How I Discovered My Passion in Life

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                          

Let me start by saying I wasn't trying to discover my passion in life. Of course I had heard many say that one should find and follow one's passion in life to be happy and successful.  There are books written on the subject, blog posts and websites with lists of questions to ask one's self to discover it, as well as courses offered on the subject by websites and even churches.  I had no urgency about finding my passion, as I had been working successfully for over thirty years in a career that I enjoyed and it always kept the wolves at bay.  I had a lot of interests in life which occupied whatever free time my work allowed.  Mostly my life was goal oriented, following the path to accomplish that next purpose.  So I had never tried any of those approaches, as there was apparently no need.

                                                                 

But my approach to life began to change in the summer of 2009 when Marcia got her diagnosis of cancer, not long after I learned that one of my very best friends in college had succumbed from a heart attack.  Life had become more precious and my generation no longer enjoyed a really long future, the immortality of youth.  One began to think more seriously about what to do with whatever time one might have left.  Then on November 1, 2009 when Marcia passed on, I found myself in new, uncharted territory.  Suddenly all that mattered was to deal with our loss, as the mourning process began.  There was no purpose to achieve, no clear path to follow, no timetable to meet a deadline.  Thankfully, Marcia's suffering had finally ended.  Nothing could be done to bring her back.  But how would I deal with this?  

                                                                

At her memorial service, I listened in my grief to her friend and minister of forty-three years and his wife tell about her life, stories going back to 1966.  Then her son gave a beautiful, emotional, chronological account of her life, story after story after story that illustrated the strength and character of his mother, who he clearly loves and respects very much.  There we all were, her friends and family, enjoying these stories, learning all kinds of interesting things about her life, and remembering those parts we had experienced directly.

             

As I looked around the room, I could see we were all genuinely grateful to hear more about her life and to discover things we hadn't known.  But it suddenly dawned on me that there had not been a single story told that I had not already heard, directly from Marcia!  I had known her for nearly forty years, but only intimately during the last decade of her life.  I realized that during those ten years, Marcia had shared with me everything she considered precious and important about her life.  A huge wave of gratitude came over me as I realized how lucky I had been to share that time with her.  This feeling was a blessing, but quickly an even stronger, transcendent feeling of pride and joy welled up inside of me, as I realized the particular bond we had developed was a gift she gave only to me, a very strong and intimate connection, which I will always keep close to my heart and will never ever forget.

                                 

This brought me a huge amount of relief and peace.  I resolved to always honor her memory, and attend to whatever came my way in this mourning process.  The grief had been replaced by the wave of gratitude.  I  still thought of her every day, but I was in no hurry for that to change, or to "get over it" in any way.  I would just see how life would go now.  I was open to any thoughts or feelings I had about her, was willing to accept any communication I had to her, or from her, and remained open to any other ideas that might come my way.

                                            

And it was with that open attitude that I planned to celebrate her birthday on January 24, 2010.  I've already written about that evening when I listened to Mahler's "Farewell to Life" and realized that I needed to experience more live classical music in my life, which led to my planning the series of concerts that I have been attending.  And now I've written about the first concert with the performance of The Planets (don't forget the Corn Nuts), the magnificent performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony and the transcendent moment I experienced upon the completion of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto.

          

But now it's time to go back to February 10, 2010, the evening before that first concert in the series.  I had made the final plans with my Chiro Friend for getting to the concert hall for the show.  She had never attended a symphony orchestra concert, so I had briefed her on what to expect.  I told her she could wear a ballroom gown, but then relented and admitted that concerts were no longer quite that formal.  In fact, I assured her that I would probably not even wear a tie, just a nice sweater.

                      

So the night before the concert I decided to pick out what I would wear from my closet.  I slid open the closet door and began to pull out sports jackets for consideration.  As I looked over the shirts, I began to think about ties and I had this strong feeling that one goes with the other.  So I pulled out some ties and found myself selecting which tie would look the best with the shirt and jacket I had chosen.  I set them aside, so they were ready for the following evening.  Okay, I was going to wear a tie after all, in spite of what I had told my Chiro Friend!  Somehow, that felt very good.  I went to bed looking forward to the next day and the start of my concert season.

