re-solving.

one of the problems that I’ve felt more aware of recently is:

When somebody “finds their voice” it usually means that (partially at least) they’ve found an audience.

That’s a good thing right?

I guess partly it is. Because the thing about an audience (and a relationship and an upbringing and any membership) is that once you’ve found them – they maintain their delight whenever you do the thing for them again that made them love you.

When they recognize you for who they knew you to be -- then (!) they see you.

But if you venture too far away from what you should have been than they cannot see you at all. You become invisible. So its a bad thing too...

Because the problem for the author / the individual / the child / the member --> is that we cannot be human like this. We cannot continue in an endless repetition. We cannot always, over and over again, be who others expect us to be.

I wrote about this dilemma on my last birthday like this:


The thing is humans need to grow and change – and if we find that our stories do not accommodate growth and change – then we rigidify. We become an instantiation of our own story. A puppet in the service of our past. A metaphor that illuminates a myth.


I preach the answer to this quandary from the bully pulpit of my classroom as "finding the delicate balance of invention and convention...."

but i'm seeing right now that there's more there than that. There's all these issues of Faithfulness. and True Essence. and Vocation (which, yes, I remember, is not something we talk about here at the BackBurner...but...it turns out we tend to think about it alot.) Convention and Invention refer to the generic formulas we employ to keep our audience's attention, but the delicate balance between Authenticity and Expectations seems like a slightly different dialectic....

so anyway....

these are the kind of things I think about when I think about new years resolutions. These and how late can I put off my hundred pushups tonight and still be doing them every single day of the new year.

peace~

Top Two Christmas Presents

Jaelyn brought me a present that had been quite vigorously wrapped by her. LOTS of paper. LOTS of tape, oodles of folds and crinkles.

"What is it?" I ask.

"A firefly cat..." she blurts....

"No, not yet..." I protest....

She covers her mouth. Trying to hold in the joy... "I wrapped it all myself!"

I unwrap. It's an old jar of Vodka Sauce -- with bits of the vodka sauce still pooling inside (just before Gia Russa discontinued their line we bought a hundred jars....well maybe not a hundred...).

From two weeks before when she had wrapped it and placed it under the Christmas Tree.

I'm glad that I had gotten a hint beforehand that I needed to say: "A firefly catcher! I love catching Fireflies!"

And of course I'll be keeping it for use in June.

.

And my brother David, along with niece Emma & nephew Liam got me the perfect gift.

No really. They got me an automated Keyfinder. And I lose my keys all the time. ALL the time.

(Just ask the Security Guards at the college, I'm best friends with all of them.)

So with the automatic keyfinder, you just whistle and then the keys go off like a car alarm from wherever they are -- under a pillow, in a pocket, in the refrigerator.

Two problems:

I didn't learn to whistle til I was 21.

So I still can't whistle, apparently with the right tone to make the key alarm go off, but

The Good News:

Jaelyn shouting at her brother DOES set the alarm off.

Changing the channel on the television DOES set the alarm off.

Addison's shrieks whenever he's teased by Jaelyn...Does it.

My cell phone ringing...yep.

AND to top it all off:

Anytime the kids accidentally set it off (or another appliance tries to send out a mating call to it), they're thrilled with the whole concept.

So they start to approximate whistling noises. Which are just the highest pitched shrieks you ever heard. Like a whale call with none of the subtle quiet beauty.

What's the Secret, Max?

Well it was Christmas Night and I was grateful for all of my faraway friends, but because you’re far away, and I’m here, and because I had just arrived back from Michigan, and because I was the only one who REALLY needed to see The Life Aquatic on its (Midwest) opening day, so at 10:10 it was me and a completely packed theater full of strangers watching Wes Anderson’s newest movie.

In the first five minutes of The Royal Tenenbaums, Etheline writes a bestseller –

Family of Geniuses

And having been raised in a family of geniuses myself, I’m starting to recognize some of the fundamental contours that Wes Anderson has been describing in the last three of his four movies.

I didn’t quite see it fully until this film, but as the shape of his world becomes a little more clear to me, I understand more deeply and profoundly why I love this world, yearn for it, and feel a little bit like I came from it myself.

Here’s the archtyal myth:

Max in Rushmore, all of the Tenenbaum children (and even, somewhat, by proxy, Eli, across the street) and now Steve Zissou, too….they are all passionate creative souls who have found what they loved and chase it with all of their heart. Etheline’s book, Family of Geniuses is no accident either, because in the theology of Wes Anderson Gospel – it is some fiercely optimistic matriarchal figure whose love, belief and steadfastness propels these geniuses toward their “Rushmore.”

“What’s the secret, Max?” Bill Murray’s character asks as he pulls into Rushmore Academy. Max shrugs. “Find something you love and keep doing it for the rest of your life.”

From here the myth diverges into different complications and obstacles – coming of age, dealing with family and now – on board the Belafonte – the complications and obstacles are the more complicated issues of middle age:

How do the wounds of abandonment inhibit our genius?

How do our losses stymie our potential?

How do we sustain the genuine essence of our story once we’ve seen through the story we’re telling ourselves?

How do we find genuine-ness or a spark of authenticity once we understand the loop of gesture and repetition that defines our life patterns?

In The Life Aquatic, there are moments where it seems like the heightened realism of Anderson’s voice is going to rise too high…that the quirky features of the world will become, as Jane Winslett-Richardson accuses Steve of being, too manufactured, too over-the-top.

But if you can believe and put your faith in the story – I think that the questions that the movie raises and the complicated answers that emerge, are more than a little satisfying.

Because what’s at stake seems higher and higher for Wes and for all of us who believe in the code:

Do what you love.

Do it more passionately than everyone else.

No matter how weird or quirky or esoteric that makes you.

And hopefully the love of a few devoted friends and family should be enough to sustain you.

The older we get and the more difficult it becomes to stay true to this code -- whether we’ve written a hit play or won a Wimbledon match or made a winning documentary, or whether our losses and our regrets and our shortcomings threaten to silence our voices all together....or the ugly stumbling shortcomings start to crowd our vision of our self, our world. Boring and reliable pragmatic realism threatens to inflect our entire diction…

And little rebirths of hope, no matter how braided they are with loss – go a long way.