Songs in the key of me

   Music is a big deal to me.  I have to have it somewhere nearby nearly all the time.  I am one of "those people" who always seem to have a song in their head.  At almost any given moment you could ask me which song and I would have an answer for you.  If fact, one of the ways that I know that I am getting sick or especially developing a fever is when I have the same small piece of a song I hate running on constant repeat in my head.  When it happens I know it's tine to go lie down and sleep for a long time.

   There are artists' whose music is in fairly regular rotation for me, and some of that music goes back decades and is not really the stuff you might hear on the radio playing the "best of the 80s and 90s!"  For example:  My favorite band is The Police, but I prefer all of the "filler" songs from their albums.  I really don't like to listen to their Pop hits.  "Roxanne" and "Every Breath You Take" are not favorites at all.  But I love their instrumental stuff, especially "Masoko Tanga" with all of its nonsense or "The Other Way of Stopping".

  But for the last couple of days my mind has entertained "See My Ships" by the Violent Femmes.

"See my ships 

They are sailing 

In and out of the harbor 

Will they go together 

Or must they stay apart "

and then later in the song...

"Mercy mercy me 

Marvin Gaye he was shot 

By his father 

O my Father 

Have mercy on me "

   Now at first you might think that this would mean that I am in some sort of confusion, but not really.  The ships, for me, are symbolic of my thoughts, or maybe the various pieces of my life.  As in "Will I ever get my act together?" or "Is consistency even an option or possibility for me?"  These are all fair and accurate.

   But the interesting thing about the mention of Marvin Gaye...

   When I was about three years old my dad was forced into making a tough decision.  
   
   We lived in a trailer park at the time.  The landlord had come to my dad and told him that my brother (thirteen years older than me) had been caught either in possession of or selling marijuana from our house.  He evicted us.  In 1975, in a small town in the South, this was a big deal and very unexpected.  Moving a mobile home is neither easy nor inexpensive, and well, would you expect people living in a trailer park to really have the money on hand (or even access to it) to pay for something like that?

   So my dad performed something of a miracle in retrospect, and it was the right thing to do.  But even though I have neither spoken to nor heard from my brother in years I bet he still hasn't forgiven Dad for doing it.

   My dad made a deal with the landlord that the rest of the family could stay if he kicked out my brother.  So he did.  He was banished from anywhere on the property.  Over the next seven years (until my dad died) I rarely saw my oldest brother, except maybe on holidays.  To be honest I really have no idea how he got through the rest of high school.

   But the song lyrics...

   I thought about those lines last night as I was falling asleep, and I remembered hearing the news about Marvin Gaye when I was a kid.  I had no idea who the man was, what he did, or what he was famous for having done.  I gradually learned about him in the days following the news, but the thing that has stuck with me since I first heard the song back in 1990 was how that could have been the same story for my dad and brother.  Maybe they were so much alike that it made it impossible for them to get along.  They certainly knew how to push each other's buttons.  

   I don't know if my dad saw something in my oldest brother that no one else did,or if he simply disliked him for some other reason.  I don't know if my brother was truly a bad kid or felt slighted or was just rebellious by nature. 

   But whenever I think of Marvin Gaye I think of the dynamic of that father-son relationship and compare it to my own family's.  And I wonder if my dad had not died when he did would something similar be part of our shared history?

Hello? Testing... Is this thing on?

     So I have this blog.  And theoretically I am a writer.  So why do I not write for my blog?  I have no idea.

     I call myself a painter.  I don't paint.  I have canvases that will need to have the dust washed off before they can be used.

     I have had an idea for a novel for years, but I can't seem to do anything with it except come up with what I call "fringe" ideas, meaning that I have character names, some settings, and other various odds and ends, but when it comes to actually writing text, well, no.

     I am and have always been a procrastinator.  But when I was a teenager I knew I wanted to write.  I read what Steinbeck did with words and stories and I wanted to do that.  In my 20s I read Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It" and knew that I would never write anything so lyrically beautiful, but I still wanted to belong to the club, so to speak.  I still want to.  I guess I have finally realized exactly what the dues are that need paying.

     Don't get me wrong, my ego tells me (and various other people) that I am a writer already.  I can discuss mechanics.  I can discuss plot development, setting, you name it.  I can sound convincing that I know what I'm talking about.  But I have never finished a story.  I think my "mathematical" or "analytical" mind wants to get bogged down and distracted by details and minutiae.  I guess it's an ADD thing.  Very similar to my lack of success in academics.  (Or painting for that matter.)

     For some reason I feel like I need to create some sort of plan or framework or skeleton even for my novel.  I have to decide the timeline of events, the setting...  all of the crazy little stuff that I'll probably end up changing during the rewrite but that seems so necessary to decide on before I start.

     Writing teachers and others have told me to "just sit down and write", but for some reason that approach seems wrong to me.  I get the purpose of it and it makes a lot of sense, but it seems to be a great effort to make my fingers touch the keys.

     And yes, I get the odd coincidence that I am writing right now as I type this.  But...

     And now I realize that I am still just making the same old excuses.

     Years ago, shortly after we were married, my wife told me what is probably the most profound truth that any person has ever said to me.  She told me that I have never suffered from a fear of failure.  I suffer from a fear of success.  She explained that failure didn't scare me because I had been through failure but had continued on.  She clarified by telling me that I was afraid of success in that if I were to succeed at something that I really cared about, then it would be expected of me, and I didn't want that responsibility.

     She was right, of course.  And I knew she was when she said it.  I just wish that I hadn't wasted the last 19 years ignoring it.

     Now, I have no idea whether I'll be successful with writing (or painting-- or woodworking, etc.), but I have made another realization recently that, like so many other things in my life, I have known intellectually but have not accepted to be able to know emotionally.  That simple concept is that I do not need to be financially successful at something for it to have value in its pursuit.  Catharsis or simply enjoyment of the process are reason enough to pursue something.

     Now...  It's time for me to get to work.