               

Only I couldn't get to sleep right away, as I thought about how I felt as I picked out those clothes.  A comfortable, familiar feeling had come over me.  I was feeling very much at home, in a safe frame of mind.  What was this feeling?  Was it because I was going to wear a jacket that Marcia had bought me many years earlier?  No, it went deeper than that.  I was pulled back to 1964, getting ready for one of the dozens of concerts that I attended as a student at Oberlin College, where we always wore a jacket and tie, both at concerts and at dinner every evening.  Decades later I had been experiencing that same delicious anticipation from getting ready to see another live performance of music.  It was a dance I had been through so many times, which always led to a very positive and enjoyable experience.

                

As I had been going through the mourning process, I had been paying close attention to my feelings and seeing where they would lead me.  And that's what I did again that night.  Only this time, parts of my life began to fall into place like a puzzle.  The feeling I had when I began the process of dressing for a concert was the key that unlocked the door and all the connections came tumbling out.  I began to look over parts of my life, the important parts, and my life began to make sense, in a way that had never occurred before.  As more and more of these connections came to mind, I began to get more and more excited, as the epiphany fully took hold of my consciousness.

                                  

Far too excited to sleep, I finally switched on the light and pulled out the notebook by my bed and started to write, summing up my life, as I now clearly saw it, in one single line.

   2:43 AM       What ties my life together: MUSIC!       2/10/10

This was followed by five pages of single spaced writing, listing one example after another of that realization, covering events from all periods in my life, going all the way back to before I started grade school.  I finally stopped after listing fifty of these examples from my life.  My understanding of my life had taken a quantum leap forward.

                                         

I had discovered the thread that ran through my entire life.  I had discovered my passion in life.

                                  

                                                                                               

The mourning process had gotten me to open up my attention, to let it reach out in all directions, not just the path ahead.  And finally I came to see what held my life together.  I had always concentrated on the path to my goals.  The beautiful green trees were always there, but they didn't lead anywhere.  It was the path that lead somewhere and so it was the path that needed to be followed.  Or so I thought.

                            

Those trees had always been there.  They were so much always there, that I didn't realize this was anything unusual or special about my life.  They were so much a part of me that I didn't even recognize that they define who I am.  It wasn't until February 10, 2010 that I finally got a look at the forest from above.  And then I realized that it was a forest, not just a path passing through pretty green trees.

                   

Of course the forest is the music, my love for music, my passion for music, that holds together all phases of my life and makes it uniquely MY LIFE.  Realizing this has changed everything.  I have given myself some time to let this sink in, perhaps to make sure that I'm not just delusional.  I'm not.  This is important and real.

                                        

As I said at the outset, I wasn't looking for this understanding.  And if the question had been posed to me, "What is your passion in life?" I would have said, "I don't know."  Or maybe I would have said that I was passionate about a lot of things, and I'm not sure that One Single Passion in Life is possible, or worth trying to discover.  Marcia once wrote that I am an "honorable and passionate man."  I liked that, because I knew I could feel passion and express passion at times, and it felt really good to do that.  But how could there be a Single Passion in my life?

                           

But there can be, if you realize that the passion can be as big as a forest going out in all directions and off into the distance.  And there are a lot of paths down there among the trees, but what is most important is the beauty, strength and stability of the forest.  Even though I wasn't looking for it, I'm very glad I found it.  And now I encourage everyone, including you, to take a look around and notice what is always there in your life, that makes you YOU.  And if you're fortunate like me, and you discover your passion, I think you'll find that it brings a lot of order to your past and it orients you in a positive way that you may not have previously experienced.  And if this does happen for you, tell me about it in the comments.  I would be very interested in your experiences.

                                     

                                                       

That Magnificent Sound

                                                                  
It is 8:00 pm and I just returned home from a Sunday afternoon San Francisco Symphony performance of Mahler's Second Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), with Laura Claycomb (soprano), Katarina Karnéus (mezzo-soprano), and the full San Francisco Symphony Chorus, directed by Ragnar Bohlin.
                                 

