The Lesson of the GOATs Who Died Young

As we move through our life we participate in a continual process of personal exploration, social experimentation and the discovery of our own varying aptitudes and skills. It is often a joyous journey. Yet death truncates the process, at least in this our current incarnation. Unfortunately one never knows when the Grim Reaper will come to call!  Perhaps it will be a calm and natural visit after a long and reflective and creative life. Or the eternal footman may appear tragically and unexpectedly; occasioned by pestilence, war, or random violence. It is this unpredictability, this capriciousness of death that should inform us as to how we should live. Let me explain. 

When reading about the lives of the “greats” - our popular culture is currently obsessed with designating the GOAT, aka Greatest Of All Time, in many fields of endeavor - one often encounters an author musing about what a particular GOAT who died young might have accomplished had but they lived longer. What pictures did Caravaggio leave unpainted? Songs Janis Joplin left unsung? Words unwritten by Brontë? Plath? Keats? Shelley? Wilde? Well, posthumous GOAT hunting is perhaps amusing, but ultimately futile. What is valuable is what we can learn from the truncated lives of these various GOATS.

Interestingly the lesson was best articulated for me by the life of a colleague who was something of a GOAT himself. A well-known Communication scholar and administrator during our shared years at North Carolina State University, Raymond Rogers and his wife Peggy Beasley Rogers purchased some riverfront property, oh, maybe 20 miles outside Raleigh. “Undeveloped” would be a kind description. Nonetheless they christened it “The Good Old Days.” And Raymond - who, after fighting a lifelong battle with various maladies, sadly died at the young age of 57 - would always declare, when he had successfully tempted us to go fishing out at the river, “Ah! these are the good old days!”

And that is the invaluable lesson from all the GOATS who died young: These are the good old days. 

We should try every day, not only to find the place in the universe where we belong, but to fill it to the best of your ability. Paint your best painting, write your best prose or poetry, sing your best song, devise your best algorithm, execute your best research design, dance your best dance, be your best parent, partner, lover - everyday!  Because, even if  you really are the GOAT in your particular milieu, well, there is the off chance that you may not get another opportunity.

Question Certainty

 Distilled Harmony changes slowly.  I first began to explore the idea of an existential “theory of everything” back at the turn of the millennium - as 2000 turned into 2001. It was those reflections that resulted in Distilled Harmony - which I guess can be best defined as a “philosophy to live by.” More sophisticated monikers lead to unnecessary semantic quibbling. Anyhow, at that point in time Distilled Harmony rested on three prioritized tenets. 

First, the foundational tenet, Foster Harmony, an affirmation of the seemingly universal notion that we, as individuals, nations, and societies should treat others as we would desire to be treated.

The second tenet, Enable Beauty, advocates for making art - beautiful art, in all its guises, seemingly another universal aspiration for human society. The important issue here is the notion of beautiful art.  Guernica is generally accepted as great art, but isn’t really beautiful except within a specific philosophical context. Distilled Harmony is anchored in a different, kinder, more gentle perspective and philosophy regarding art.  Think Hudson River School, think Ansel Adams, think Vermeer. Art that calms, lowers the blood pressure. Art therapy might encourage an individual to represent negative experiences and emotions, but that is not the task of Enable Beauty.

Oppose Harm, defined in a variety of ways, depending upon the specific harm one is confronting, personal, political, social, environmental, etc., rounded out the three initial tenets of Distilled Harmony.  And so it remained for a decade or so.

However, eventually I came to feel that utilizing these three tenets in seeking the best path to a harmonious existence implied, perhaps mandated, an additional tenet, a fourth tenet fitting most naturally between Enabling Beauty and Opposing Harm. And so Distill Complexity took its place in Distilled Harmony, mandating that we subject any existential assertion to a “tear it down to the studs” consideration and see if it can stand up to a thorough examination of its assertions. 

After lengthy reflection of how life is evolving around us, I think it might be time to add a fifth tenet to Distilled Harmony: Question Certainty. That may seem to be a simple restatement of Distill Complexity, but there is an important difference. We seem to be poised in the midst of a debate - at the ballot box, in the global marketplace, and on the battlefield - between two fundamentally different ways of viewing the world: democracy and autocracy. 

China is perhaps the most currently successful autocratic regime - certainly from a marketplace perspective. Obviously there are some significant social and political “push backs” from pieces of this incredibly diverse nation - but currently “The Party” seems to be maintaining control. Putin would like to claim parity with Beijing, currently by pushing autocracy into the democratic Ukraine. His success is anything but certain, and paradoxically his “Me too!” war seems to have strengthened the democratic resolve of his Western opponents in the EU and beyond.

I am inclined to add Question Certainty because of the political assumptions shared by the two dominant autocratic philosophies in today’s world, which are essentially “trust me based.” Whether Chairman Mao or Marx/Lenin, the political “truth” of an autocracy rests on the unquestionable certainty of the proclamations of a current, or historic, “great leader.” Democracy has, or certainly should have, trouble with that type of assertion. I know I do.

