Hurry. Don't Belong...

      My wife listens to and loves music of all sorts (except jazz for some reason), all while I am quite content to sit with a book in silence.  Yet plop me at a concert, or put on a good concert video and I'm all in (that is, if it's good).  But for the most part, my wife is far more open to new music and new artists while I am the one continually asking who that guy is who jumps off pianos (and does he have more than one song)?  So shiver me timbers when the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry reported that after studying nearly 11,000 elderly folks (yes, that's me raising my hand in the air), they found that those who "always" listen to music: ...are 39 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who said they "rarely" do.  Wait, didn't the report also say that more research was needed to confirm such a link?  So what about the other new stat that said that 40% of those over 45 report that they're often lonely.  So what, you say?  For one thing, the report added that being, or feeling lonely, increased your chance of early death as surely as if you smoked 15 cigarettes a day (imagine those who do smoke that many ciggies and feel lonely).  So many studies and such, even if it seems they've never asked me what I think.  But it got me thinking since my friends, who are also big music listeners, have dropped their Spotify streaming (to protest it's running of ICE recruitment ads) and jumped to Jeff Bezos' Amazon Music (although I hesitated to tell them that those same ads appeared on HBO, You Tube, Meta, Pandora and more, and that Bezos just got rid of the entire sports & books section, as well as over 30% of the foreign bureau reporters of his Washington Post; said executive editor Matt Murray: We can't be everything to everybody).  Zeesh, what's a music or sports person to do?  

     So I began to look into a few of these companies and found that sometimes those words of editor Murray can prove both true and biting, especially if you tend to "own" the company and are now getting blurred vision from all the power and money building exponentially.  Spotify truly does pay meager sums these days, as in about a third of a penny per play, a far cry from the days when just writing and maybe playing one song could buy you a ranch or mansion.  Story goes that when a ranch owner asked a very young Neil Young how he could l afford such a property, Young reportedly said, "well, I wrote a song."  As the embellished story goes, the rancher kept chewing his piece of straw and kept looking out at the horizon before adding, "hmm, you wrote a song."  As a side note, Young would later join Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp to start the Farm Aid concerts which helped raise money for struggling small farmers.  Back in those days, however, even the Beatles would mention that while dazzling audiences full of shrieking young girls, they were being paid only a penny per song and a nickel per album as royalties, so said because royalties jumped to 9x that amount for most artists a few years later.  If all of this sounds too confusing to keep track of (or care about), you're right.  But then came the death of Chuck Negron.  

     No problem if that name doesn't ring any bells (it didn't for me) but he was the lead singer for Three Dog Night, a band named after the aboriginal term of how many dogs it took cuddling around you to keep warm on a cold night (most of us early rock fans didn't know that fact until later).  One of the hit songs of Three Dog Night was One Is the Loneliest Number, a tune written by Harry Nilsson, a songwriter known more for songs such as Everybody's Talking At Me, and Coconut ("put dee lime in dee coconut...").  He also produced the animated film, The Point, which remains one of my faves not only for its variety of Nilsson songs but also for the message that everything and everyone has a point.  Which brings us back around to that song of one being the lonliest number.  It's ironic in that we strive to be number one, to finish first, to top the charts and to receive that award.  But age has a way of turning that around, to whack you on the head with the reality that those days of reaching that goal are sort of over, as if with age comes a sort of giving up.   And I can hear it said almost with a sigh of relief in my age group, that "at least we'll be gone before that happens," or "not in my lifetime."  One can insert whatever topic you want in those phrases: running out of fresh water, super hot summers, oil disasters, bird populations plummeting, crop failures, viral pandemics.  You get the picture...

     Music and sports share that spotlight.  To be playing a sport professionally in your mid-30s or later is to be pushing the envelope.  And looking back at most of what we listen to, at least the "hits" which are played ad nauseum, is generally something left to band songwriters in their 20s.  As Larry the Cable Guy joked: Here’s something you never wanna hear at a concert: And now we'd like to play something from our new album."  But that's my old-generation brain talking, as people such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran continue to make and perform hit after hit well into their mid-30s.  That and watching my friend's 5-year old walking up to the the speaker to tell Alexa to play that song from Demon Hunters, and then began singing along and dancing away as if it were her favorite song ever.  I had never heard of the tune.