The original plan was to take both my Chiro Friend (CF) and the Dancing Cellist (DC) to this concert.  But as it turned out, the Dancing Cellist was under a lot of pressure to prepare for her college final exams, which are next week.  So on Saturday, it was decided that her mother, the Dancing Poet (DP), would attend in her place.  Neither CF nor DP had ever been to a live performance of any music by Gustav Mahler.

DP attended the pre-concert talk with me and CF joined us for the concert itself.  The very informative talk was given by the Program Annotator for the symphony, James M. Keller.  Keller is a graduate of my alma mater, Oberlin College.

I am not a music critic, nor a music journalist.  So I don't intend to write a review of this, or any other, concert.  I intend to describe my life in music in this blog, and that is all.  I will write about what I personally experienced  in hopes that the reader might find this of some use.

On the drive home, one word came to mind to describe this performance.  It is magnificent.  Look it up and you'll find the following words as synonyms for this word: grand, splendid, majestic, superb, glorious, impressive.  They all apply.  

There is no way to describe this experience in words.  One simply must experience  the music  directly oneself.  And that is what I encourage everyone to do.

I am partial to Mahler.  He and Bob Dylan are the two musical giants who have meant the most to me in my life and have had the most impact upon me as a listener.  So perhaps I came to the concert with a bias in favor of this piece of music.  But upon its conclusion, both CF and DP were excited about the performance and were very happy to have spent the afternoon in this way.

I am not a critical listener.  That is, I am not listening for things that I might criticize.  I am there to experience the sound and see where it takes me.  With a larger than usual orchestra and the full chorus and two soloists, there were probably somewhere between 200 and 250 dedicated musicians, between those on stage and the horns, trumpets and percussion in two locations offstage.  Surely each one has spent thousands of hours learning their craft and practicing their instrument to master its use, in order to win the right to sit on that stage to play for us today.  For most, they did not do this in order to make a fortune or to become world famous.  They did it because of their love of music.  And to my mind they are doing God's work, elevating the consciousness of those who pay to see them perform.
                   

So I have tremendous respect for these world class musicians.  And in recent years, this orchestra  under the direction of MTT has recorded the full cycle of Mahler symphonic works and has gained a world-wide reputation for being an excellent Mahler orchestra.  We are very fortunate in the SF Bay Area to have this great symphony available for our listening pleasure.  So I considered it a great honor for me to be able to hear their performance of this work.

I am open to feeling whatever emotions and feelings the performance might bring my way.  Before they began to play, I was feeling nervous and anxious, just like I used to feel before I performed music in my childhood.  Perhaps I was reliving some of those feelings, or perhaps some of those feelings were coming from some of the performers or others in the hall, or both.   Whatever their origin,  those feelings went away as the music began to be performed, just as they used to do when I was a young performer.

Now understand that this work deals with the subject of death and resurrection.  Mahler originally called what eventually became the first movement Funeral Rites and the fourth and final movements specifically address death and resurrection in the words sung by the soloists and chorus.  In that way, this is serious music, dealing with a serious subject.  For me this had special meaning, as I have been going through the mourning process  after the loss of a love of my life, Marcia (RIP).  And it is this loss that has directly led me to this rejuvenation of my musical life and the series of concerts that I will be attending during these next few months.

In preparing for the concert I had read the chapter on the Second Symphony in a Mahler biography I own.  And I had listened to a number of performances of the symphony, both on CD and with You Tube videos.  The latter mostly consisted of performances by the NY Philharmonic directed by Leonard Bernstein and an 8/30/98 performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Simon Battle.  The latter videos have excellent video quality, as well as subtitles with the English translation of the singing in the final two movements.     

On three separate occasions during the final days leading up to the performance today, I had burst into tears while watching the last eight minutes of the Rattle/CBSO performance.  In each case I was watching the video with a great deal of interest, but not in any sort of morose state, and each time my tears had simply burst out unexpectedly as I watched.  Each time this grief was accompanied by thoughts about Marcia.  And each time it felt like a healing experience.

                                  

                      

Perhaps part of my nervousness before this performance was over wondering whether I might find myself bursting into tears during this performance as well.  Our seats were in the middle of the second row, less than ten feet from the edge of the stage.  I didn't want to cause a scene.  So before it started, I warned both CF and DP about this possibility, so that they would not be thrown off by it, if it should come to pass.