Back in the 1950s Disney aired a TV show starring Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. Davy’s mantra was “Be sure you are right, then go ahead!” At first blush they seem words to live by, and may have influenced a significant number of the program’s youthful audience. However, upon further reflection they underly some of humanities greatest tragedies. The problematic phrase is “Be sure you are right.” And how, we should ask, can we ever be sure we are right? It is quite easy to believe we are right, but certainty regarding the rectitude of would be political leaders - particularly in a democracy - often leads to potentially irreparable damage. 

Both sides in our own civil war were undoubtedly certain of the rectitude of their positions. The result was the deadliest war in American history leaving between 600,000 and 700,000 combined Americans dead. And John Wilkes Booth was no doubt certain killing Lincoln would right some existential wrong. Would that we had left such political certainties in our past. We have not. Yesterday we were driving through a piece of rural Indiana en route between Michigan and Illinois. It is, of course, election season and yard signs were blooming across the landscape. Being from out of state, I knew none of the names, nor their stance on any issues.  But apparently to one homeowner, such ignorance wasn’t important. A hand-painted board, next to the candidate’s professionally manufactured yard sign, proclaimed: “Trump Endorsed!”

Certainty rules. No thought necessary. If my email inbox is any indication, the same is true for “blue state” candidates. Apparently all that is necessary to secure my “desperately needed” contribution to their campaign is to “agree” that the Supreme Court is terribly biased. No thought necessary. Click here regardless of candidate or position being contested. Stay true blue. Send contributions. Certainty rules.

But of course it doesn’t. As we craft our unique and personal relationship to life another’s certainty can never substitute for our own thoughtful consideration of potential beliefs and behaviors. So we need to slide the chairs a little closer together, and make room at the Distilled Harmony table for a new tenet - Question Certainty.

What’s Left at the End of a Love Song?

I always listen to music while drawing - well actually I always listen to music unless I am doing something else that preempts the auditory channel; watching a video, or engaging in conversation - stuff like that. But when drawing I make specific musical choices. Usually I opt for instrumental works, or works like opera sung in a language I do not understand. Otherwise the words seem to get in the way - they sort of block the images that are trying to make their way onto the paper or the computer screen.

But there is an exception to this rule of thumb.  When I have completed the “cartoon” version of the drawing - the black and white outlines and designs within the outlines; when all that is left to do is choose what colors go where - I can listen to “songs with lyrics that I know very well.” It is not surprising that there are more love songs in that category than probably any other genre.  I suppose if you want to slice the big musical “songs with lyrics I know” pie into really fine pieces you could find some “non-love song” categories e.g. sea shanties, work songs, hymns, lullabies, parodies, children’s songs, etc. But if you sift through my Pandora selections - which is my “go to” app for music - you will find more love songs than anything else. That may be reflective of the fact that if you were to ask for all hopeless romantics to raise their hands, I bet I could beat Hermione Granger to the draw.  (Did I mention I am re-reading the Harry Potter books?)

While working on the “tale of two tongues” images that I recently shared with you, completing the areas that sort of turned out looking like Aztec glyphs gave me a lot of hours to listen to love songs.  And I found myself reflecting on a particular facet of the genre: the end of a love song. I realize, as Billy Collins points out in The Great American Poem, that one of the benefits poetry has over prose, novels, etc., is that you don’t have to parse hundreds of pages to get to the important kernel of the work. So how love song's lyrics - given that “lyrics” are simply poems put to music - end is a legitimate area of critical reflection.

So then - on to the ending of love songs.  While there are plenty of “hurtin’” love songs - those “somebody done somebody wrong songs.” There are a surprising number of “things turn out fine love songs.” Those moments when the lovers ride off into the sunset. “The hands that once held a six-gun, are holding their baby tonight,” etc. Find your own favorite examples, there are plenty of “happy love songs” out there. Disney and Broadway are fertile fields for these.  But even in these happy examples what follows after the ride out into the sunset is rarely if ever addressed. There are some - Kisses Sweeter than Wine, comes to mind, but not many others.

Country music in particular thrives on the “bad news love song;” “He stopped loving her today,” “Bury us both deep, and maybe we’ll find peace, And pulling the trigger, she fell cross the dead cowboy’s chest.” “Somewhere near Salinas, lord, I let her slip away.” But even in Country we can find some “happy love songs. “So I walked away from the hangin’ tree, And my own true love, she walked with me.”  And that strange “happy dying love song” Running Bear, “As their hands touched, and their lips met, the raging river pulled them down, Now they’ll always be together in their happy hunting ground.” But here too we never learn how the lovers - particularly the dead ones - deal with any prolonged happiness. Music stops. Story over.

So love songs, neither happy nor sad, rarely manage to tell us what happens after the lovers ride off into the sunset. What happens when the kids get the mumps? What happens when the horse dies? the cattle stampede? the bank won’t extend the loan? one of them gets called off to war? the crops fail? one of them “meets someone”? etc., etc.

But, in truth, “tough love” isn’t the job of love songs. Even the sad ones are supposed to make us feel good - sometimes in a “hurts so good” kind of way. “The phone that rings at midnight ain’t got nothing good to say. She just called to tell you she’s a thousand miles away. Long gone this time.”

So if you want to seriously suffer, to learn all the sordid details of lives and nations falling apart, you might better advised to read a novel, Tolstoy perhaps, or even, shudder, watch the news. Love songs, thankfully, point us in another direction.