soulmailing

When the Internet went black on me, I was supposed to see the light. It would be a divine revelation.
“Hey, you know what? I can get along without this just fine! I am more mindful and spending my time in healthier ways! I think I’ll stay offline more often now!”
Instead, it was like trying to walk on a broken foot. There are a lot of places I just can’t go now because, you know, I’m on crutches.
Far from being a refreshing break from online life, I’ve found just how dependent I am on being plugged in. I’ve discovered my life is normally ruled by x’s and o’s. I’m stuck in Nowheresville while everyone else is making time and money.
It isn’t good. It feels like I am – what’s the word? – deficient. And just a few days ago I was a cool dude.
There I was, humming along the information superhighway on cruise control, and I pull off to get some gas. But wait, there’s no ramp back onto the freeway. Now I’m going 55 on some country road in the middle of Ontario, no idea where I’m going. And not a Cracker Barrel in sight.
Spiritually speaking, I’m dealing with the reality that I depend much more on technology, day-to-day, than I do on God. Much as I dislike the high-tech lifestyle, I have become a creature of it. My daily habits, my livelihood and even my thinking depend upon access to gmail and Google. They are the lords of my personal universe.
This makes me want to rail against the whole bit, the way Ray Davies did long ago in that klassik Kinks song, “20th Century Man”:
This is the age of machinery, a mechanical nightmare;/ the wonderful world of technology, napalm, hydrogen bombs biological warfare/ … I’m a 20th century man but I don’t wanna be here.
Ray was ever given to hyperbole so I will back it up a bit from his voice-in-the-wilderness despair. But I must say this digital dependence is troubling to me. If some cyber-terrorist succeeds in taking down the grid, will I even be able to light a fire?
It’s not like I wasn’t warned. A few weeks ago files started disappearing from my Word docs. Stories and videos that were there just minutes before suddenly vanished, as if a green bug with glowing red eyes were eating them. It was downright spooky.
Turns out the bug I did have – one of more than 500, actually – had scrambled my computer’s “indexing” system. This made it impossible for my poor Dell laptop to “find them.” The virus in question, my tech told me, had “opened the door” to let other bugs in. I found this “completely creepy,” picturing my computer as a Middle Earth king whose castle walls had been breached.
Once that siege was turned back thanks to a carpet bombing with super-strength anti-spyware, I decided to simplify my life by getting rid of my landline. This would be another way of turning back home invaders, otherwise known as telemarketers, whose calls were pretty much all I was getting on the old Aunt Bea phone.
Big mistake. It seems that to disconnect one’s AT&T landline one must also disconnect one’s Internet service. They can’t just turn off your phone switch. You need to stop the whole thing and start up a new account for just the Internet, at a slightly higher rate. This is your punishment for trying to simplify.
But no problem, said Carrie, the first AT&T Person Out There I talked to. When your phone goes off you’ll automatically be taken to a page where you can re-register your account. When I asked if my Internet service would be interrupted, she said I was making this more difficult than it needed to be. Thanks Carrie; I will place my trust in how smart you are.
But come Tuesday, landline turn-off day, Carrie turned out to be not smart at all. I lost all Internet access and had no magic page to re-register. Not only that, but I found out from Shelby, second Person Out There, that my new service would not be hooked up for another week.
This is when I truly became an unpleasant guy. After sympathetic Shelby, I tried other People Out There to see if one of them could get me back on the highway. Nope. Not Madeline, not David (although he at least said he could), nor Sudheer, with whom I chatted online from a coffee shop.
You must be at home to troubleshoot your problem, Sudheer typed. But I have no Internet at home, so how can I troubleshoot? I typed back. I understand, Sudheer typed. I am sorry you are having a problem. You can call our tech support number at xxx-ooo-xoxo, which is available 24/7. But Sudheer, dear Sudheer down there on the other side of the world, that is the same number I called yesterday and got ABSOLUTELY NO HELP!
This is where spiritual wisdom did in fact emerge from the darkness. And it said: Charley, it is time for you to submit. Stop fighting the man (and the woman named Carrie) and just, as Paul would say, let it be. In the great scheme of things, this problem is very small. In a few days it will go away. Probably.
For now, just enjoy the fact that you are not plugged in every minute of every day to the great out there. Spend more time in here with yourself, your charmingly printed books and your loved ones.
After all, there are better x’s and o’s to be had than can be found online.