Well it did not happen that way.  But the music did move me in significant ways at many points during the performance and at three different points (not the same point as when I watched the videos) tears began rolling down my cheeks.  I just let them roll.  I didn't even wipe them off, not wanting to direct any of my attention off of the performance.  And once again these felt like healing moments.

As I thought about all this on the drive home, I realized the point I wanted to make in writing about this experience.  And that is that far too many people these days are missing out on these experiences.  There was one empty seat in the first row right in front of us, but mostly the concert looked to be sold out.  But I had been able to buy my tickets only six weeks before the concert.  For such a large metropolitan area, this tells me there are a huge number of people who don't have the slightest idea what they are missing by not attending concerts by this world class symphony orchestra.

Perhaps I should keep this incredible secret to myself, as it certainly makes it easier for me to get tickets.  But how does this affect our culture and the overall well-being of our population?  As Dr. Karl Paulnack has said, attending a performance of Mahler's Second "...can be a very deep transformative life saving experience."   And as he said in his Welcome Address to new students at The Boston Conservatory, "music is a basic need of human survival."

He concludes his Welcome Address by saying the following. 
                         

"Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do."

When one first reads his statement, perhaps it seems like hyperbole, wishful thinking.  But when you  directly experience the majestic power of great music performed by a great symphony orchestra, his statement begins to feel both plausible and right.  Surely this is God's work.

                                                                              

The Role of the Audience

                                     

A week ago I wrote about the Welcome Address to new music students given by Dr. Karl Paulnack,  In that speech, Paulnack discussed how "Music is a basic need of human survival." The speech was given in 2004 and Paulnack went on to expand on this discussion in 2008 and 2009.

On August 24, 2008 he gave a sermon at his church in Boston in which he discussed his ideas, but extended them to also consider the role of the audience in live performance.  The audio of that sermon is still available at the website of the church.  In it, he says the following.

"What matters more than the type of music that you like, is that we submit ourselves to it.  That we enter into a partnership with music where we recognize its potential as a therapeutic agent.  And live music is much much better for this than recorded music. . . With live music, the specific energy that you bring as an audience member affects the performers in subtle, but real, ways. And you influence what is being created.  In effect, you co-create the performance.  And music ends up being created with you in mind." 

Does that sound familiar?  If you've read my article on The Sound of Silence, you may recall I wrote that at the end of the performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony "the audience had become performers along with the orchestra! We all helped to create that effect."  And when I talked to the orchestra members afterward about the magnificent performance, one of them commented that "it was very unusual for an audience to remain that still, not just at the very end, but throughout the final movement."  Clearly he was saying that the actions of the audience had had a positive effect on the performance by the orchestra.  This is just the sort of thing Paulnack was discussing in his sermon.

On April 25, 2009 Paulnack expanded upon this role of the audience in a telephone interview with Janice Harris published as a podcast on her Music Therapy website.  In that interview, he states the following.

". . . if you go to a performance and you sit there quietly with your gaze on the musicians, giving your whole heart and soul and attention into that performance, focusing on those musicians, supporting them, in a way; if you go with that kind of devotion, musicians thrive on that.  We can feel - we can actually feel which members  of the audience we have.  Who's with us?  And we usually play to those people.  We play to those people who are riveted on us, who are focused on us. . . They don't recognize how much of a positive impact they have on performance by sharing it.  And really, the performances are shaped half by the people in the audiences and their states of receptiveness, just as much as they're shaped by the people on the stage."

So the role of an audience member is not a passive role.  The more we engage with the performance, the more it will enhance the performance for us, as well as for everyone else.

And in that same podcast he discusses the power of some musical performances.

"Going out to Mahler's Second - that's not 'entertainment' - that's not what that's about.  It's a very deep and transformative - it can be a very deep transformative life saving experience.  So I think one of my intentions here is not to put down in any way people who do music as entertainment, or the use of music as entertainment.  There's nothing wrong with entertainment.  It's not a bad thing.  But to assume that all music somehow is entertainment or has a function of distracting us or carrying us away from the deeper aspects of life, is I think, a misconception in our society.  Music can actually carry us very very deeply into our lives and into a deeper experience and a deeper connection with our lives.  Which I see as a different function from entertainment."

