it, today’s class. The last class of 2009.
On to 2010 and the next awesomely mystifying Dream.