In my little neighborhood of the little big city of Grand Rapids is a little street named Sunset. It really should be called Sunrise, because that’s what the sun does when you walk over to Sunset early in the morning, as I just did.
Here’s the world from Sunset, which overlooks downtown nestled in the Grand River valley: steeples and steaming smokestacks; water towers and the Waters Building; cars cruising by on the roaring river of Int. 196 and people huddled in a warren of humble homes on tree-shrouded streets.
In my leafy neighborhood overlooking it all, clear sunlight bathes the still-bare branches where birds sing somewhat deliriously. The waking world whispers rejoice, the time is coming, spring is about to be born again.
This is how God’s creation speaks to me on these last days of March, walking gently toward April glory. I couldn’t find such inspiration in a book. It’s too much of the senses more than of the head. It speaks in a soft language my whole heart and body understand.
Same with a Bach cantata or a Keith Jarrett piano meditation, to which I am currently listening. The mode of music, like the book of nature, admits the divine in more artful ways than words. Though I am a writer, I better comprehend the sense of God through non-literal means.
In my work I often read theological battles based on words. Believers cite Scripture to back up their version of God. Nonbelievers cite science and reason. Both leave me spiritually cold. I don’t ignore textual arguments about God’s being or non-being, but neither do I rely on them.
The very idea of proving God, or disproving for that matter, does not appeal to me. I’m too much a romantic mystic to be persuaded by words one way or another. If it all came down to words, I’d be terribly disappointed.
We hear a lot of words at this time of year, some of them recounting events that seem implausible to the modern mind. The Red Sea parting in the Jewish Seder; Jesus returning from the dead in the Christian Easter. If such accounts were written now they’d be shelved alongside Tolkien and Rowling.
People don’t enter into these stories on their words alone. They are carried along by ritual, music, prayer, tradition, experience. The stories speak to them on deeper levels than cognitive. They are soul-stirring stories, wrapped in mystery and miracle. Believers are not so much rationally convinced as spiritually convicted, on whatever level these accounts ring true for them.
So when I walk over to Sunset on such a splendid morning as this, I am not looking for proof of God’s glory. I don’t need to. I see it in the sunrise, feel it in the chilly air lightly stinging my nose, hear it in every bird’s delirious song.
God is not up there; God is down here, all around me. I struggle to express the joy I feel in his presence. Mere words, by which I earn my keep, are not nearly up to the task.

Something of the medieval monk
Lies among these deep devout drifts
Snugged around the awakening city
Wholly dedicated to sacred silence
Illuminating his manuscript hour upon hour
Removed from the uproar of the world
Tongue tucked thoughtfully in his mouth
As he delicately depicts dragons
On the corners of the Earth
While far away rage armies and despots
Intent on their dull noisy business
Of death and desperate destruction
Of art, beauty, history, sanity, hope
The monk is heedless of it all
With his tucked tongue and exacting hand
Like McCartney’s Father McKenzie
Darning his socks in the night
When there’s nobody there
Pausing only to join his fellow solitaries
For the daily office rounds
Matins, lauds, prime, terce
Sext, none, vespers, compline
Only breaking the deep shroud of silence
To intone ancient melancholy Psalms
So does the snow lie all about me
Deep, silent, devout, shrouded
As yet unsullied by blackening exhaust
The exhausting noise of the world
On this silent sacred morning