Wow, he has set a high standard here!  This comment made an immediate connection with me when I heard it a couple of weeks ago, as I had just purchased tickets to the 3/14/10 performance of the Mahler Second Symphony by the San Francisco Symphony.  I will be taking both my Chiro Friend and the Dancing Cellist to this concert.  I bought three tickets to this one, as I didn't want to have to make a choice about which of the two of them would get to go to this one.  So I got tickets for both.  We're all really looking forward to this performance!

                             

My Concert Season Begins

          
On February 11, 2010 my series of seven San Francisco Symphony concerts began with a performance at the Flint Center in Cupertino, CA.  My Chiro Friend had agreed to join me for this one and this was to be the first time she ever attended a symphony orchestra concert.  I thought this would be a nice way for her to get started with this kind of music.  It would be a short drive from her office to the concert hall; much shorter than going all the way to San Francisco.  And the concert was to include The Planets by Gustav Holst, which would be very easy to enjoy, even for a young woman new to classical music.

 

And it did prove to be a good choice.  We both enjoyed the music conducted by Charles Dutoit, very much.  She was most excited about the various emotional moods represented in the Holst work.  As we left the concert she was talking about how she might be able to incorporate the music into the health care talks she gives to people.  She realized that it would be easier to play a passage that brings on a particular emotion, rather than just describe the emotion with words. I thought that was fantastic, as she was immediately applying this new experience to her own life in a really creative way!

It had been really interesting to be next to her as she attended her first concert.  Before it began she let me know that she already knew that we weren't supposed to clap between the movements.  Yes, I confirmed to her, that is the tradition.  And then she grabbed the program and began reading the program notes with great interest, to see what we would be hearing.  Excellent, she really is getting in to the experience!  I was very pleased that she was really participating.   

The concert began with Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by William Walton.  When the first movement finished, the crowd began it's usual chorus of coughing, shuffling, and throat clearing from all directions around us.  She cracked up and whispered in my ear, "Is it always like this?"  Well yes, I had to admit, pretty much.  She found this rather amusing and gave me a big smile about it.  The second movement ended, followed by the same sort of rattling around by the audience.  Another chuckle on her part.  She listened intently during the playing, but didn't get all serious about it.  A perfect attitude.

During the intermission, we got up and walked around a bit, used the facilities and so on.  She disappeared for a bit and then reappeared with a small package in her hand.  You see, she had been seeing clients right up to the time when we had to leave for the concert.  So there was no time for dinner before the show.  The poor girl was probably starving!  So she had gotten herself a snack, which was the small package in her hand.  Hey, no problem with that.

So we headed back to our seats to get ready for The Planets.  And when we got settled, she started in on her snack, offering me some, but I declined, as I wasn't particularly hungry.  And then I saw what she had bought at the concert hall canteen.  It was a bag of Corn Nuts!  Can you say crunchy?!! 

Wait, the Maestro is coming out again.  They're about to get started with The Planets.  Quick, eat some of that crunchy goodness.  Crunch!  Crunch!  Crunch!  Hey, no problem, the applause started up to welcome the conductor back, pretty loud.  Still time for some more crunching.  And then the first movement began.  Ooops, caught with a mouth half full.  When the music got louder, I could hear some teeny tiny, mouth closed,  slow, crunching noises, just because I was sitting nearby.  And so it went.

Now The Planets has seven movements, so that meant six breaks between movements for the crowd to loosen up for the next movement.  And the same routine every time with the coughing and throat clearing, but now there was some added crunching in my vicinity as well.  Finally my dear sweet Chiro Friend could not contain herself any longer.  On the next break between movements, she leaned toward me, open mouth near my left ear and let go with a loud C R U N C H    C  U   U   R   R   R   U   N   C   H  ! !   It was hilarious.

Hey, she's a great chiropractor, but she's got a sense of humor too.

