Once in A Lifetime

I remember first knowing about the Talking Heads because of a guy on our swim team in Amarillo, Kris Perry. Kris was an interesting guy in many ways as I think back on it now, but I do remember this song as something that I learned as a result of knowing him.

This was a time of the early to mid-80s, when MTV was just beginning and it was pretty much guaranteed that you would see T-Rex, Mott the Hoople, Wall of Vodoo, The Buggles, and/or Haircut 100 on any given day. Or, somewhat more exciting, the Talking Heads.

The experience (for it was neither merely an LP nor a concert video), "Stop Making Sense," for those of you too young to remember, redefined "live music" because it was the first mainstream video recording of a concert that was consciously trying to also be an extended music video for mass consumption on MTV. David Byrne's "big suit" redefined stage appearance and presence as much as any glamour trend has in the past 40 years.

Why Kris Perry though? Kris was an actor, naturally, and he eventually went to school in California to pursue it professionally, though I don't know the fate of that. However, all that he did had a dramatic flair to it, and one of the things that he did which later spread to most of the members on the team was to do the chop suey motion from "Once in A Lifetime" in which David Byrne does a series of chopping motions down his arm while singing/talking the lines "and you may tell yourself, this is not your beautiful house/and you may tell yourself, this is not your beautiful wife" followed by the refrain of  "same as it ever was...same as it ever was..." as well as the in/famous full-body jerking that was to become a temporary dance fad at the time. It became legion upon the team to do these two motions: the chopping and the hurky-jerky dance.

Listening to this song now, as opposed to then, it is interesting to see the differences and vicissitudes that life does bring to us, and we to it, and to observe how one has changed over the years, but perhaps equally importantly, how one has not changed. There are things in my life, and my life's philosophy, that have not changed, that are indeed "same as it ever was." But, like the song, one day, I looked around at what had happened in my life, and I could also say, "this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife..." as those things had changed, though I was still sliding/swimming/gliding down the slipstream of life, merrily, merrily...wondering if life is but a dream, or so the song also somewhat goes.

When the material elements are gone: the beautiful house, the large automobile, the wife, and so forth--what happens? What happens, when we find ourselves "in another part of the world "? 

Who am I then? "Well, How did I get Here?"

And, more importantly, you may say to yourself  "My God! What have I done?"

I have in the meantime learned to live that each day, in each moment, with each breath, is indeed Once in A Lifetime, and that within those days, those moments, those breaths, either we learn to appreciate them, or we merely float along, biding our time, though not abiding, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, without the awareness and without the realization of what it took for us to get to where we are on this day, in this moment, with this breath. It takes a Lifetime.

Knowing the difference between what I cannot change and what I can within this lifetime, however, has been the greatest gift of all. Like a diamond bullet, straight through my forehead, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Perhaps that is the jolting motion that Mr. Byrne is experiencing...it has been for me.

Perhaps one of my all-time favorite songs/videos. Somethings do come around, once in a Lifetime.

There Is A Mountain

When I was a young professor some years ago, I was teaching a course called "The Pursuit of Happiness" for a Freshman Humanities course to a group of extremely bright, young men and women.

Although the title of the course garnered much derision (this was before someone made a similar course the most popular class at Harvard), what myself and the students quickly learned was the question of "What is Happiness?" is one of the most difficult and long-standing questions ever asked.

Indeed, what then does make one "Happy?"

The origin of the word in the western world is eu-daimonia, which means "good spirit," and you can readily see the stem of the word daimon, which later takes a sinister turn in the 16th Century or so, becoming demon. The "eu," unlike the unhappiness caused by those two letters in Europe currently, means "good" then.

Is Happiness, however, a state? a journey? a destination? a fiction of our imagination? 

My own tendency is that like the story of Croesus, we cannot know at any given Time in our lives if we are "Happy," but rather, what is the sum total of our lives, unfortunately, only to be counted after our deaths. In other words, the darkest part of one's life is merely a portion of that person's life, but in order to concede that, one must then be willing to go with the fact that the best moment of Life is also just that, fleeting and ephemeral. A part of the larger whole.

In the tradition (or lack thereof) of Zen, there is the concept of contemplating a mountain. In deep contemplation, one first sees a mountain, then not a mountain, then a mountain again. What happens in that middle stage, when the observer has dis-entangled himself from the object, is the Quality of our inner be-ing. Who are you, when there is no mountain? Who are You when there is neither happiness, nor pain? When it is just You, without sensation, without the judgment of others bearing down on your shoulders, where do You go?

I don't really have much truck with the concept of "Happiness" and I usually try to avoid saying whether  I am "Happy" for the most part.

Rather, I have learned to focus on that Quality of what is within, what makes me "Me" and not "You"? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, when we die, we'll become part of that mountain again. But, during the interim, when you learn to live true to yourself, Happiness becomes a thing of the past, as do all other temporary sensations, and then, you begin to Live.

One of my students from that class, who suffered from some serious personal struggles in life, introduced me to this song when we were discussing Zen in that course. In that course, I chose the philosophical tenets that I knew that I wanted to live my life by, but it has only been in the past couple of years that I can say that I now truly live them. Sometimes, that mountain is not a mountain for a very, very long Time.

Thank you, Josh, for introducing me to this song.

Death By Water

Martin Heidegger, a controversial figure in the history of Philosophy spoke of the darkening of the Earth as it became consumed by impersonal technology, becoming a man-made World. When the Technology dictates our very lives and consumes our every communication, we will drown in it, and the Earth will be forgotten, hidden.

The Earth is Drowning.

With the advent of a New Year, 2012, there are doomsday mythologies including that the planet will be consumed by a flood, or some other major catastrophe.

There is a more immediate dilemma. The Earth is desiccated, starved for spiritual rain. Mass protests and political sanctions will not bring relief.

Kieslowski's movie, Blue, includes this adaptation of I Corinthians 13 as the closing piece.

May it be a Message for 2012.