“They stamp about and shake and, oh dearie me, they just send the joy out to you.”
So did one ecstatic British girl describe the Beatles in a Nov. 18, 1963 Newsweek

from latimes.com

article titled “Beatlemania.” Her sentiment holds up nearly 50 years later as a succinct summary of the Beatles Effect. Considering it was published four days before John F. Kennedy was killed, it is all the more powerful now.
The dearie-me girl’s comment was one of few that accurately described the band in an otherwise astoundingly square story. It calls Beatles music “high-pitched, loud beyond reason, and stupefyingly repetitive. Like rock ‘n’ roll, to which it is closely allied, it is even more effective to watch than to hear.”
Being as it turns out the very pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll, Beatles music remains “effective” in both the watching and hearing. This is due not only to the genius of the music, but the joy, excitement and hope exuded by the songs and the Beatles themselves – qualities we hunger for at least as much now as we did then.
Their continuing cross-generational appeal comes home to me in a short course I teach called “Love is All, Love is You: The Spirituality of the Beatles,” most recently at the Dominican Center at Marywood and beginning Feb. 28 at the Calvin College CALL program. The Marywood class includes two fathers and their teenage children, who seemed as keenly engaged in the subject matter as their parents.
One of the teens was struck by how high George carried his guitar in an August 1965 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the last time they would play that esteemed venue. It is a thing of beauty to watch, as they do indeed stamp and shake and sing most joyfully. John is in rare form with his goofy introduction to “Help!” This despite its desperate lyrics expressing the depression of what he later called his “fat Elvis period.” One class member called it the “most relatable Beatles song ever” with its “sad lyrics and happy music.”
Others marveled at Paul’s performance of “Yesterday,” the regretful ballad recorded two months after “Help!” — twin expressions of vulnerability by two maturing men. “I long for yesterday” takes on deeper resonance for those of use who have piled up many yesterdays since then.
But it’s the exuberance of the band that captivates with a freshness of spirit hard to imagine being possible now. The business-like Sullivan clearly has been charmed by the boys by this time, introducing them singly beforehand and afterward congratulating them on handling themselves “magnificently.” “Well come on, let’s hear it for ‘em!” he implores the screaming girls.
They scream for all of us who long for joy and hope delivered through thrashing guitars and gorgeous harmonies. The Beatles’ faces are streaming with sweat, their vocals dead-on and their instrumentals near-flawless in the face of this 747-level noise. Their cheerful energy defies the darkness of the times, then as now, even with all the darkness we know is to come in their own lives.
Their first Sullivan appearance was a supernova for 73 million viewers still in shock following JFK’s assassination, biting their nails over Russian missiles or getting pummeled by cops in civil rights marches. In his insightful book, “The Gospel According to the Beatles,” rock journalist Steve Turner writes the band “represented the best of what people longed for” in that dark, cold winter of 1964: “They represented laughter rather than tears, hope rather than despair, love rather than hatred, life rather than death.”
Beatles music still represents those longings. Despite the darker strains that would later imbue their songs, the body of their work speaks to the best in us. Theirs is a vision of joy linked to the power of the mind, inviting us to imagine a different kind of world. Have you heard? The word is love.
Oh dearie me.

Yours truly with his trusty Les Paul at Goon Lagoon studios

Today’s post comes via localspins.com, the excellent all-music-all-the-time blog by my friend and bandmate John Sinkevics. May we rock forever!

For the self-respecting band trying to turn heads and grow fans with originals, the cover song can either fly like an eagle or become the accursed bird you cannot change.

On one hand, a good cover provides built-in fan-band bonding: the sweet surprise of an instantly recognizable tune, preferably one that gets feet moving and fists pumping, plus a bit of hipster cred: “Wow, these dudes play this? Nice!”

If, on the other hand, the cover is too good, it will make your originals sound pale and sickly by comparison. Pretty soon the crowd wants more covers, and before you know it you’re playing a “Sweet Home Alabama/Freebird” medley while a guy in a Slash T-shirt stands right in front of your guitarist, hoisting a pint and screaming the wrong words.

The cover you really don’t want is the one you despise playing but feel you must to please the pint-hoisters. Back in my early band days, that was “Smoke on the Water,” a tune we dutifully performed with a secret mockery bordering on self-loathing.