Now I don't want to mislead the reader.  We weren't creating a scene or bothering anyone.  It was just a little fun in the moment.  Overall we both listened very intently to the music, which is, after all, a very showy piece and a great introduction to a new listener of the great variety of sounds that can be produced by a good orchestra.  We both left the concert in great spirits after an evening of wonderful live music.

             

Follow Your Heart

On January 24, 2010 my life began to shift in a new direction.

I had decided to set aside much of the day to remember Marcia, my partner in life during much of the previous decade, who had passed away on November 1, 2009.  I had been going through the mourning process since then, with her in my thoughts every day.  Right after her passing I had taken a 3,000 mile road trip in my car, to Colorado and back, to meditate about her and our lives, together and apart.   I spoke with my  family, my closest friends, my co-workers, my clients, my chiropractor, my general practitioner, and my favorite neighbor about Marcia, my life with Marcia, and my loss.  I drove to Los Angeles and attended her very moving memorial service. I had no particular plan or agenda, nor any particular time table.  I had just decided to let my thoughts be on her and to honor her memory with my thoughts.  I was in no hurry to "get over" the loss, or reach any particular conclusion with the mourning process.  I had decided to just let myself have the time to explore this process.

January 24, 2010 would have been her 66th birthday.  Marcia never made any big deal about birthdays, but for her 65th birthday I had designed a special birthday card just for her, complete with some nice photographs, an appropriate Dylan quote, and some heartfelt prose about her qualities.  She liked it a lot, saying, "Very thoughtful of you and beautifully done."  Marcia was a fine artist, so the "beautifully done" meant a lot to me, as she had excellent judgment about the quality of art.  She was very pleased that I was "exploring and experiencing the creative process." 

I never imagined that by her next birthday she would be gone.  And so as that day approached, I resolved to do something special to remember her.  There were a number of things I did to remember her throughout that day, but the most special thing I had planned was to devote the evening to meditating about her, inviting her presence in my heart.  It seemed to me the best way I could do that would be to listen to a recording of Mahler's Ninth Symphony on my living room stereo, while letting myself go to her.

I chose that piece partly because of the subject matter, Mahler's "Farewell to Life."  But my attendance at a performance of this symphony in 1994 had been one of the peak experiences in my life, so I knew that  the music would be worthy to the occasion.  And the article I wrote about that performance was one of the first things I had Marcia read when we first began connecting as a couple.  She liked the article very much.

And so that's what I did.  It was a wonderful evening, well spent.  Somewhere along the way, I began to feel nourished by the music.  As Dr. Karl Paulnack has said,

"Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

The music was doing that for me that evening, as I meditated about Marcia and our lives.  It was helping to heal my heart.  And one clear thought came to me, above all others.   

"I need to experience live classical music more often.  It makes me stronger, more sane.  I will be better, with more of it in my life."

The very next week I was working at my desk, with Pandora playing music for me when the internet music service ran one of their brief ads between songs.  It was an ad for the San Francisco Symphony, which was promoting a 50% off sale coming up in just a few days.  Bingo!

I spent the rest of the evening exploring their website and looking at their upcoming concerts and the great deals they were offering on tickets.  I decided to order tickets to seven of the concerts as soon as the sale began.

But I also decided not to attend alone.  In recent years I had gone to a number of concerts alone.  And though the concerts were wonderful, I always missed having a companion at the performances.

In fact the very last concert I had attended was a Leonard Cohen concert in San Jose, the final performance in that tour. When I had a discussion with the two young ladies sitting next to me, one of them asked, "So tell me, why a nice man like you is here at this show all by yourself!"  Well of course, I was really there with them, at least at that moment.  But I had to admit to myself that she really did have a point.

And so I decided to find someone to go with me to these concerts. In fact there will be at least three different women attending various of these concerts with me.  The first to agree was my Chiro Friend, who had never attended a symphony concert in her life, but had offered wise counsel during my grieving process, not to mention all the great help she has given me with my body aches and pains.  The second to agree was my Dancing Cellist Friend, who had a room in my home for a couple of years and had been there for me many times.  The third to agree was my Dancing Poet Friend, who has been very dear to me for nearly forty years, a friend for life.

