Odyssey - the journey to Greece (2011) - Part 7 – Life & Death

There was a great Texan country folk singer by the name of Townes Van Zandt who died in 1997. Townes Van Zandt wrote beautiful songs / poems and performed them with a melancholy that is almost unsurpassed. Even his love songs like “If I Needed You” sound sad.

He was a long term heroin addict and chronic alcoholic who once offered to sell all the publishing rights of his songs for $20 to get some smack, and also once shot up in front of his 8 year old son. He died at the age of 52.

One of his blacker songs – and one of my favourites – is “Waiting Around To Die”:

Waiting Around To Die – Townes Van Zandt

Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me
Sometimes I can't even see the reason why
I guess I keep on gamblin', lots of booze and lots of ramblin'
It's easier than just a-waitin' 'round to die

One-time friends I had a ma, I even had a pa
He beat her with a belt once cause she cried
She told him to take care of me, she headed down to Tennessee
It's easier than just a-waitin' 'round to die

I came of age and found a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar
She cleaned me out and hit it on the sly
I tried to kill the pain, I bought some wine and hopped a train
Seemed easier than just a-waitin' 'round to die

A friend said he knew where some easy money was
We robbed a man and brother did we fly
The posse caught up with me, drug me back to Muskogee
It's two long years, just a-waitin' 'round to die

Now I'm out of prison, I got me a friend at last
He don't steal or cheat or drink or lie
His name's codeine, he's the nicest thing I've seen
Together we're gonna wait around and die

The original tune from the album it came from is here (with some great photos of Townes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwR1n0p1V7U

Another great recording is this duet with Townes and Calvin Russell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNM4OwJX1H0

From the brief biography and the song above, it is pretty clear that while Townes had talent, friends, family, money, some success (although while alive he was always something of a “cult” musician – and very much a musician’s musician), and many other opportunities besides, for him life was too much of a challenge. Life for him was about waiting around to die – which he did. Far too young.

For those of us with far less musical and poetic talent, life still has its challenges and difficulties to overcome. We can either accept those challenges and beat them – having the courage to choose life or we can be undone by them, dragged down and just wait around to die.

In the last few weeks I have had close friends and family be diagnosed with cancer, undergo serious surgery, have loved ones involved in serious car accidents and then of course there are many who struggle with everyday life – with depression, with unemployment, with unhappy marriages, with stressful jobs and so on. Life can be a bitch – and some of it is of our own making, which makes it all the more painful, ironic and frustrating.

Pessimists rejoice of course in this aspect of the human condition. The American journalist George F. Will who currently writes for the Washington Post wrote in his book “The Leveling Wind”: “The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”

I, however, am delighted to be proven wrong and unpleasantly disappointed – for I am an optimist. A fully paid-up member of the club and an advocate to boot.

Why do I choose optimism? Because it provides me with the courage to live my life as fully as I can. Without optimism, I am sorely afraid that I would end up waiting around to die – and that would be a waste of my time, the time of others and frankly a waste of a good opportunity.

Being a greedy person generally, I want to get the most I can from life – especially as it is finite and quite possible shorter than one might imagine or hope. Although my natural optimism wars with my other tendencies of idealism and pragmatism – I tend to settle on a biblical target of three score years and ten – with any upside representing a profit margin I am willing to declare to the Good Lord on the day of reckoning. And if I do live longer than that – just another thirty years before break-even– then I will certainly owe some taxes on my extra profited years.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view."

I tend to take that view about my life. I think that most things will turn out well or very well – but I accept that some won’t. I believe that on balance, if I stay positive, I will enjoy life more than if I let it get me down. And when I am down or have the devil in me (see: http://osapp.blogspot.com/2009/06/devil-inside.html ) it doesn’t last long if I focus on the positive things ahead.

I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that it is better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t done. The only time I modify that philosophy is when my actions might directly impact other people negatively – and then I weigh things up a little more carefully.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to get myself an orange dress, a dumb haircut and start chanting Hare Krishna – nor am I shaking my rattle in the church hall singing “Kumbaya”.

I am talking about a faith in life that overrides my fear of life. For all of us have fears – and the most deep rooted ones are about our own existence. Mortality, identity, security, vulnerability, vanity and so on.

I know I’m going to die. I’m not awfully keen about doing it anytime soon – but then it may not be entirely up to me.

I know who I am – more or less – and find as I grow older (and hopefully just a little wiser as opposed to just wider) that I am more and more comfortable with who I am. Good and bad. (Next step is to balance better once confident in the knowledge of both aspects)

I do not fear for my security over much – thankfully I live in places where generally I don’t need to. I do appreciate that for others this is not so easy.

I do not worry about my vulnerability as I seem to be able to bounce back from most things whether disease, physical injury, psychological or emotional trauma and so on – and I think a good deal of my ability to do is because of my optimism (with just a sprinkling of idealism).