     When Alan Allport wrote in his book: ...doodlebugs, gas masks, ration books, and blackouts, came songs such as 'We'll Meet Again" and "Lily Marlene," words and songs "woven into the fundamental fabric of what it meant to be British," he may as well have been talking about my wife's mother who had those words and memories etched in her brain from her days as a 14-year old huddling with others in the Underground while doodlebugs, those V-1 and V-2 missiles, fell during the Blitz in London.  My memories of what music I enjoy, along with those memorable moments hearing them, will soon become equally antiquated, giving way to the acceptance of what Al Stewart once sang, time passages: Well, the picture is changing, now you're part of a crowd.  They're laughing at something, and the music's loud.  A girl comes towards you, you once used to know.  You reach out your hand, but you're all alone in those time passages.  We reflect on the familiar, no matter our age, watching as our "unforgettable" school memories steadily filter down to just a few tidbits, as do the endless hours of work or parties that mounted over the years and now trigger that "clear cache" setting in your brain.  Songs from the war and songs written in protest have now given way to times nearly forgotten, begging the question of whether many of us give way to dementia simply because there is no longer any need to keep everything stored up, or stored "up there" anyway.  Make room for time passages...

      I have found that I am a whiner if I had to be honest, nowhere near the grin-and-bear-it toughness of so many friends I know.  As an example, something happened to my knee the other day and suddenly bending it became painful.  When it was much the same the next day, I popped a few ibuprofen and cautiously waited.  Surely, whatever it was I had done would go away with a bit of rest coupled with plopping onto the recliner with a good book.  But alas, that pain stuck around.  A bit of acupuncture and ah, it was feeling better...for a bit.  So off to the doc (suggested by the acupuncturist).  Did I pop something, twist a ligament, maybe tore a tendon (which I'd done before in my foot).  A few quick X-rays and the results were in.  I had arthritis.  Wait, me??  Flares up now and then, the doc said; you've just been lucky.  Pretty much bone on bone on the insides of both knees, he continued, so you may want to consider a knee replacement if the pain continues.  Wait, was he really talking to me, telling me that my carefree days of hiking and walking the dog without a thought were likely going to now be limited, or at least not as pain-free as they once were?  Surely not, except that today's walk was admittedly a bit of a grimace...ouch.  Where's that bottle of ibuprofen?

      It would appear that the time either had come or was getting nearer, the time to admit that age was catching up to me.  Almost everyone I knew (including my wife) had replaced their hips or knees, or gotten screws in their backs, or were making frequent visits to the doc.  But not me.  No, I was pretty healthy and exercised and pretty much ate right, and thought that I could look forward to a nice sail into that sunset.  But life has a way of dumping surprises on you.  My neighbor, one of the healthiest, most active people I know, is battling cancer and getting radiation treatment 5 days a week for 28 days, all because chemo has been ineffective at shrinking his tumors.  Another friend sits in memory care at the highest watch level, conversing with you as normally as any other friend except that she is on Hospice due to her heart slowly failing.  Another friend goes in and out of emergency rooms and doctors' visits as they try to diagnose his internal symptoms, vibrations strong enough to debilitate his functioning enough that he can't make it through the day...so far, his steady rotation of different pills and new drugs have proved ineffective.  And yet, I don't hear a peep or complaint from any of them.  So my knee?  Who was I kidding? And then came Kyle Carpenter...

Kyle Carpenter receiving the Medal of Honor

     You've likely heard that Trump, who has never served in the military (his dad's podiatrist got him an exemption for a bone spur in his heel, despite Trump being on the football and soccer teams in his private academy school) is thinking of awarding himself the Medal of Honor.  This award is quite limited and is not given lightly, often only after an extensive investigation by a team of military personnel who question witnesses and pour through hospital records.  In the case of Kyle Carpenter, who went on to write You Are Worth It, he and a fellow Marine serving in Afghanistan, were on the rooftop of a home, huddled behind a few sandbags when a grenade landed between them.  They had just been joking about what they would do if that happened since the Taliban had only started to use grenades, something the Taliban avoided simply because a person had to be close to throw one and could easily be picked off by a sniper.  But this was a small village where people walked the streets and before they knew it, a grenade was there between them.  Without a thought, Kyle lunged on top of it with all of his tiny 5' 7" frame (he was the smallest, lightest guy in his unit).  The explosion was so strong that it blew a hole downwards through the roof and into the room below.  Kyle's armor body plate shattered like safety glass, a plate designed to take the force of 7 rounds fired directly at it.  But along with the plate went Kyle's body.  Half of his jaw tore off, and shrapnel punctured everywhere else, so much so that he now "jokes" that in an X-ray, in his words, the many fragments of bones make his face look like glitter (the majority of his face is a series of titanium plates).  His arm bone shattered into 37 pieces.  When the medic ran up, he looked at Kyle, half of his face dangling down and his body in a pool of blood, and assumed he was dead.  The other Marine was gurgling blood and struggling to breathe, shrapnel having bounced off the top of his helmet and puncturing his face and neck.  After putting a tube in his throat so that he could breathe, the medic crawled over to check Kyle and was surprised to find him still alive...but where to start?  The lower half of his jaw was just hanging on, his eye looked punctured (it was), his teeth were all just fragments, his tongue dangled out loosely like a tired dog.  Move him and the lower part of his entire mouth would likely just fall away.  Nonetheless, the medic got a breathing tube in him, attached what he could of Kyle's jaw to his upper lip, and waited for the chopper to get him to the surgeons at camp.  As Kyle noted, one of his happiest days was discovering some days later that he would be sent to Frankfurt.  To do so, he wrote, meant that the field docs thought that you had a chance to make it.  But medal of honor stuff?...9 months and countless surgeries later, his case was still pending (it would take nearly three and a half years before the investigations were completed and he was awarded the medal)..