I have started to follow my heart, to act on that firm resolve that came into my consciousness that Sunday evening in January.  This was the first step that I took with this new direction, that has already had far reaching beneficial effects upon my life.  I invite you to keep reading this blog and follow along as I write about my life in music.

                                                           

Sometimes an Old Man Will Surprise You

                 

February 11th I got home around 11 pm after a great time with the San Francisco Symphony at the Flint Center with my Chiro Friend.  It was the first symphony orchestra concert she had ever attended in her life (she's now 14 years out of college) and she seemed to enjoy it a lot.  In fact she asked to borrow my CD of The Planets by Gustav Holst, which is the best work we heard performed that evening.  Of course I was blown out as always after a concert and very happy to have introduced her to something new in her young life.

On to my nearly 94 year old Dad.  When I got home, he was reading in his rocker in his bedroom with the door open.  He stayed up because a lens had come dislodged from the frame of his glasses and I had promised to fix it when I got home tonight.  So I did that.  Then he asked me what concert I had attended, so I told him about that.

Somehow this led to him saying something about "that singer who plays the guitar and the harmonica at the same time."  I said, "You mean Bob Dylan?"  "Yeah, that's the one!"

A pause.  And then he said, "Hey, you know I read a book about him from your bookcase the other day.  It was really good!!  A big thick book, it was this thick," as he showed me his finger and thumb, spaced a couple of inches apart.

This came as an amazing announcement to me.  My father has never been a music lover.  Back in 1969 or so, I bought him Dylan's LP Highway 61 Revisited, but I doubt that it got played very many times.  He's just never been musically inclined.  So I asked him to show me the book he had read, thinking to myself, "Wow, I gotta see this!"

We went into my office and he marched right up and pointed at one of the hundreds of Dylan books in my Dylan bookcase, saying "This one."  He pulled out Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited by Clinton Heylin and handed it to me.  "That's the one.  It's a really good book.  First, it's written by a really good writer, Heylin is it?  He keeps you interested all the way through."

Still a little dumbfounded, I mumbled, almost more to myself, "So . . . you read this whole book?"  He says, "Yeah, the whole thing.  Well it only took me a day!  I'm a really fast reader."  

   

The large hardback book is 720 pages long, not counting the 60 pages of references in the back!

"Okay!" I said.  "Well if you liked that one, I'll tell you the next one you might want to read, if you want to read another one."  "Sure", he says, "which one would that be?"  "Well you could read the one Dylan wrote himself about his life."  "Yeah, okay, do you have that one?" he asked.  So I took him in the other room and grabbed the paperback edition of Volume One of Bob Dylan Chronicles and handed it to him, explaining that Bob was given a contract by Simon & Schuster to write three books about his life. 

Then I asked, "So what was it you liked about the one you read anyway?"

"Well he's a really interesting guy.  He writes all his own songs, right?  He's sung all over the world, I guess.  But I think his real genius is in his songwriting.  I mean a lot of people can sing songs.  But he writes them!"  Of course I told him that lots of people have sung tons of the songs he has written, but that Dylan's own version of those songs are usually the best.

 He paused and then looked right at me.  "You know what I really liked about the book was that by the end of the book I felt like I really knew him!"  And off he went to his bedroom with Bob's book in his hand.

And there I stood, taking it all in.  I went back in the office and looked at my bookshelves.  The ones with the Dylan books take up a total width of over fifteen feet.  And out of all those hundreds of books, he made a pretty darn good selection for finding out about Dylan's life.  If he had asked me, I probably wouldn't have handed him a 720 page book as a starting point, but like he said, he reads really fast.

Then as I thought about it more, I found it interesting that he didn't ask me if I could give him some Dylan music he could listen to.

Like I said, he's never been a music lover.  He's always been a book worm.

But we got to the same place about Dylan.  After listening to his music for decades, I too, feel like I really know him.

Postscript:

One time before a Dylan show I was talking to a fellow at his first Dylan show about Bob and his recent shows.  After a bit, the guy asked me, "So how come you call him Bob and not Dylan, or Bob Dylan?"  So I told him that when you get to know a person, you just start calling them by their first name, right?