There is a very interesting article in the September issue of The Atlantic. "My Father, Guitar Guru to the Rock Gods" is written by the daughter of Fred Walecki, who crafted instruments and provided advice to the greatest musicians of 1960s California. Here are the introductory paragraphs:
In August 2000, when I was 2 years old, my mother put me in a maroon velvet dress and stuck foam earplugs in my ears. She carried me through the backstage corridors of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium... My mother remembers the night in flashes. David Crosby—walrus mustache, smiling eyes—telling jokes. Bonnie Raitt’s aura of red hair. In the distance, the sound of Linda Ronstadt warming up. Sitting in a dressing room with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, already in costume as Spinal Tap’s front men.That night, the auditorium was hosting the Friends of Fred Walecki benefit concert. These friends included Crosby, Raitt, and Ronstadt. Also Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Emmylou Harris, and Warren Zevon. Three of the four original Eagles, who in this room in 1973 had performed their new album, Desperado, were there too.One of the Eagles, Bernie Leadon, had helped put the event together. He had known Fred Walecki, my father, since they were teenagers, when Leadon started coming into Westwood Music, Dad’s musical-instrument shop in Los Angeles....
I'm not posting this for the music of the 1960s, which I love (please go to the link to continue reading, if you share that interest). I'm posting this to share one bit of advice that Fred Walecki offered his grown-up daughter:
"When I was 18, I got a bad concussion that took me out of college for my first semester. My doctor didn’t want me to fly home for a while, so I called Dad one night from the other side of the country, panicked that my brain would never return to normal.“What are you looking at right now?” he asked. Pine trees, I said. Some shrubs. I’m sitting on a bench outside. “What’s the temperature like where you are?” It’s nice. Cool but not cold. It was early fall in the Northeast, a new sensation for a Californian. “What does the air smell like?” Wood chips.“I know it’s hard, but your only job right now is to stay in this moment and not future-trip. In this moment right now, the one God is giving you, the air smells nice, the temperature is good, you’re somewhere beautiful.”"
Excellent advice, in my opinion, and worth sharing via the blog.
Ah, I am going to go sit outside on the steps to my front deck.
ReplyDeleteThe sun is beaming down after a night of startling star clarity, and the insects are making their music.
Many birds do their operatic bits, mainly native ones but a few from other countries.
The cats that live here, 2 gingers I brought with me years ago, a few tabbies and a calico that once were homeless but now live here, lay about on the concrete like so many pots on a stove top, heating gently in what is here, this opposite hemisphere, this southern land, the start of summer.
This property I have is an oasis within a residential town, where the previous owner had planted a collection of baby trees on the borders, and now they're grown I am cocooned in green, and that explains the birdlife, that and my feeding them.
It truly is a wonderful world, as Louie said, and even if I don't have or need the crutch of thinking some sky bound deity gave it to me, to us, and it (he ?) watches my, every move with his studded club of hell fire and damnation threats, it still does make me feel wonderful that I can exist in such a warm, colourful world.
Future trip ? Not me, not here.
May I suggest you substitute "the cosmos" for "God" in the advice being offered. Then perhaps you can chill without that undertone of bitterness.
DeleteI like the closer of that paragraph (in the article): "He signed off that night, as he usually does, by saying not I love you, but I’m loving you—love, active.".
ReplyDeleteCan you add that to the 'advice'?