     At the end of her book, American Harvest, author Marie Mutsuki Mockett, who is half-Japanese, was casually invited and attended a Shoshone Sun Dance, something which the US government still outlawed until 1970); it's a ritual where dancers fast and have no food or water for three days, often through intense summer heat.  She felt welcome at first, thinking it was because of her mixed heritage, but soon realized that she was violating something sacred, viewing it as a journalist and not actually "seeing" it, as she put it: I looked like I fit in.  In fact, I was enjoying looking like I fit in...I, who try so hard not to make errors, have made one, and I have contributed to the pain of others.  Because of vanity, I have glimpsed suffering that was not meant for me to see...even in writing this, I am committing a transgression, since the dance is closed to outsiders and I am am outsider.  My apparent camouflage does not matter.  I have a powerful feeling of wanting to go home.  There is no center of belonging.  This looked like the Obon festival which I associate with my mother, but it isn't Obon.  It isn't Buddhist meditation and fasting.  This isn't a version of home and there isn't another home to go to.  So many of the world's oldest traditions reject words.  Language creates a reality whether it is true in the physical world or not.  The Native Americans, the Yazidis, the Shingon Buddhists in Japan all pass on what they know through action and demonstration and not the written word.  Not everything can be explained through language.  I have committed an act, and it is the wrong act. 

     There are few movies I watch a 2nd or 3rd time, but one of them is Hero, a cinematic spectacle unmatched in both color and pageantry (who else hires over 10,000 extras to show the scale of an emperor's army?).*  It's a tale of an often ruthless tyrant trying to unite the various prefects of China, surviving many assassination attempts, until confronting the final assassin.  Through a series of chess-like tales, the soon-to-be emperor and assassin come to listen and respect each other, and to understand the definition of a true warrior.  It becomes a classic tale of what Teddy Roosevelt once said: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust, and sweat, and blood.  Who strives valiantly; who, at worst, if he fails at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

                       

     It is hard to let go, a friend told me, to admit you're not as strong or have as much energy...or your knees hurt.  As singer Negron said, this after a long battle with his heroin addiction: You must come to terms with the gifts you have, the faults you have, and learn to embrace your life.  But I enjoyed more the words of psychotherapist Mary Pipher, that we: ...need to be able to sort true from untrue, deep from shallow, and temporary from long-term.  We need what Hemingway referred to as "foolproof shit detectors."  Author Mockett felt that she didn't "belong" where she was, and that she now struggled to find where "home" was.  My song recommendations, thoughts and ideas may have also come to a place where they also now struggle to find a home, along with my rickety knees.  I am now the old man in the Neil Young song.  There are plenty of heroes in our world, not only the Kyle Carpenters (who continues to remain humble about what he did and feels that his "medal" was not for him but for the many others who have sacrificed much for their country; he keeps his medal in a box in his closer): struggling single parents, countless volunteers for food banks and other organizations helping others, teachers and nurses and coaches who get little recognition, endless other people just doing good in the world.  

     I am not sure where I belong these days, not feeling that old, and yet...and while I may know little about actually belonging or not belonging, I do know one thing that doesn't belong, and that's the Medal of Honor self-awarded by an old president who has never served a day of his life in the military.

*Give Quinten Tarantino credit for relentlessly working to bring this hit film to the US, even letting the studio use his name for audience recognition (Tarantino had nothing to do with the production of the film).  After 2 full years, Tarantino convinced Miramax (which owned the US rights) to release the English-subtitled version.  Hero grossed nearly $54 million in the US and over $177 million worldwide...