As for vanity – it is closely linked to one’s ego. We all have one – the trick is to try and keep it in check as much as possible, but never to try and deny its existence. I don’t worry about my bald patch, my rather too large belly is a health concern more than a question of vanity and my looks are the ones I was blessed or cursed with and I don’t believe in plastic surgery other than for medical reasons – so that is that.

Of course – as I inferred in the part about security – I have life pretty damn good. I enjoy moderately good health – despite my very insistent efforts to compromise it – with some help from my employers and my clients. I am comparatively wealthy and enjoy a high standard of living. I live in peaceful, crime free environment. I come from a stable, conventional family. I am well educated and I work in a professional and broadly safe environment. So what’s not to be optimistic about?

If I was a starving child exposed to chronic diseases in Sub Saharan Africa? If I was a Palestinian living in Gaza or one of the refugee camps? If I had been born blind, deaf, paralysed, or with a fatal disease? If I had cancer? Would I still be as glib about optimism providing the courage to live life?

I would like to think that I would. I believe that no matter what disaster befalls us, whether at birth, by circumstance or by design – optimism is the difference between defeat and victory in terms of dealing with that challenge.

Faith – whether in God or good fortune – surely is a means to find resources from within oneself (or from others) and either overcome the problem one faces or simply learn to live with it ?

When my finger-tip was amputated recently, I was pragmatic and optimistic. My friends and loved ones were alternately shocked, sympathetic and even empathetic – many sad for me about my loss. I failed to understand this. Sure – it was painful, annoying and a bummer – but it was just a finger-tip. It could have been much worse. To me it was just one of those things. I gave thanks I hadn’t lost an eye or my hearing. I was pleased it was just the tip and not the whole finger – but generally it was just “one of those things”. Shit happens.

A few weeks afterwards I got very depressed about it. Not because my hands were no longer beautiful (that was compensated by the automatic 10% discount on manicures . . .) – but because it was going to very seriously affect one of my great loves in life. Playing the guitar. You kind of need all your finger tips to play guitar.

I’d looked up Tony Iommi and Django Reinhardt – two great guitarists of rather different genres. One was the founding father of heavy metal and the other a gypsy jazz legend. Both had serious finger injuries – Iommi losing two finger tips in an industrial accident and Django being burned in a fire which badly damaged his third and fourth fingers. I was buoyed by their stories and decided this wouldn’t be a problem. Until I tried to play.

At first my finger was very swollen and still very painful so playing was impossible anyway – but after the swelling went down I realized that I really couldn’t play half the songs anymore – including ones I had written myself. I was really devastated. Furious with myself that one passion (motorcycling) had cost me another (guitar playing). Sad that I would lose the comfort and joy that playing music brings me.

I mooched and moaned for weeks, feeling ever more grey and down about the whole thing. Wishing I could undo things. Until after a while I stopped and thought of two things. One is to do with relativism as a coping mechanism – the other is the power of lateral and optimistic thought.

Relativism helped me to contextualize my problem – I didn’t lose my arm. Or even my hand. OR even a whole finger. I lost a tip. If it had been worse then guitar would have certainly been off the menu forever - along with my new found interest of teaching myself piano. BUT, it wasn’t worse – therefore I was lucky and not unlucky. I had hope.

The lateral optimistic thinking went like this. I can’t play guitar like I used to. Can’t play the chords or scales that I used to. So I will learn to play guitar differently, will learn new chords and use different tunings to make my own sound. And that will be even better than before because it will expand my musical vocabulary. And so that is what I did.

Since my finger amputation, I have written and recorded three new songs, played a live gig in LA and learned new techniques using slide guitar, open tuning and using my little finger instead of the damaged third. I have to have another amputation on the third finger to take it down to the knuckle and it doesn’t bother me – because I have found some optimism in this small misfortune.

Now I didn’t watch my sister get blown to pieces on a land mine, or watch my family be blown up in our home, or see my whole village die of starvation or disease – so again one needs to frame the discussion within the context to which it might relate.

But even the orphaned child, the disease ridden villager, the widowed soldier’s wife have the choice of hope, and the relativism of “it could have been worse” – no matter how awful the trauma was. There is always the choice of life – and I would always advocate making that choice – and using optimism as the courage to do so. There is always the possibility of things getting better – and if we believe that, we can increase those chances to probability from possibility.

Two members of my family have committed suicide, another has tried. I wish the two had chosen life and had the courage to do so in the face of their pain, tragedy and loss. And I am glad the third ultimately did – as it would have been a wasted opportunity to live, to enjoy, to succeed, to laugh, to cry and to fail.

If we can fail, then by definition we can succeed. If we can die, then by definition we can live.

Just takes a little courage sometimes and seeing life from someplace else, if it doesn’t make sense from where you’re sitting.

This piece is “αφιερωμένο” to E.K. – thanks for the idea.