The cover you want is the one that comes out of nowhere and, despite its well-known origins, bears the unmistakable imprint of your band. This still provides the sweet surprise but newly packaged. And it adds value to the great canon of rock, an ever-growing library kept ever-new by young bands’ fresh interpretations.

I’ve heard many West Michigan bands which focus mostly on their own material play uniquely original covers to wonderful effect.

The Crane Wives’ version of “Smooth Criminal” is marvelously counterintuitive, morphing Michael Jackson’s techno fever-beat into an acoustic roots rave-up. Ditto for The Northern Skies, who filter Al Green’s soulful “Take Me to the River” through the Skies’ distinctive bluegrass stomp.

I once had the pleasure of stomping to a heavily rockified version of “I Am the Walrus” by the erstwhile Jim Crawford Band (whose founding members Zach Guy and Tory Peterson now rock righteously as Simien the Whale). Imagine if you will the Beatles’ dreamily psychedelic original set to the loose-limbed funk of “Tricky Fingered Woman.” Like I say, tons of fun.

The Crawfords’ cover came during one of the annual Feedback benefits staged by John Sinkevics and our band The Honeytones. Feedback also saw Valentiger turn out a dandy version of the Kinks’ “Picture Book” in their own smart-pop style. Those who inhabit my Kinks-worshipping universe know that song not from the cute HP commercial but from their 1968 LP, “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,” a commercial flop and musical masterpiece.

Which brings us to The Honeytones’ own covers and the issue of how best to cover a cover. The Tones have always opted for non-slavish versions of well-known originals. What is the point of trying to play Steely Dan’s “My Old School” note for note when no one could possibly do it better than the Dan already did?

On the other hand, we put our distinctive Tones stamp on Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Fall Down” with roughly the same ferocity as Metallica covering The Cowsills. No disrespect to the fine original, but frankly our version is more fun.

Hey, no one said we had to check our egos at the door.

It’s been a year that he has not been in the world. Hard to grasp that Dad passed that long ago. His absence from my life still aches. He was so present in it for so long.

It’s been a strange year, that’s for sure. Strange and rough. Continually trying to come to grips with the fact of death, hard and unyielding as an iron wall. Death doesn’t mess around. When it takes you it takes you, and anyone else it pleases. Jesus may have been able to raise people from it, but not me. Believe me, I would have if I could.

Well, maybe not. When I talk to Dad in the early morning, I often picture him with Mom, his beloved Betty. Having a drink with all the relatives, like in the dream I had last night. Sitting by their trailer in some autumn-bright state park. Dancing in heaven on New Year’s Eve. What a couple they were.

So I would not want to bring Dad back from dancing with Mom in the faraway places now. The past year, then, I have tried to bring him back in my mind, day to day. Sometimes he just shows up, in my dreams or on a long walk. He may be off in the cosmos somewhere with Mom, but he’s also right next door to my heart.

Still, it’s disorienting, this being an orphan thing. How many times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and hear Mom’s voice, full of love and bugging me about her latest project for my life. How often I’ve wanted to call Dad to yak about the Tigers’ latest game, or to get his advice on my latest issue without specifically asking for it. He was good at that.

Knowing you can get that call or make that call to your Mom or Dad makes all the difference. Even if you don’t make it, you know you could if you needed to. Just the knowledge keeps you grounded. Start floating away from the earth in a mess of trouble, all you have to do is pick up the phone. Mom or Dad will always reel you in.

It was hard enough not being able to do that with Mom. Yet we knew for a long time that Mom’s days were numbered. She was a frail autumn leaf ready to blow away at any time. Dad was the tree itself, a mighty maple rooted deeply in the ground. And then one Sunday morning, in a shocking instant, he was felled.

The swiftness with which he fell made it all the harder to accept and comprehend. He should still be standing there, soaking up the sun. He should still be walking beside me on our way uptown to Baldino’s party store in Williamston. He should still be sitting on the floor across from me playing hockey, madly pulling at the handles trying to keep up with the lightning reflexes of an 8-year-old boy.

