"...Writers Wrote Books, Thinkers Thought About It..."

What is a life well-lived?  What that we do is of value, and to whom, and for how long, and why?  I raised those sorts of questions last week in thinking about my friend Tom who died recently.  MA, PhD, immersed in music, literature, art, drama, traveler of the world: Tom lived a full and filled life, emptied by dementia long before actual death.  We all know on some level--however much we'll actually let the fact sink in--that we're gonna die, and that it's pretty unlikely that we'll carry memories of our lives, learning and experiences with us, any more than we'll bring cash or, if you're Egyptian royalty, cats.

Why then do so many of us take in as much as we can, immerse ourselves in the Arts or travel or mindless consumption (see next week's post for more on that, I think)?  Is it denial of death?  Is it a way to leave something of ourselves behind, some lasting monument that says "I was here once, goddammit!  Attention must be paid!"?  Denial of death becomes assertion of existence; I don't think that the two are necessarily the same.

Much to my family's chagrin, I am not a traveler, at least in outward realms.  I don't have a bucket list, a need to walk on the moors or loll about in Tuscany, or see Disneyland.  And yet books and music and art and even this stupid blog are of immense importance to me, as a way to experience the lives and thoughts and emotions of other humans, to connect, to draw from and perhaps even add to the enormous trove of the talents and thoughts humans have created and left behind.  But again, why?  If I am extremely fortunate I will have all of that within me, accessible, until I shuffle off.  But of course that's already not true and, given family history, a lifetime of actively ingesting corrosive substances and now being passively exposed to an incredibly vast array of body- and soul-destroying chemicals, it's increasingly likely that my mind and memory will journey to the elsewhere before my body does.

In her first book, Elemental, Alice B. Fogel wrote a poem based on a writing exercise I used to use in my classes which took the familiar phrase "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" and used it as the title and jumping-off point of an essay we'd all write.  I think some cool stuff came out of that, because it sort of forces one to be reflective, to think metaphorically, and to make connections that might not naturally occur to an 18 year old--or most 50 year olds, for that matter.  Here are a few lines from that poem, "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear:"

Meanwhile, we paint our self-
portraits on everything
imaginable, then hold
them up like mirrors.
Our mercurial brushes
grow longer, our skills
more acute.  Dust clouds
the vision, tinder
to the eye.  So we burn
trees to save the forests, burn
air to fly afar.  We do, we say.
We can....

Or as Kurt Vonnegut put it in Cat's Cradle, 

We do, doodely do, doodely do, doodely do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, Muddily do, Muddily do, Muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

And maybe it's as simple as that:  we do things because we can, often don't consider whether we should, and the devil take the hindmost.  What an interesting group of organisms.

Here're some songs for this week's show, then, on Tuesday from noon til two on wool.fm:

Age of Reason                                                                    Wake Ooloo
There's A Reason                                                                 A. A. Bondy
There Is A Reason                                                               Alison Krauss & Union Station
Finally Found A Reason                                                      Art Garfunkel
Ain't No Reason                                                                  Brett Dennen
Reason To Believe                                                               Bruce Springsteen
Reasons                                                                               Earth Wind & Fire
Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3                                          Ian Dury & The Blockheads
All The Right Reasons                                                        The Jayhawks
Reasons For Waiting                                                            Jethro Tull
Two Good Reasons                                                              John Gorka
Reasons To Rise                                                                   John Stewart
Reason To Cry                                                                      Lucinda Williams
No Reason                                                                            Nick Lowe

Reason To Believe                                                                Rickie Lee Jones
Reason To Believe                                                                Rod Stewart
Any Reason                                                                           Tanita Tikaram
The Reason                                                                            Thunderclap Newman
Give Me One Reason                                                            Tracy Chapman
There Must Be A Reason                                                      War
Turning Point                                                                         David Lindley
The Point Of It                                                                       Yo La Tengo
Do You Realize?                                                                    Flaming Lips
Let The Slave                                                                         Van Morrison
Spark In The Dark (On The Moody Existentialist)                Alpha Band
Take It Where You Find It                                                     Van Morrison

That last, whence comes the title of this post, has become my favorite Van song and mantra.  Hope you'll listen and like.