The Music of Autumn
The increasingly cool weather combined with the earlier setting sun has definitely put me in the autumnal mood. Even though these signposts most surely mark the end of summer, I confess that I look forward to them every year. They bring to mind good memories of school, especially those final years at North Park; they make me look forward to the comfort of fleece and boots and sitting by a late night fire; they even make me look forward to the crisp, damp air of early morning.
For me, autumn also has its own soundtrack; and, yes, I am fully aware of how odd that fact is. Not surprisingly the main score is that of George Winston's Autumn: the clean, melodic accompaniment to numerous hours of reading and schoolwork. (One close friend still has the Pavlovian response to crack the textbooks whenever he hears George Winston's piano playing.) But another album that holds an equally strong association with autumn is the Greatest Hits of James Taylor. I am not entirely sure what in this record---especially those first six songs---represents autumn with such power. It may be because the first time I heard it was the fall of my freshman year at college. Or it could be that the contemplative, sad nature of the lyrics in "Fire and Rain" and "Sweet Baby James" invoke a feeling of slowing down after the crazy summer rush. I don't know; and I probably never will know. All I am certain of is the ability for these songs to simultaneously send me to the past while firmly rooting me in the present; not many things can perform such a feat.
The Cast of “Operation Chaos”
Reading through an article about Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" I came to this passage:
"We have done our part to expose Obama through our support of 'Operation Chaos,' effectively using the Clinton campaign as our foil, and Obama and the Democrat Party are the weaker for it," he said. "Every objective has been met and surpassed."
Maybe it was his use of the word "foil" but I immediately had a picture in my mind of Rush as Iago. Of course, the association entirely breaks down because I don't think either Obama or Clinton would acknowledge Limbaugh as a best friend and advisor, but for a moment I had a good chuckle.
a few of my favorite things
I always enjoy it when a particular confluence of events results in a few of my favorite things all appearing within the same vicinity of one another. That happened this evening while reading Michael Chabon's most recent column in Details magazine (the sole reason for my paid subscription).
In the first paragraph of his column about why we should stop mocking the seventies, Michael Chabon (one of my favorite authors), mentions a particular episode of WNYC's Radio Lab "devoted to contemplating the romance and the grim realities of space travel." Radio Lab, thanks to the introduction by Mr. Anderson, has become one of my favorite NPR programs. Then, a page later, Chabon references a recent issue of The Believer, one of my favorite eclectic literary 'zines.
This all resulted in a smile on my face, which continued when one of Chabon's insights reminded me not to take myself so seriously:
Each of us serves, if we are conducting our lives in the usual fashion, as a constant source of embarrassment to his or her future self, and by the same formula all "eras" can be made to look ridiculous in retrospect.
So... I'll approach tomorrow with the attitude that I'm simply providing my future 50-year-old self with some good material for humor or, at the very least, embarrassment.
Home
I have always had a fascination with the concept of “home”. I am not sure if this fascination is because I am a self-described homebody who would rather spend a vacation close to home than traveling the globe (that is slowly beginning to change in my advancing years) or if the fascination is more base, the idea of home simply a part of being human. Even if it is a universal understanding, I am continuously fascinated by how home is described by other people. A friend of mine, even though she is in her late 20s and on her own, still considers “home” wherever her parents live. For others, home is where they grew up, regardless if they or their parents live there still. I've always half-jokingly taken the phrase “home is where your clothes are” and changed it to “home is where your books are” to be more applicable to my priorities.
The main reason I have given this so much thought recently is because of a song that won't stop haunting me. It is one of those songs that is unbearably beautiful both lyrically and musically. The refrain goes: “In the cathedrals of New York and Rome / There is a feeling that you should just go home / And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is”. I believe what is especially haunting for me is two-fold. First, as a self-proclaimed homebody, I have never seen the cathedrals of New York and Rome. So many wonders of the world have been brought to me only by images, not by experience. And second, "home” may very well be something even more intangible than where my books are. Home may be wherever I'm at, with or without my books, and it may take a lifetime to truly learn that.
I remember in college how I felt, at some level, that I was never at home. When I was on my college campus in Chicago, I would talk about “home” as being Minneapolis, where I grew up and where my parents lived. When I was in Minneapolis, on school breaks, I would talk about “home” as being Chicago and my college campus. I think that was the beginning of a realization that my longing for a place to call home would always trump a physical location labeled as “home”. My parents have since moved on and I love visiting them in their saltbox house in Door County, but it isn't my home. I love my apartment and enjoy returning to it everyday after work, but even in such a place that is very “me” and full of my stuff and a wonderful place to read, play, and relax, it doesn't feel completely like home.
A different song by a group I especially liked in college, has a song that describes a God-shaped hole that is in all of us and can only truly be filled by God. Maybe “home” is just that for me—a hole within that only serves to remind me that I never will be entirely complete this side of heaven. I don't know. Maybe my longing for a place to call home is just another lesson teaching me to be content with where I am at, but to also remain perpetually hopeful for more.
A real-world “Ten Wickets”
Jeremy: Halfway around the world, a lone man has accomplished an extraordinary athletic feat.
Dan: What?
Jeremy: I don't know.
Sports Night, Season 1: Episode 21
CNN.com article, 9/24/07: "India claim thrilling Twenty20 win"
After reading that article, I very much understand what Jeremy is saying. Someday I hope to understand cricket.