How could he have been so present for so long, and then, suddenly, just not there anymore?

I was never not proud of my Dad. Not for a day. I admired his strength, his grace, his good humor, caring nature and sound advice. He looked cool with a pipe in his mouth. He was a handome bugger, in a rugged Hugh O’Brian way. He knew how to make people feel at ease. He walked in beauty, as the Indians say.

Hollywood commonly portrays the distant dad who never praises his son or actively belittles him. I can’t relate. Dad nurtured me from day one – spoiled me rotten, was Mom’s way of putting it. He let me drool on him when he held me high in his arms. Cradled me while watching TV or reading to me at bedtime. It was warm in his arms. He made me feel deeply loved and safe in the world.

He spanked me only once. Mom says it was because I crossed Philadelphia Avenue and almost got hit. Well, I did get hit by Dad – one astonishingly strong whack on the butt. He probably thought it hurt him more than it did me. I’m not so sure.

The only prolonged tension was in my teen years. I wanted to grow my hair long like my beloved Beatles, and Dad had always cut my hair, in the kitchen. Invariably he would cut it shorter than I wanted. He didn’t know how to do it any other way, and didn’t want it long besides. Finally he gave up trying.

I was into the Doors and Stones and other strange bands that Dad didn’t understand. Our worlds went their separate ways for awhile. In my college years he once told me to go off in a cabin and write if I wanted to; just commit to something. I didn’t appreciate his advice then.

My maturing as an adult brought us back together – that and baseball. Give major credit here to Carlton Fisk. His dramatic 12th-inning home run in the 1975 World Series renewed my love of the game, which Dad had taught me to begin with.

Last fall, I watched every last inning of that miserable Tigers-Giants World Series. I had to. What if the Tigers staged a miraculous comeback? Dad would be very disappointed if I missed it.

He still guides me in little ways – how to deal with a bad morning, how to take long walks at night, how to read a good book to settle my nerves. Basically, Dad taught me how to be a man.

I once told him, in the midst of a marital crisis, that I didn’t feel I’d ever grown into a man the way he did. There was no World War II to make me grow up. Dad told me that once I got through the crisis, I’d know what it felt like to be a man.

He was right, of course. I am more of a man now, but still learning how to be one from him. That goes on every day, even with him gone from the world.

Stellar cradle of young stars, NASA image

They call it the God-sized hole.
That ever-gnawing hunger inside
Always waiting to be fed
With meaning, purpose, assurance
Faith
Soul food.
I have heard many people talk about it.
I believe in this idea, because I can feel it
Deep in my gut.
I know about how big it is.
It’s the size of my record collection, all 400-plus albums.
Throw in my 300-plus CDs.
Make it bigger with my shelves and shelves of books
Thousands upon thousands of pages, ideas crammed front to back
Collecting dust on basement shelves
Or spilling over in neglected piles.
The hole would swallow all of them
And you wouldn’t even see them
At the bottom.
I could pour in all my old writings
Saved for some reason in boxes
All my yellowed thoughts: letters, college papers, newspaper clips
They would cascade down in a musty avalanche
And the hole would be far from filled.
I could flood them with drink:
Great growlers of beer
Bottles of splendid wine
Coffee by the gallon
And still not see the mushy pile
So far down the hole it was.
Down there with a thousand conversations
Beautiful evenings with friends
Wonderful captivating movies
Plays that drew my gasps and tears
Baseball games that made me shout with joy
Meals, such fabulous meals …
So many fine lovely things, but not nearly enough
To fill up the God-sized hole.
I always feel it down there, dark and full of echoes
Waiting for more
Waiting for meaning
Waiting for me
To finally submit, and admit
How badly I hunger
How much I want
To fill it with prayer
And devotion
And intention.
But I don’t, I won’t.
I’m afraid of what I’d find
Of what it would ask of me, or do to me
And what I would have to do
If I went down all the way.
I’d rather drop things in:
Little daily pleasures
And reassuring gestures
And fine thoughts
Putting in just enough
To keep from starving.